Hi everyone,

I’ve given more thought as to what gear to take with me on my trip to Canada later this year, it’s nearly forty years since I last set foot in Canada and I was substantially fitter and healthier back then. I’ve decided to pack my two lightest and smallest lenses my 14mm f/2.5 and 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 Lumix tiny pancake lenses and Olympus PEN-F camera along with 4 filters and two spare BLN-1 camera batteries and some memory cards which fit comfortably in my small and sturdy Billingham Hadley Digital camera bag. Given the principle nature of the trip is to visit my elderly father and my sister and her family I’m going to do something that I wouldn’t normally do and pack another camera, my lightest, smallest camera, my Olympus PEN E-PL8, as a backup should anything happen to my beloved PEN-F. I’m certainly not going to take the chance of being stuck for the duration of this trip without a camera. I have a small matching detachable add-on pouch for the Billingham bag which is large enough to accommodate the E-PL8 camera, two spare BLS-5/50 batteries and a few additional memory cards. As this pouch is relatively small I’ve fitted my Olympus 15mm f/8 body cap lens. If worst came to the absolute worst then any lens is better than none. It’s not a lens that I’d relish being stuck shooting with for the duration of the trip with its small fixed aperture and poorer image quality but a heck of a lot better than nothing, “any port in a storm” as the old saying goes and a camera without a lens is about as good as a chocolate tea pot. 🙂

As well as the lenses in my camera bag I’m packing three more, my Lumix 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens, my small Lumix 35-100mm f/4-5.6 zoom and an additional backup Lumix 12-32mm lens packed in my travelling tech bag alongside my usual assortment of USB camera battery chargers, charging hubs, cables, card readers, travel adapters etc. etc…The plan being that I can just take out one or maybe two small, lightweight lenses at a time to suit my requirements for the day and still be travelling comfortably light or, if I chose, I could swap cameras and use the E-PL8 for an even lighter and relatively less conspicuous carry especially of a night time. All being well I think this arrangement should work well for me. The 14mm and 12-32mm pancake lenses are, to the best of my knowledge, the smallest, lightest, multi-aperture lenses for the Micro Four Thirds system and, from experience, I’m more than happy using both. If one mounts either of them on the E-PL8 then one really has a pocketable camera.

Kind regards

Leigh