Travels with my camera...
The recent hiking trip in the south island of New Zealand gave me some problems. Usually I would take the full kit and a laptop to download the photos each night. But this was a hiking trip and anything I took had to be carried for four days.
Also, the overnight stops were at lodges deep in the New Zealand wilderness with no access other than walking and by helicopter. Power is supplied by generators that are turned off at 10.00 pm. When they get switched back on at 6.00 am, it was all systems go until we started walking at 7.30. So there were limited opportunities (and power points) for re-charging batteries.
I decided to leave the laptop and camera battery charger behind, take a pile of CF cards and a few spare charged batteries. I finished the trip with one empty CF card and one unused battery. I wouldn’t have wanted to cut it much finer.
I also left behind the 75-200 mm tele and the 20 mm wide angle and rely on the 28-135 mm all-purpose lens. There were a couple of occasions when a big tele would have been useful (but it would have been a major problem to carry) and one occasion when the 20 mm would have produced a great image (at the top of Mackinnon pass we saw a superb rainbow arching from one side of the valley to the other in a perfect arc, best rainbow I have ever seen, but the 28 mm didn’t quite get it all in) but the all-purpose lens did a good job in the majority of circumstances.
Taking photos while walking along the valleys was a little tricky in places. The light levels were very low at the best of times in the dense rainforest and marginal when the sky was overcast or early in the morning. I should have used the image stabiliser setting more than I did, but I was worried about battery usage.
Also, because of the dim light at the valley floor and the sunlit mist/light cloud in the sky, the dynamic range between sky and shadow was a little hard to deal with at times.
So that I could take photos as I walked along the valley floor, I decided to carry it in my hand. It was more comfortable in the back pack, but the rigmarole of trying to get the camera out every time I wanted to take a shot got very old very fast. There were times it became uncomfortable or difficult while climbing over trees and rocks, but I carried the old D60 for 55 kilometres.
It was a great trip, I am still going through the hundreds of shots I took, but I have some images I am very happy with.In May we are off again, this time to Malta and Sicily for a month. Currently the plan is to take the laptop and I have just ordered a new toy, a Vosonic image tank that is supposed to hold 80 Gb of images that can be downloaded directly from CF cards.
Also, the overnight stops were at lodges deep in the New Zealand wilderness with no access other than walking and by helicopter. Power is supplied by generators that are turned off at 10.00 pm. When they get switched back on at 6.00 am, it was all systems go until we started walking at 7.30. So there were limited opportunities (and power points) for re-charging batteries.
I decided to leave the laptop and camera battery charger behind, take a pile of CF cards and a few spare charged batteries. I finished the trip with one empty CF card and one unused battery. I wouldn’t have wanted to cut it much finer.
I also left behind the 75-200 mm tele and the 20 mm wide angle and rely on the 28-135 mm all-purpose lens. There were a couple of occasions when a big tele would have been useful (but it would have been a major problem to carry) and one occasion when the 20 mm would have produced a great image (at the top of Mackinnon pass we saw a superb rainbow arching from one side of the valley to the other in a perfect arc, best rainbow I have ever seen, but the 28 mm didn’t quite get it all in) but the all-purpose lens did a good job in the majority of circumstances.
Taking photos while walking along the valleys was a little tricky in places. The light levels were very low at the best of times in the dense rainforest and marginal when the sky was overcast or early in the morning. I should have used the image stabiliser setting more than I did, but I was worried about battery usage.
Also, because of the dim light at the valley floor and the sunlit mist/light cloud in the sky, the dynamic range between sky and shadow was a little hard to deal with at times.
So that I could take photos as I walked along the valley floor, I decided to carry it in my hand. It was more comfortable in the back pack, but the rigmarole of trying to get the camera out every time I wanted to take a shot got very old very fast. There were times it became uncomfortable or difficult while climbing over trees and rocks, but I carried the old D60 for 55 kilometres.
It was a great trip, I am still going through the hundreds of shots I took, but I have some images I am very happy with.In May we are off again, this time to Malta and Sicily for a month. Currently the plan is to take the laptop and I have just ordered a new toy, a Vosonic image tank that is supposed to hold 80 Gb of images that can be downloaded directly from CF cards.
posted by Interface at 3:02 pm
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