We’re in the middle of preparations, not for New Year’s Eve 2024, but for our imminent departure for Vietnam! On the evening of the 1st, we head for Bangkok before catching a connecting flight to Saigon. The journey will be a little long, as we’ll be in transit in Bangkok for almost 9 hours… You know when you’re looking for the cheapest plane tickets possible, you’re prepared to put up with lousy waiting times to make a few hundred euros. That was back in May when I bought the tickets that cost us over €5500 (!!!). Today I’m thinking that I should have dropped the extra €200 or so to avoid having to wait 9 hours in Bangkok. A lesson to remember for next time…

Gwen is in charge of clothes, medical kit and toiletries. As you can imagine, I’m in charge of all the electrical equipment. That’s a lot of stuff to bring. In bulk

• Binoculars: we’ll be passing through Cat Tien National Park and will need them to spot birds and gibbons.
• A host of plugs and adaptors, given the amount of gear we’re bringing. USB cables galore
• The GoPro for the Vlog that Joachim wants to make
• External batteries (30,000mA so that the kids don’t find themselves in recovery position because their smartphones are discharged…)
• Cameras with their batteries and associated chargers
• My laptop: I’m the type of person who spends nearly 1 hour editing the day’s photos the same evening. I don’t like to deal with it later, because the task would be too big … I procrastinate on a lot of things, but not this!
• My external HDD to store all those big RAW files

For a long time I wondered what gear I was going to take on the trip. For our last trip to Thailand, I packed my Ricoh GRD IV, my Fujifilm X-E2 and the 23mm f1.4 I’d just got for Christmas. In the end, I never used the Ricoh for the whole trip. This trip marked my transition to 35mm. I’ve kept it ever since!

You may not know it, but a few months ago I fell for the Fujifilm X-E3. My X-E2 was starting to give up a bit and I needed another camera to continue using my 35mm f0.95 lenses (which I love!) and also my 23mm f1.4. The Fujifilm X-E4 was my first choice, but given the second-hand prices, the X-E3 was preferable. So here I am with a new camera: the Fujifilm X-E3.

• 24 MP
• An inferior EVF (it’s crazy that, with an upgrade, it’s not as good as the X-E2’s EVF …)
• A useless touch screen
• A pop-up flash that has disappeared (sic)
• A supposedly faster AF (something I couldn’t care less about …)
• Some Simu made in Fujifilm (also useless for me)

So what should I take? Knowing that during our visit to Cat Tien National Park, my 50-200mm zoom lens would be very useful in case of an encounter with gibbons perched high in the trees … But lugging around so much gear just for this outing makes , no way !.

I’ve made up my mind. I’m only going with the Ricoh GR3. With 7 extra batteries! Yes, you can never be too far-sighted with the lousy battery life of this camera … I’ll be able to juggle between the 28mm for landscapes and the 35mm for everything else. And for the birds and gibbons? well, I’ll just enjoy the show! Joachim will also be carrying a Lumix TZ90 compact that he borrowed from his grandad. Zoom 24-720 mm !!!! Well, it won’t be the same quality as my Fujifilm, but it’ll be more than enough to get close-ups of gibbons if we can find any!

So that’s it, it’s going to be a light trip in terms of gear for me. Just the Ricoh GR3. Yes, that unloved camera about which I’ve said a lot of bad things. I refer you to my Blog about it. I’ve been using it for almost a year now and, for want of a better word, I’ve accepted its faults. Its lousy AF, its overheating that forces me to switch the camera off (otherwise it switches itself off …), its lack of pop-up flash. As for the rest, I’ve got used to its ergonomics (remember, I was quite critical of the position of the on/off and shutter release buttons). It’s worth noting that I’ve sorted out a very annoying design problem with this camera. From time to time, my Ricoh would switch itself off with the lens out. There was no way of switching it off properly. You had to take the battery out and put it back in to turn the camera back on. This problem was very recurrent and clearly spoilt the experience. On examining the battery compartment, I realised that the battery wasn’t sitting straight. The battery ejection spring must be too hard and it happens from time to time that the battery connectors don’t make contact with the camera connectors. Problem solved with a piece of paper between the battery and the battery door. How much does this camera cost? 1000€? Oh Ricoh/Pentax, I suggest that for the next iteration of the Ricoh GR, you put a thick layer of plastic on the right-hand side of the battery door to avoid this problem …Since then I’ve had no more problems with my camera turning itself off!

I’m sorry about this blog going off in all directions, but you’re used to that. I hope you have a great holiday as we move into 2025. See you next year! Best wishes to you all!

All photos were taken with the Ricoh GR3 | Crop 35 mm.