Switzerland is very nice, it’s also very expensive here… 🙂 Anyway Switzerland is also a photographers’ dream. Nearly everything is here: Sun, landscape, mountains, lakes, etc. By climate there is also a lot: Snow in winter, flowers and green mountain hills in spring, lush colored forests in Autumn.
The nice thing about Switzerland is that the country is not that big. You can easily travel by train throughout the country. The trains are really good and bring yo to most of the nicest places in Switzerland. SBB (Swiss Rail) got a very good website and App for iPhone and Android.
For weather checks SRF Weather is very ok !! Also on App available. Nice to check the weather before you go out shooting. 🙂
So I have been around in Switzerland, visited Locarno, EbenAlp and Rhinefall Waterfall. Amazing places ! Check out my portfolio items. Some more places are on my list like Cauma See, Cresta See and Berner Oberland. A ‘See’ is a lake up in the mountains, usually with very cold water (well for me it is…) but crystal clear and mostly green blueish of color. I can recommend to bring a CPL and a variable ND filter for nice landscape shoots. Sun is abundant on good days, which can make shooting a bit harsh. Sunlight can be very hard at times. Focal lengths to bring: 24-105mm F4, 100-400mm F4 or 70-200mm F4. For the wide freaks: a 16-35mm F4 or 17mm F4 Tilt-Shift. I prefer zoom lenses on hikes and expeditions. Mostly because it are tourist places, that alone means that you are NEVER alone. So zooming with your legs while having your 24, 35 or whatever prime on it, is usually difficult. Also, due to the landscape it is often not possible to zoom with your legs. I use F4 and stop them down to F5.6-10 range. Lens get sharper and no diffraction. I don’t see the need for 2.8 lenses or faster as we are not shooting in low light or need a very shallow DOF. ISO i keep on AUTO. Focus point always on manual selection.
I shoot with Fujifilm X systems these days and the nice thing about these cameras are that they are light and compact but still offering great image quality and impressive dynamic range. With hard sunlight and high contrast situations you can push the files a lot in Lightroom and/or Photoshop and that is a big plus. No need for HDR anymore ! Also hiking with a Canon 5D Mk3 loaded with a 24-105 and 100-400 is quite heavy. Sure, it’s good, offers excellent image quality, but at a price and weight. And when you have to go 2500m up, you want light equipment…. i mean light and good… 🙂 Olympus OMD is also recommended and for full frame lovers: Sony A7 Mk2.
So change your gear and get out there. 🙂 Shooting !
