[at-l] Trail Camera?

[bullard@northnet.org (James Bullard)]

At 03:29 PM 2/13/01 -0800, terry_norton@iname.com wrote:
>On Tue, 13 February 2001, FurTrappers@webtv.net wrote:
> > Need some help buying a camera for my upcoming thru-hike.
>
>I like the Yashica T4 Super Weatherproof if you plan on taking slides.  It 
>has a super shart Zeiss lens which takes good slides (200 speed Ectachrome.)
>
>Here area few other features I like:
>1. It is highly weather resistant.  It survived my thruhike in 1998, 
>several winter camping/skiing trips, and a couple of days on the beach.  I 
>never had to store it in a plastic bag.
>2. Relatively small size and lightweight.
>3. Uses only one readily available photo battery (123A)
>4. Neat right angle viewfinder.  You can easily prop it up on rock and aim 
>the camera from the top rather than contorting to look through the viewfinder.
>
>There are two caveats:
>1. The sharp lens comes at a price -- The T4 is not a zoom camera.
>2. Like most point and shoot cameras, it does not focus well in very high 
>humidity environments.  Remember to put the camera in infinite focus mode 
>when you are in the clouds.

All good points but remember that an SLR is nocessarily the best choice 
when hiking.  Like RhymingWorm I carried an Olympus XA for years.  It is a 
rangefinder style camera.  Unless you are planning a lot of close-ups where 
parallax is a problem there is no real advantage to an SLR and the body 
lens conformation may be a problem to a long distance hiker.  A rangefinder 
type that collapses would be preferable for compact storage.  A lot depends 
on your level of expertise too.  If you don't know the ins and outs of good 
exposure a point and shoot may well produce just as good a result as a 
camera with more controls that you don't understand.

sAunTerer