The wrong lesson: carry an extra of everything.

The right lesson: identify the things you need for a successful trip and have a plan for when one of those things fails.

Hopefully you didn’t notice it but when I took all those pictures at Silver Lake earlier this week I was using my backup camera. The problem was that my Olympus Tough TG-810 was bumped wrong, turned on accidentally and was completely drained by the time I got to the trailhead. (something I mentioned in my review of this camera)

Initially I was a little scared. I can’t hike a trail and not take pictures because then I’d just have to come back and hike it again to get pictures so I may as well just wait until I have a camera and hike it then.

Thanks for coming off the bench and saving the day.

I do always carry a back up camera. A trusty old Olympus Tough 8000. (I may do a review of that one someday) But I thought, what if both cameras are dead? What if they have formed some sort of a digital camera union and started a strike? Would my GPS join next?

Thankfully that wasn’t the case. My backup fired right up and, well, you’ve seen the results.

It got me thinking about the value of the backup. There have been times when I didn’t have space for it but made some anyway. There have been times when I was trimming as much weight as I could but carried it anyway.

This was a good moment of positive reinforcement for me.  A day was saved, a trail was added to the website, I had a stare down with a fish.  Now when will someone design a rugged camera that takes AAs?

What’s one piece of gear that you can’t do without?