Micro Blog: 30th July 2011 (Travel)
Whenever I am getting out for a shoot, be it a paid job or a casual one, I double and triple check the equipment that I will be bringing along. A casual shoot such as a bike ride around the estate will really only require a media card and a fully charged battery. There have been times I have roamed around with the iPhone to liberate my thought processes and never felt I wished I had a more comprehensive kit with me. If I were to be heading out to the remote areas but not crossing any borders, then it will be a more elaborate list sans laptops and backup body. The biggest headaches for most shooters will be a lengthy overseas photography trip. Add to the fear that any loss of equipment may not be replaced in time, it is little wonder we photographers get sweaty palms just at the thought of heading to the airport. I hope this micro blog entry will help curb some of these issues and fears and make travelling less of a hassle for you.
The first step to take is to list down all the equipment you have in stow. When I mean all, it will include post-processing equipment, backup storage, filters, batteries and all the small accessories. It is also recommended to include a column for quantity. From there, I refer to the schedule and try to determine the equipment I may require at the location. If I have never been to the location then figuring out what type of photography I will do usually helps. If I were to be doing landscape photography, the remotes, filters and a spare tripod setup will be needed. If it was street photography, then the faster lenses will be called upon and the filters will be reduced to a polarizer, a single 3 stop ND and a ND grad. It is essential to give this list a good look through and know that bringing everything IS actually not a good idea. Overloading bags will no doubt result in strained shoulders and obviously does no good to the shooter's level of creativity. The less I carry, the more I can think out of the box and try to work within the limits of the gear. That's works wonders a lot of the time.
On the New Zealand photo tour I have wrote about in the previous micro blog entry, I noted that I brought along 2 camera bodies, 5 lenses and a whole lot of accessories and storage. This was planned over a couple of days and visits were paid to the shops to either purchase additional pieces of kit (e.g hard drives) or replace scratched filters. Looking at the equipment list, I will then check each item thoroughly, be it a piece of battery or a remote cable, everything has to be working. What's the point of bringing a faulty piece of gear?
After laying all the gear on the table, it's time to select the bag of choice. I have to confess now that I have variety to choose from but they are all used in one way or another. I mainly stick to 2 brands: Lowepro and Thinktank. Both brands have served me really well with the Lowepro offering very good protection of the gear. Thinktank bags can however hold way more gear than an equal-sized Lowepro but at the compromise of thinner padding. Considering the amount of hiking we did, it was a natural choice to head for the Lowepro Computrekker Plus AW. It is a great size and with a laptop compartment, I had copious amount of space for the both the shooting gear and the bulky jacket for cold weather conditions.
I also carried a HPRC resin casing for the harddrives, laptop, cables, card readers and the 4 x6 filters in them. Spare batteries go in as well.
My equipment list was as follows:
Camera, Lenses and Media:
1) 2 x Canon 5D Mark II
2) Canon 17 TSE
3) Canon 24 TSE
4) Canon 16-35
5) Carl Zeiss 28-85
6) Canon 100-400
7) Transcend 400X 32GB cards x 8
8)Transcend 133X 32GB cards x 2
9) Sandisk Extreme III 16GB cards x 5
Filters:
1) Lee and Hitech ND Grad Hard set: (0.6, 0.9, 1.2)
2) Lee and Hitech ND Grad Soft set: (0.6, 0.9, 1.2)
3) Singh Ray and Hitech Reverse Grad set: (0.6, 0.9, 1.2)
4) Hitech ND filters: (0.9, 1.2, 2.1)
5) Lee Big Stopper x 2
6) Lee Circular Polarizer
7) Lee Filter Holder x 2
8) Lee Filters Rings (82mm x 3, 77mm x 3)
9) Canon 77mm 500D Closeup Filter
Remotes:
1) Phottix Intervalometer x 2 (with matching cables)
2) Third-party RC-80N3 x 2
Lighting:
1) Canon 270EX
Support:
1) Sirui R2204 w/ Kirk BH-3 ballhead
2) Siruis T1002 w/ Sirui G20 ballhead
3) Markins L-bracket on both cameras
4) Allen keys for bracket and tripods x 5
Post-processing and Backup:
1) 15 inch Macbook Pro loaded with Aperture, Photo Mechanic and PS CS4
2) 2 x FW800 2.5 inch 750GB drives
3) Western Digital FW800 500GB 2.5 inch drive
4) 2 x Nexto OTG 500GB drives
5) Lexar FW800 CF Card Reader x 1
6) Sandisk FW800 CF Card Reader x 1
7) Sandisk USB2.0 Multi Card Reader x 1
8) FW800 cables x 6
9) USB 2.0 cables x 3
Bags:
1) Lowepro computrekker plus a.w
2) Thinktank skin pouches and skin belt
3) HPRC hard case for hard drives
This sounds like a really packed and comprehensive list and it is indeed. Coming up below is a short writeup of each piece of equipment and whether it worked and the reason I packed it along.
