Which camera should I take?

[Jonathan Huyer]

Hi Joel - welcome back to the forum!
Certainly weight matters an awful lot when you are hiking, so it's hard to resist going with the lightest possible kit. My only suggestion would be to go with whatever body gives you the chance to use filters. A polarizer will be super useful, and so would an ND filter and grad filter I'm sure. But if it's at all possible, just bring everything (including the 70-200) and find a way to leave the heavy stuff behind somewhere when you do the big hikes.

[Joel Bookhammer]

Thanks for the reply Jonathan.
I do have and use a polarizer for both the 5DII setup and Fuji. A solid ND filter probably wouldn't be super needed on this trip because of the environment, and rather than using a graduated ND's I generally either adjust a single image in post or take multiple exposures and then blend them. If I could bring everything I would but luggage space is limited and the majority of the trip is going to be spent on trail so Im not willing to leave the 24-70 and 70-200 in the rental car.

This trip is enjoy the experience and take pictures second. But I want to take the kit that offers me the best possible image quality. While the Fuji has great image quality its a fixed focal length so anything that needs a longer focal length its kinda useless for that, hence why I took the G15 last time. Most of the shots I took on the last trip though did not exceed 70mm. The only two instances where I was glad to have a longer reach than that was in Zion when two California Condors flew through, and seeing some beautiful Desert Big Horn rams while hiking out of the Grand Canyon, and while the G15 didn't give me the best or longest focal length it still allowed me to document seeing them. But in both cases I would not of had any telephoto DSLR lenses with me because of the distance/elevation of the hikes.