Whats the best way to carry heavy lens with equipment while hiking into the bush

[stevewill]

Hi All,

Does anybody out there use large lenses like either the 800mm or 600mm canon lens? If so it would really be appreciated if you could share how you hike with these giants.

I have a Gitzo tripod with Wimberley head, with my 100-400 mm lens this is not a problem, but thinking of buying an 800mm or 600mm lens as the range for small and breeding birds is just too short and I do not want to disturb the breeding birds. So I was wondering how you go about hiking with these?

Any ideas welcome
Thank you
Steve

[Steve Axford]

Use a good day pack, not a camera pack as they are never designed for walking with. I use a Deuta Futura 32 day pack, which allows me to carry a Gitzo CF tripod on the side of the pack and a 300mm F2.8 lens plus 2x extender, plus several other lenses (eg 14mm plus 100mm macro). The whole thing weighs about 10kg with water. I have walked 25km with this, though not recently.

[jim]

Hire a porter?

[Morgo]

I use a Gura Gear Bataflae 32L which holds just everything I need. It is well built with nice support and padding for carrying a heavy load around.

You could carry either a 800 or 600 in just one side of the 32L and still have half the pack to carry bodies and other lenses etc.