5D Mark II:
- Not 1 but 2 for a very simple reason....backup. I even have a spare body when I do shorter landscape trips, not to mention one that will last almost a month. The risk of getting equipment damaged while pursuing landscape photography is definitely there, from the corrosion by seaspray to constant condensation caused by the cool air of the forests warming up. Not having a backup camera is simply not an option and one will perhaps regret it for eons if the main body fails. Now it has to be stated that the spare camera body need not be the exact same model. A lesser model will definitely do fine and being lesser in cost, will encourage even the photographer on a budget to get one for a lengthy trip.
Another reason for having a spare is to avoid the constant changing of lenses in rough shooting conditions. We headed out to sea at Kaikoura to get to the Albatrosses and that was when I had both the wide angle and telephoto available for use readily. Swapping lenses is not impossible but in a swaying boat, it is not advisable to do so.
17 TSE:
An ultra sharp lens with the ability to create 3-shot panoramas and maximize DOF through tilt. It was packed along to serve as a backup to the 16-35 zoom in case the latter failed and for times when I wanted the best quality images. That said, the inability to use filters is at its disadvantage and frankly, it somewhat limits the kind of images I can create. ND filters? No. ND Grads? No. HDR? Yes. I did use it a couple of times but at the end of the day, I would have chosen to leave it at home. The extra weight for the few shots was just not worth it. For landscape work out in the wild, the bulging front element seems to have me moving way slower.
24 TSE:
A different beast from its bigger brother, the 17 TSE. The 24 TSE allows filters to be mounted and that is a major advantage. Granted, the 2 lenses are totally different focal lengths but I found that I could much of the time work with the 24 by moving back or looking for another composition. The sharpness from this lens is on par with the 17 TSE and leaves nothing to be desired. Well worth taking up the extra space.
16-35 2.8 L:
The staple wide angle lens. I try to avoid shooting at its widest focal length of 16mm as distortion is obvious and requires extra post-processing work. Zooming in a little will solve that. If I was however shooting at 24mm or thereabouts, then the 24 TSE will replace this lens on the body. That is not to say the sharpness is lacking. In fact, there is a high level of image quality to be obtained from this lens but since I have the 24 TSE with me, what is stopping me from changing to get better sharpness from the scenes before me? It just takes a few seconds and I gain the advantage of being able to shoot 3-shot panoramas with ease too.
Carl Zeiss 28-85:
A solid (HEAVY) lens with an 82mm filter diameter. This lens simply blows me away with its sharpness at the wider apertures but it is still used mainly stopped down. The weight of the lens will deter a few users but the image quality makes it all worthwhile. My only gripe is the rotating focus barrel makes using ND grads and polarizers a little tricky.
Canon 100-400:
Graeme loaned me the lens before the trip as the 70-200 IS was down for servicing. Initial worries about the lens being not as sharp was unfounded. In fact, the copy that I had was pin-sharp although it has to be said that I avoided the longest end much of the time. From 130mm to 350mm, the lens is a landscape shooter's dream. Being designated as an L lens, it is well-built but it died of all of a sudden at a shoot at Christchurch. It was disturbing as I was still using it a few seconds before and all of a sudden, neither the zoom nor focus was working. Perhaps the fault could be attributed to the one touch design. It has since been serviced and is working flawlessly but what really went wrong? Canon Singapore could not give me a satisfactory answer so I just have to blame it on luck (fortunately, the travel insurance took care of the repair bill). That said, I have recently purchased the 70-300 IS L and am thoroughly enjoying its lightweight and superb optics.
