Kit for backpacking in Belize

rogerstpierre wrote:

Been to Belize. If it were me, I’d take the stylus and forget the EM-5.

Just returned a few days ago. Ended up taking E-M5ii, 12-40 & 40-150R, plus the two tiny Stylus compacts, waterproof one for swimming and snorkelling, and the other one barely got used, since my Samsung Note 4 has a much better camera, and I nearly always had it with me. We spent the first 4 days inland at San Ignacio, exploring Maya ruins, waterfalls and the jungle, and used the E-M5ii here the most. The 40-150R only came out a few times at the ruins. I found myself wishing I'd tossed the 12-32 in also, as I rarely needed the speed of the 12-40. It was about 3 days before I saw anyone using anything other than a cellphone, and then it was a woman with a D800 in the market, which looked really huge.

The next 6 days we spent in San Pedro and Caye Caulker, and mostly used cell phones, as we were swimming a lot, and only carried a swimsuit and a small pack. Sailed a 36' Cat one night, and was glad I took the E-M5ii then, and also the next day on the same boat doing some sailing and snorkelling. All in all, I probably could have survived just fine with my cell phone and a waterproof case for it, which several people had on the boat.

We kept pretty busy, so there was little time to review photos at night, basically just tried to keep batteries topped up, and even failed at this, mistakenly bringing a dead battery with me one day. Of course, it was the one time I didn't bring the solar battery pack...

The ability to take quick panos with my cell phone often made up for the lack of a wide angle, and the IQ is fairly decent, even though it doesn't shoot RAW.

I'll share some photos once I have some time to review them all. One mistake I made was clearing some space on my phone one night, since they were backed up on Google Photos, but I forgot that it wasn't set to keep original quality, and the compression is noticeable. Next time I will swap SD cards in the phone instead.