Entries Tagged 'Things I Use' ↓

This was my third trip to Iceland and I my first solo trip. Traveling alone allowed me to be nothing other than a photographer and traveler. It also meant that all the work of making and breaking camp, cooking meals and making decisions were all mine and mine alone.

So what worked and, inevitably, what did not work (at least to the extent that it is worth complaining about?)

There and Back

jetBlue / IcelandAir – jetBlue handled the direct round trip flight to Boston Logan and was kind enough to wave the (then) newly instated second bag fee. That won’t happen again… The red eye put me and my luggage in Boston 7 hours prior to IcelandAir finishing the trip. My IcelandAir flight was the first of the day so I was stuck with lots of luggage and little sleep until the IcelandAir ticket window opened 5 hours of so after I landed. I was beyond happy to get rid of my luggage.

Especially when compared to jetBlue, IcelandAir seems like a blast from the past. All women cabin crews in tailored uniforms and giant row filling stainless steal carts are the most obvious contrasts to jetBlue. Older 737′s with very little in the way of inflight distractions is another. The fact that they continue to serve meals also makes them a vanishing breed.

And in a final homage to times gone by, both the outbound and inbound Boston to Reykjavik flights were on time.

I will complain a bit about the schedule. IcelandAir hubs in Reykjavik and the flight is timed to land in Europe in the early morning. That is fine if, as most of the people on the plane were, you are headed for Europe. If you jump of in Iceland you wander up to the rental car counter after midnight still facing a 45 minute drive from the Airport into the big city.

Thanks largely to the German cartographer at ourfootprints and my trusty Garmin Nuvi, I drove directly to my favorite place to stay in Reykjavik, GuestHouse Anna. Anna’s is located near the transportation terminal should you take the airport bus into Reykavik. It is also an easy and welcomed walk from Anna’s to the Reykjavik city center. Anna’s is a nice and fairly priced place and she is a gracious and properly eccentric host.

Long ago I found the commercially available camera backpacks to be over-engineered, too heavy and too costly. Sure, encased in pounds of high density foam, your equipment would likely survive a drop of 30 feet. But, I asked myself, how often is this an issue?

My 4×5 equipment lives in a Dana (RIP), front loading Pack with the camera and lenses all safe in Gnass Gear (RIP?) cases. The pack is made for backpacking and other backcountry uses and easily carries 35-40 pounds. The camera infrastructure, the pack and the dedicated bags, weigh just 6 pounds (contrast this to the roughly equivalent Lowepro Photo Trekker which is nearly twice as heavy.) I figure it’s good for no more than a twelve foot drop. No, I’m not going to test it.

As I collected digital camera gear my first impulse was to go the build-it-yourself route. Once again, I needed a pack that was designed to carry well and was a front or panel loader. These are scarce and the ones that are available all had the same flaw – the front “rainbow” zipper stopped far short of the bottom of the pack

As Mark Dubovoy discovered and writes about over at Luminous Landscape the folks at RPT have a nice solution for large format types. The combine a modified Kelty Redwing Pack and custom lens cases into a decent carrying, lightweight system. And, to their everlasting credit, they modify the Redwing Pack so that the front panel zipper extends from the floor of the pack. But the system is intended for large format use…

So I bought one intent on making it work for DSLR cameras and lenses. A visit to the local Real Camera Store ™ solved the problem. Pelican makes a padded divider that fits perfectly and they had one in the back. No I don’t have the model number. Here is the link to the Pelican Case Accessories Page - it’s there somewhere.

The RPT Modified Redwing Pack with the Pelican Case padded divider weigh very little, provide plenty of protection for gear and look like this:

But, this nice carrying, light weight combo is too large for international carry on.

So I fly with a Lowepro All Weather Mini Trekker , which is internationally flyable. The RPT/Pelican Pack collapses well and is packed inside one of my two rolling duffels. I’m 6’2″ and the Mini Trekker is simply unwearable in the field. The pack is too small in every way but in particular, the waist belt is useless and your shoulders take the entire load.

Note how much longer the torso is on the RPT Kelty pack (left.) Also, it is nicely adjustable and has a real, “glad to help with the load,” padded, adjustable waist belt. The dog is Zach and really wanted to be part of this picture. So he is.

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.

This will be brief.

The ATP Electronics GPS Photofinder doesn’t work. Mine is in a box on it’s way back to the folks at B&H.

And I’m out 3 hours and round trip shipping…

To be precise, and why not, it is a tiny battery sucking GPS with a sub-microscopic display. Not only is the display small, tiny just begins to convey it’s lack of size, it cannot be read by humans when viewed while the sun is up (which is when I do most of my photography…) The three LED confirmation system that augments the really tiny and unreadable-in-sunlight LCD display is just dim enough that you have to hold the device up to your face to see confirm that the thing is working. Holding the unit will, in almost every case, cause the PhotoFinder to lose satellites.

Along the worthless display and the dim blinking LED’s, comes the third strike, it doesn’t actually do the one thing that made it worth considering. Sure it logs Latitude and Longitude but that’s not so hard. In the end this device is a one trick pony. It is supposed to append GPS info directly onto JPEGs stored on SD cards in the field.

And it doesn’t.

I was fortunate, back in late May, to receive one of the very first Canon EOS 1D Mark III’s. (Come on Canon, do something about your naming scheme…) It arrived, thanks to the fine folks at Badger Graphics, one week prior to a three week photo trip to Iceland. I bought it specifically for the Iceland trip and with the intention of selling it sometime after I returned.

Six months later I still own and use it. It is hard to imagine not owning and using it. I would only trade it for the full-frame goodness of the EOS 1Ds Mark III. (Really, Canon, huddle up and come up with a better name for the pro line…)

The 1D3 has had a fair amount of bad press, along with the usual forum centered righteous indignation, in regards to it’s occasionally sub-par AI Servo focus. Rob Galbraith was the first to quantify this and by throughly documenting the exact conditions under which the focus problem occurs, helped to convince Canon that the problem was real.

With the problem identified, Canon has begun a program to repair a defective part. They have also recently posted a firmware fix that seems to take square aim at the problem.

Any day now, Galbraith will post his evaluation of the mechanical fix by Canon along with the firmware upgrades and pass judgement on what may yet be called the Canon EOS 1D Mark III Blue Dot. As I type this, I have no idea what his testing will show.

But here is what I do know. I have never seen the problem. Several thousand frames shot in all sorts of conditions and it just isn’t there. I haven’t seen the problem because likely I haven’t shot in the specific conditions where the problem occurs. The full explanation is here. Remember, the problem is specific to what Canon calls AI Servo focus. I use AI Servo focus less than one-half the time with the 1D3 and basically never with my 5D. Follows is the executive summary:

It means that when the light is especially bright and the temperature is warm, the camera’s autofocus performance drops like a stone. Yes, you read that correctly. On sunny, warm, beautiful days – the sort of conditions in which autofocus usually thrives – the EOS-1D Mark III’s ability to make in-focus pictures of still or moving subjects is greatly reduced.     

But it is 2007 and the world is full of opinions and opinions, thanks to the constant din of the web, turn into facts. A specific defect in an otherwise very capable camera has turned into a wholesale focus defect in a sub-par steaming pile of a camera.

What Galbriath has to say about the fixes Canon has in place will be interesting. Just as interesting, especially if the specific autofocus issues are fixed, will be the response by the indignant forum trolls.