Canon 77mm 500D Closeup Filter:
Long recognized as one of the best closeup filters for the longer telephotos, the Canon is a welcome addition to the bag and is housed in a durable plastic case. Used only in 2 situations and the resulting frames are not worth being included in the portfolio. That said, if macro is one of your interests, it will be good to have one these around to slap onto the longer telephoto lenses such as a 70-200 or 100-400. Splendid optics and saves one from carrying a macro lens.
Transcend and Sandisk Compactflash cards:
Personally I never had a problem with cards from both brands. I have the Transcend 400x cards as I had them at a unimaginable price and yes, half a year on, the cards are about the double of what I paid them for. That could have been a pricing error but I'm not complaining! Honestly speaking, I would rather get smaller capacity cards such as the 4 or 8GB cards but being a video and timelapse photographer, I will require the higher capacity cards. All the cards worked well and the Transcend 400x were more than fast enough for "boat-birding."
Lee, Hitech and Singh Ray filters:
I have been a huge fan of nd graduated filters since I started to get serious about landscape photography about three years ago. Back then Lee and hitech were not readily available in Singapore and Singh Ray having such a stellar reputation saw me throw down a thick wad of bills for their ND grads. I was however a little upset when I saw a slight colour cast in the filtered portion of the image. It was even more evident with the reverse grads which was first introduced by them. Within a few months, I had a full set of Lee and Hitechs replacing the Singh rays. There were no more colour cast issues (stacking too many filters will however create a magenta cast) and I would say 95% of the filtered shots were with the Lees and Hitechs. Very valuable for the landscape photographer and is one accessory I highly recommend. A side note: HDR and blending may have replaced filter usage for many situations but if there is motion in the photo, it is always more advisable to get it right out of the camera than to juggle with multiple frames in post-processing which may not yield anything at the end of the day.
Lee filter holders and rings:
Without them, I would have to handhold the filters which is not wrong at all. Many photographers do that successfully but my experience has been next to awful. To avoid getting the lens's reflection off the filter and bouncing back onto the image, the filters need to be as flushed to the lens. Holding the filter with a two minute long exposure, what are the chances one can hold it at the same angle and grad line for the entire duration? Soft edged filters may not pose much of an issue as the softer transition will allow some leeway in the shifting of the filter. The hard and reverse grads are however way less simple to handhold. I have ruined a few images from either the grad line not being precise (resulting in filtered treetops, etc) or motion blur due to the filter knocking the front of the lens during exposure. Thus the filter holders are essential items for me and just in case one goes down the waterfalls, I got another as a backup.
Phottix remotes:
My gear if they have any emotions, will never feel any love from me. The way I get knocks and bangs onto them has had more than one photographer look at me and say OUCH. But as an outdoor photographer, do we really need to keep our cameras in spanking new condition? No. The shooting conditions we face are too diverse to think about how banged up our cameras will be at the end of the trip. Let's face it, we (most of us hopefully!) are photographers and not camera collectors and we will use our gear and getting scratched filters and damaged remotes are just a tiny part of the whole process. For the remotes, I used to have the Canons and have spent a healthy sum on them. However, despite the higher prices, they are not much more durable compared to the third party varieties. I have had seaspray and sand condemn at least 5 remotes. The solution? Go for the third party versions and at one third of the price, u can easily get a backup or two and put your mind at ease. They work remarkably well and I am comforted by their abundance in the inventory list.
Canon 270ex:
A small flash unit would be useful for the occasional portrait or macro situation where some fill flash is desirable. The small size and light weight did not add much to the pack but couple in the 4 AA batteries (2 for backup), it starts to get substantial. Throughout the trip, the flash was not fired once so it will enjoy the warmth of home on the next lengthy landscape trip. On a side note, if the flash had a Test Fire button, I could perhaps use it for filling in the shadows of a dark foreground but it does not have it. A small 3W LED torch can take its place and being paranoid, I do have 2 handy with me throughout the trip.
That's all for now. Stay tuned for the second part of this blog where the remaining gear will be reviewed. At the end of it, I hope it has helped you make sensible and informed choices. There is a fine line between getting frustrated with too much gear and bringing just enough that your creative juices can still flow freely and yet, have the assurance that you can cover almost any expected situation.