Bring along lighting?

I always bring my smallest Flash, my Canon 430EX, for just the things you mention. But I'm a digital imaging pro and photo nerd, so others' mileage may vary.

"Who would use a reflector while backpacking anyway?" Anyone who doesn't want the light to SUCK! :-) (kidding!) But seriously, after anyone reads strobist.com or gets some direct-flash experience will find that direct flash is awful, horrific, and worth avoiding. I always bring a few 3×5 cards for catchlights in people's eyes and yes, if you carry a chrome umbrella, well, you're gonna be able to take some awesome shots…but you'll also have to hold your camera, and your 'brolly, or you're packing a tripod and you're as bad as I am and then we're not UL weenies anymore, are we? :-p

There are times when my beastly camera feels so heavy that I just can't bear to take a flash with me…and if I'm hiking with someone else, well then – POOF! Instant photo assistant. In such cases, I carry items to still modify natural light to supplement the classically painful dark-trees-blown-out-sky kinds of problems. Also perfect for getting rid of those face shadows from those wearing billed hats.

– Tin foil for sharper fill lighting, easier to aim for newbie "assistants." Bring lots.
– Heck, bright white glossy printer paper (a few sheets). Like tin foil, but much softer quality of fill light.
– Tape and tissue if someone must use direct pop-up flash from a Point & Shoot camera; loses a stop or so but softens the light when applied over the pop-up flash
– That chrome umbrella might just reflect enough light on its own to act as a fill light opposite the sun.

I find that scrims and other stuff to soften sunlight need to be too big to be useful, and impossible to set up right; go for lightening the shadows instead of dampening the light source.

And, finally, since binary data weighs nothing, I bracket like hell so that I can combine multiple exposures in Photoshop later, so that I can fill in deep shadows in post rather than carrying a flash.

I'd best stop writing lest this become painfully long. Hope this spurs some thinking.

That's exactly what I was looking for, definitely not too long.

As I think you've guessed, I've been reading up on strobist.com, and now that I have a tentative grasp on cameras and lenses, lighting is my next frontier.

The idea I've been kicking around is buying a Sigma 530 super flash – it would give me both a ETTL-talking on-camera flash, and an optical slave off camera (set up on a gorilla pod to be ultra light, of course).

But I really like your ideas of sunlight modifiers – aluminum foil or white paper reflectors is a great idea!

Thanks again for your feedback.

Final thought: This being BPL and all, we've not even begun to dive into multi-use lighting modifiers. That mylar space blanket? Large silver reflector. That tinfoil "pot cover" for your SUL500? Small silver reflector. That one-sided map? White reflector. Noseeum netting? -2 stop sun diffuser. (well, for small bits like flowers, anyway). If someone made an all-white version of the GG ThinLight we'd really be cookin' with fire. :-)

Heck, the more I think about it, many of us may be carrying our arsenal of lighting modifiers.

(Greyson, I've been studying lighting just like you for about 2-3 years now, between the studio and the field. Definitely a whole world of fun…and challenges! Good luck and feel free to PM me if you've got any questions or frustrations.)