Entries from May 2008 ↓

When I travel far from home I have two rules. OK, I have lots of rules but two that specifically apply to traveling with photo equipment.

1. Everything that matters (and is allowed) travels with me in the sumptuous confines that are economy class.
2. If any one thing breaks, something else can, more or less, take its place.

So, follows is an annotated list of the camera and lenses I’ll be hauling this year to Iceland.

Camera Bodies

• Canon 1Ds Mark III
• Canon 5D

Yep, two Canon full frames. I don’t expect the 5D will see a lot of work but it is significantly lighter which may earn it some use. A 40D or other APS sized sensor camera would do as well and help with telephoto work. I just happen to own these at the  moment.

Lenses

• EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM ((rented from LensRentals.com)
• EF 17-40 f/4L USM Zoom
• TS-E 45mm f/2.8
• EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Zoom
• EF 70-200 f/4L USM Zoom
• Extender EF 1.4x

I’ve gone with the “slow but light” f/4 zoom line. These are good traveling lenses, Hell, these are good lenses under most any circumstances. Most often used on past trips to Iceland were the 17-40mm and the 70-200 zooms. A very nice, lightweight kit would use the 5D, the 17-40mm and the 70-200mm along with the 1.4x extender.

The 24-105, thanks to the nice zoom range and IS, is a great general purpose/walking around lens. However, at times, it isn’t quite wide enough while also not being quite long enough. That said, if I had to go with just one lens… It also can, per the second rule, stand in for either of the other zooms should disaster strike.

The TS-E lens (strangely enough the fastest lens that I own in this set) is along as an homage to my View Camera roots. The shift allows for easy to shoot, easy to stitch, 2:1 or 3:1 panoramas. It also helps, should I need to, keep buildings straight as the folks that built them intended. This is the sharpest lens in the bunch and that, along with tilt and shift, earn it a place on the trip.

The 14mm is along for a number of reasons. I bought and sent (right) back, the original EF 14mm so this is an extended audition of the, by all accounts, much improved version. It also has an f-stop and some real width over the wide end of the 17-40mm zoom. Again, invoking the second rule, the 14mm and the 45 TS-E, odd couple though they are, would do much of the work of the 17-40mm should something dire happen to that lens. Finally, the 14mm as a new-to-me tool, will allow me to approach the trip with a brand new perspective.

Last and lightest, the 1.4x extender gives me a little more reach with the 200 end of the 70-200mm zoom. Also, it is the essence of the second rule: it adds versatility to several of the other optics should I need it.

I’m scheduled for three weeks in Iceland this year. This will be my third trip in as many years.

With most of the population living in and near Reykjavik, much of Iceland is thinly populated. Even as tourism peaks in the Summer, the countryside outside the Capital area seldom seems crowded. Campgrounds are widely available, fairly priced and, thanks to the open style of camping, don’t really ever fill up in the way that American campgrounds, limited by individual sites, so often do. ¹

It is also easy to stay in places that have ceilings, walls and such. Guesthouses, hotels, hostels, resorts and even rural schools offer weatherproof if often expensive places to stay throughout the country. Unlike the campgrounds, indoor accommodations do fill up in high season so advanced reservations are a very good idea.

So, staying indoors is dry, pricey and inflexible. Car camping, despite the logistics of hauling gear 5000 miles from home, provides the freedom to travel and photograph as weather and whim dictate. Not incidentally, campgrounds typically have hot showers (geothermally heated in some parts of the country) and clean restrooms with flush toilets.

Getting there requires, at least for we West Coast types, both Domestic and International flights. Each has different restrictions on baggage with international, aka IcelandAir, the more restrictive. Since I’m not about to become responsible for a typo that results in a violation of IcelandAir’s baggage policy, you should go here and read it yourself.

Generally, the roads in Iceland are excellent. There are also plenty of rough, 4×4 style roads but the rental car companies don’t want their cars on them. The interior then is basically off limits except to tours, busses, locals and folks who bring their personal vehicles in from Europe. It’s just as well – you only think you want to drive across a glacial melt stream/river. Those giant four wheel drive rigs the locals drive have snorkels for a reason.

Vehicle rental is expensive and the price of fuel is just plain mean. As I type this AutoEurope (I have no interest or affiliation with these folks, they just have lots of my money…) is charging about $600 US per week for your choice of tiny car. Reserving early (as in February) or for travel off peak season can cut this price by one-third. Gasoline is sold by the liter and adds up to better than $8.00 US per gallon. That’s the bad news, the good news is that gasoline is widely available. Most stations are automated. Memorize your credit card pin – it is required in some areas to purchase at the pump.

With the rainfall totals in the Summer months less than you might expect, the wind becomes the most common camping problem. The Europeans are fond of tunnel type tents with large vestibules. After a first trip with a standard issue back packing type tent, I settled on this free-standing tent, complete with a giant wind-stopping vestibule, for year two.

¹ Campgrounds can seem very full on the first weekend in July. This is the traditional start of Icelandic camping season and just about everyone with a tent trailer is out enjoying the 24 hour daylight and summer weather. This is also the only time that Iceland campgrounds get noisy. The rest of the year all is quite by midnight.

