High Sierra Topix

We have the Sony RX100 mark 3 and mark 6. The newer one has an easier to use pop up view finder. My wife and I have each carried one when we both wanted to have a compact camera. I need a camera with an electronic view finder. The bright sun makes it too difficult to use an LCD screen.

This year I am going to carry the FujiFilm X-H2 with the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 DC DN lens on a Cottonwood Pass to Bishop Pass trip. The auto-focus works great for a 3rd party lens and the lens weight is 10.1 ounces. The f/2.8 lens speed is great for a lens of this weight. The camera and lens weigh about 33.5 ounces. I carried the Canon 6D with f/4 16-35mm lens on a 16 day SOBO JMT trip in 2014 but this will be a lighter but much more capable camera for 4K video and 40 megapixel photos.

The camera fits nicely on the Peak Design V3 capture clip and I have the Peak Design camera rain cover to keep rain on the camera while it is on the shoulder clip.

We will be traveling as an extended family of 4 adults so by sharing a lot of common gear (1 stove/pot, 2 Z-Pack Triplex tents) I can offset the extra weight of the APC size camera setup. We also will be doing about 11 miles on average per day so we can take our time to enjoy the experience.

I enjoy the photography and videography experience much more with a modern APC camera. The reduced noise under lower light conditions is a big improvement over the smaller RX100 sensors.

Thanks to all of you!!
I settled on the Sony HX99. the viewfinder is a bit weird and will require i take my gloves off, however, it is worth it for the weight savings. Everything is a compromise and, for me, weight was a huge priority.
I have been putting the camera through its paces and figuring out the settings over the past couple of weeks. Here are some pics. I think it does a fine job of dealing with difficult light situations. It also has an outstanding telephoto and macro. The sensor pics up small details and doesn't wash out the colors in bright light. I still believe that my old Lumix did a better job of sunrises, but considering everything else, I am happy to have switched to the Sony. These re pics from my home and a couple of local hikes. Most are self explanatory, but I will point out special stuff in the captions.
I just noticed that the minimum file size is 2.5mb. Sorry to all of you, I thought that it is under 1MB. Hopefully they will not be too small to see the details.

More of putting my new Sony HX99 through its paces.
Somehow reducing the size made them not quite as sharp. The picture of the "meadow" of flowers and my two dogs is quite sharp at full size.

Aura / LTS

Impressive! And indeed the click-on-the-image full size pics are noticeably sharper! I have wondered about that before on HSTopix as people who post photos via Flickr or whatever come out much sharper too. It is thus not the camera.

The Sony HX 80 also did a very good job with the greens on the factory/default setting, but can't figure out why yours is washing or failing at the sunrises and sunsets?! Even if you stop it down on Manual??? My Rx100 tries to make sunrises/sunsets too 'overall exposure perfect' by about 2 to 3 stops when on auto, so I generally Manual it and stop down until I see in the viewfinder exactly what I want. No later processing needed.

Best ~ Michaelzim

Yes, that very read sunrise pic was close to the real thing, but just too intense, or too red. Just too fake, sort of. Manuel certain was better than the scene choices or auto.

I just use my phone, shooting RAW in the Halide app and processing in Adobe Lightroom CC. I used to carry an APS-C camera with a Zeiss Touit 18mm lens and a light 40mm or the pancake zoom. My iPhone XS shot well enough in good light and would print well at 12x16", the 12 Pro Max did a better job and had less noise in low light, I haven't printed anything from my 14 Pro yet. Saves me over 2lbs counting my peak capture plate.

With a 14 Pro I don't even need to use ProRAW for low contrast stuff as much (I hate the over aggressive noise reduction which butchers texture on granite & sandstone etc)though having 10 stops of data vs 7 still comes in handy at times. The tele reaching further is nice and the UW (13mm equiv) is really useful, whereas on the 12 Pro Max it wasn't sharp enough to use for a shot I wanted to keep just for stuff I was too lazy to take shots with the main lens to stitch together. Macro mode works shockingly well. Having the main lens get a little wider from 28mm 24mm is great for me, I really disliked having my good sensor on a tighter lens for landscape stuff. I don't take 48MP shots much (has to be amazing lighting and/or something that'd make it on the annual extended family calendar), but there is a lot more detail in them that makes up for ProRAW messing with texture. Stepping down 1-3 stops is generally a good idea as you can pull out shadows more than blown highlights, but tapping for smart metering is usually enough. If I'm shooting a slot canyon or within a crack I'll switch to ProRAW and underexpose by 6-7 stops at times.

There's a good write up here if you're interested: https://lux.camera/iphone-14-pro-camera ... huge-leap/

All the photos here were taken with a phone, though none of them are really pushing photographic limits. https://cheery-hamster.netlify.app/examples.html they will be a bit better quality than fish/pass posts I've made here.

HST maxes out file size at 2.5MB and has a cap on max resolution iirc (which is reasonable given the scale of the site) - it's technically against forum rules (or at least heavily frowned on) to host images offsite in posts, but you can get much better image quality that way. There's also some compression added even on top of that which would further degrade quality (one exported image here is 644KB on my hard drive and 628KB here) along with just general noise added from resaving things in lossy formats.

A quick run down of shots and lighting (choosing mostly SW shots as off the top of my head I can think of good examples).

Erutan, thank you. Very nice shots indeed!

It's also just simpler to deal with - no SD card to move around (or a laggy wireless transfer). I can edit/share photos either in person or digitally from either my laptop or phone and with Lightroom CC cloud storage I can pull them at demand from my phone (though it's not free, I find the software well worth it both for editing and that convenience).

The IQ is still worse than my old setup, but it's acceptably worse and I don't have to worry about dust on my sensor when changing lenses in the wild.

I do find that having a physical viewfinder to put my eye up to has me create slightly better compositions, but in cases where I'm at a weird angle or it's windy I'll usually take a couple photos and keep the one that doesn't have something cropped out in a corner etc.

8 ounces with a viewfinder is a tough weight to find if you use a good quality camera w/raw capability. But to me, every camera is a compromise. I like the larger sensor, more capable cameras, but they are heavy, but I have an outfit like this that I love. I just don't carry it everywhere. On long, difficult backpacks, I might just use my top of the line phone camera since I always carry my phone with me anyway. They are actually quite comparable to a compact camera, in my opinion. (but no viewfinder) There is a camera that is out of production that I like. It is the Panasonic DMC-GM5. Micro four thirds sensor, viewfinder, kit lens is a 12-32mm good quality(not best quality) lens. Total weight: 10:5 ounces
That weight is comparable to the Sony RX100 cameras, which have a smaller sensor, but are very nice, but are a little fragile. The Ricoh GR3 would be a great choice, 28mm fixed lens, ASPC sensor, 8-9 ounces of weigh, except they don't build it with a viewfinder, and the screen sucks! those are my opinions, for what they are worth.
The best camera is the one you have with you at the moment, and the person's abilities to use it.

"Stepping down 1-3 stops is generally a good idea as you can pull out shadows more than blown highlights, but tapping for smart metering is usually enough. If I'm shooting a slot canyon or within a crack I'll switch to ProRAW and underexpose by 6-7 stops at times."

I have always understood that RAW is most useful for recovering highlights, and that consequently people "shoot hot".