Packing for international travel is never easy but packing for hiking, backpacking, free diving and having the ability to capture it all complicates things even more. On my recent two week trip to French Polynesia being streamline in my packing was essential and having a lightweight, compact camera was at the centre of this. I packed my Fujifilm X-T30 and four lenses (plus an extender) that allowed me to both have a. reach from 16-196mm (equivalent to 24-294mm on a full frame camera) all of which fit into a small camera cube for lightweight compact travel.

I didn’t grow up with a camera glued to my hand and some innate need to understand the mechanics of every electronic that crossed my field of vision - often I wish I did. I first picked up a camera in high school, I took photos with my friends doing silly things on an old point and shoot that sat in automatic mode until the day that it found its final resting place in a box in my parents’ basement. When I started to hike and travel I relied on the help from friends and my trusty cellphone to capture photos. I eventually purchased my first “big girl” camera in early 2017

Earlier this summer I set out to purchase a new camera - I was using an entry level camera from another brand and, although it worked fine for what I was doing, I was not reaching for it as much as I would have hoped for and my photos were not using out the way that I envisioned them. It was either time to invest in an arsenal of lenses, upgrade my camera or switch brands altogether. So I sat in front of my computer doing research and made frequent stops to my local camera store for a few weeks (and asked a handful of my friends whose advice I did not take - sorry!) and all of the paths I took left me with the Fujifilm X-T30 in hand and I could not be happier.