Both of Canon’s big guns, the EOS-1D Mark III and the EOS-1Ds Mark III allow for lens by lens (up to 20 individual lenses – which seems reasonable) customized autofocus settings. While potentially useful for all lenses, it is particularly important for faster (f/2.8 and better) glass.

Canon outlines an iterative “point the camera and lens at a flat surface, click, check, adjust if necessary, click, check etc.” procedure. It should work. I never bothered because it seemed tedious and my lens kit is mostly the f/4 “light and good for travel” L-series. My fastest lens is the manual focus TS-E 45mm f/2.8.

Thanks to folks that understand optics far better than I, there is a second, less subjective and arguably less tedious way to calibrate your glass. This method relies on Moire patterns that result from viewing a specially constructed optical target using Liveview.

The step by step instructions are on Northlight-Images, a very nicely done site dedicated to all things Canon DSLR.

Another discussion and a similar target can be found here..

I don’t post comments. I read and respond to the ones that deserve a response but I don’t post them.

That said, Gilber Buve has lots of positive things to say about the ATP GPS Photofinder and I had none.

Here is Mr. Buve’s comment.

I used it for 3 months and I felt it’s a very useful tool for Geotagging application. I have the SONY GPS-CS1, it’s the first geotagging device on the market, but it’s too stupid. Why ?

1. ATP PhotoFinder has a LCD screen:
It just provides a function to adjust and check your camera’s clock. Nobody won’t always watch the small sceen. Why ? Because it’s not a navigation device to provide a map. I think nobody will always watch the small screen because it doesn’t have any function besides show the UTC time. To adjust the camera’s clock is ensure the photo’s record time and date can match PhotoFinder’s GPS data. Like SONY’s GPS-CS1, because it has no LCD screen to adjust my camera, so I often took a lot of photos but several can’t be tagged successfully. Why ? Because the time record can’t match and sync.. ATP PhotoFinder has a LCD screen, it’s a benefit for users.

2. Signal lost:
As we know the GPS has 3 modes: Cold start/Warm start/Hot start.
From my experience, any GPS device is easy to lose signals because the signal is easy to interfere by environment, especially tall building, cloudy day or even rainy day.
But if the GPS device can receive the 1st signal and stable, anytime it can be a hot start mode as long as you don’t power off it.
What is the hot start mode? When you lost the signal, it can acquire the signal within 1 second depends on the GPS module chipset. I think SirF III can reach the standard and I ensure PhotoFinder can do.

3. Built-in SD/MMC/MS card reader:
It’s also a benefit. I believe other similar products on the market, when they do the tagging function, PC is necessary. But they need to install a lot of softwares and steps to tag one photo. If I took 300pcs photos, how long I spend to repeat the step ? Find the location and tag to my photos.
But PhotoFinder provides a OTG ” On the Go ” function, I can insert my SD or Memory Stick into the PhotoFinder directly, select the correct Time Zone then it will tag all my photos automatically. It’s like a magic box and I don’t need a PC to do it. And any brand of camera can use it. It’s the biggest benefit.

Geotagging is a new field and I believe more and more people will join it and find the joys.

That’s my experience, for everyone’s reference. It’s not a navigation device, PhotoFinder is a Geotagging tool, a magic box to tag all you photos.

And the camera formats, ATP already provided a PC side revised software, you can download it from photofinder.atpinc.com/manual.html I tested it and the PC software can solve a lot of format compatibility issues before.

Good luck !!

The whois information provided by WordPress has Mr. Buve traces back to the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre. He may find his Photofinder to be all that and then some or, and this is my take, he is representing a client. The Photofinder is made in Taiwan.

Follows is my reply to Mr. Buve’s comment.

As I said in the post, it is an adequate GPS but it fails to do the one thing that sets it apart from other devices… it would not append GPS info to any jpeg made by any of the 4 different Canon cameras that I own. I have two Garmin GPS devices… I can dump tracks on to my computer and tag jpegs there. If the ATP Photofinder cannot append info in the field directly on SD cards than it is just a small GPS unit and I have one that is small enough (and has many everyday advantages over the ATP unit.)

We can disagree on the tiny LCD read out. You are right that it is used infrequently, I am right that it is to small to use at all. And the contrast is so awful that the tiny letters are only part of the problem. It is extremely hard to read and that is a problem.

The hard to read problem extends to the LED status lights. They are simply too dim to be of use in average daylight. On a device that is fussy about orientation it is a requirement that the user be able to confirm that the device has satellites. I expect a device like this to both work and to inform me when it is working.

And the thing simply eats batteries. Why not AA rather than AAA for power?

The included booklet, the PDF and the information on the Web site all have different and often conflicting information on what the device does and how it does it. One source specifically mentions Canon (the largest maker of digital cameras on the planet), while another says “that the Photofinder works with most JPEGs.” Finally, the included pamphlet specifically named cameras by manufacturer and model and Canon was not included. So, which is it?

No mention is made of the Zulu offset available on the unit. I reset cameras to Zulu only to find out that I could adjust for local time. Not that it mattered. Either way the unit could not and would not append Lat and Lon on my jpegs

Go over to B&H and read similar criticism. It is a good idea with very poor execution.