I spent the weekend carrying around a useless camera. Sort of. One of my struggles with photography out in nature is my unwillingness to go without carrying around the 150mm-600mm lens. There's nothing special about the lens, other than its focal length. It is a solid budget, long-zoom lens, the Tamron 150-600. Mine is even the 1st gen, not the 2nd that comes with image stabilization. But the lens has allowed me to take lots of photos of birds, animals, etc. that have turned out pretty good. But---you have to lug it around. Sometimes for miles. And you may not see anything at all.
On one hand, nothing terribly wrong with that. But on the other hand, it means I often don't take photos of anything that can't be captured with the big lens. Either I don't feel like switching lenses, or my eyes just aren't looking for it. So, my fear of missing the shot I could get with 600mm means I am missing interesting shots at macro - 150mm...which is a pretty big and interesting range of subjects!
I think I would be fine with this, if I really, really loved wildlife photography, exclusively. But, more than anything, I just like to walk around, see what I see, and get a photo of anything that looks interesting.
So this weekend, it was super foggy on Saturday and a hike at Marsh Creek proved ....foggy. And on Sunday I ventured over to Bryn Coed Preserve (because word was that there are some eagles there recently). But no eagles. And few bird or anything else.
I spent both days really just carrying around the a99 with the 150-600 for nothing. Took about 15 shots with it. Relied much on my a6000 with a kit lens or the Minolta 50mm lens for fun and a few shots. Tried really hard to ignore the big-ish lens.
Lesson learned. Sometimes I need to force myself to leave the big lens at home and focus on something else. And, if I see a coyote, or a mink, or a Pennsylvania sasquatch, out on the trail, I'll just have to settle with trying to capture it as best as I can with whatever the hell I've got. Run what ya' brung.