One of the perks of having a compact lightweight camera ( I have a mirroless)is the portability and the ease it is to travel with.  In fact, my camera plus all my gear still weights less or about the same as a DSLR alone.  It’s definitely a benefit on long excursions as I’m not carrying extra weight on my back.  The negative though: the body of my camera simply can’t handle any large lens well.  I haven’t had any issues with that so far as I’m mostly a landscape photographer, with the occasional street and portrait photography, which also doesn’t need a large lens. 

One of my friends is a talented bird photographer, and I’ve tagged along with her a few times.  This is when I run into issues, as my zoom lens just doesn’t cut it. The birds were just too fast and too far for me to get anything good.  This is when a telephoto lens would be handy, but something like that wouldn’t work with my camera.

 I ran into luck at Salton Sea at the burrowing owls den.  Believe it or not, I was probably about ten feet away for this shot. This owl must be used to humans because it was not threatened by my presence at all.  I got a stare down during the too: kind of intimidating!

 So I guess the lesson here is that everything has its downsides, and not being able to use larger lens is one downside of my camera. Nonetheless, I’ve made it work. 

On a separate note, Salton Sea was quite an experience. What it came to be is a fascinating story.  I may have to return there to try some portraits and tell the story of the lost resort.