Seven Hills Camera Club

For Photography In Central Massachusetts

Getting Ready for Bhutan

Gear we are taking on a photo tour.

By Don Roberts

http://www.artwanted.com/onsouthpond

How much equipment should you take on a photo trip? This question depends on many things including, where are you going, how long is the trip, what type of photographer you are, are you shooting film or digital, etc.

I have been shooting digital for 5 to 6 years and tend to be a high volume shooter. So needless to say I shoot many photographs averaging between 500 to 1000 a day when on a photographic tour. Many of these shots are duplicates as I tend to photograph people and 20 shots is always better than one.

My wife Beth is a little more conservative in her shooting but still can come up with 250 to 500 photos a day.

We are embarking on our 2nd serious photo tour in March, this time to Bhutan. The following is my list of equipment and why I am lugging it along.

• Canon 5D SLR body, plus manual, as my primary camera.
• Canon 10D SLR body, plus manual, as a backup and possibly a 2nd camera when I want both long and wide lens at hand.
• Canon PowerShot A720, point and shoot, as a pocket camera for short movies and off hand shots. The A720 has optical image stabilization , so I'm looking forward to seeing what it can do. I picked this up using points off my credit card.
• Sigma 70-200mm 1:2.8, my main lens for 90% of my shooting.
• Canon L 17-40mm 1:4, this lens a good quality wide angle which I will use for landscapes.
• Tamron 2X Tele-converter, the 5D has a full 35mm sensor so I use this to extend the 200mm lens to 400mm.
• Artic Butterfly sensor cleaner. This device is great for cleaning dust from the SLR sensors. I also use it to clean dust off our lens.
• Optical cleaning cloth for cleaning my lens.
• Canon DSLR Cable Release w/ N3 Connector, by Calumet. This is new to me as we seldom use a tripod.
• Vivitar 285HV Flash, I'm new at using a flash but this is a good quality flash which works in manual.
• Wireless Flash Trigger & Receiver, I hope to use these with the Vivitar for off camera lighting. They were cheap, only cost about $30.00 total.
• Camera rain or storm jackets, Bhutan can be wet so we thought we would bring these along.
• 4 spare 2gig compact flash cards for the camera bodies to be used in the field during shoots.
• 1 spare 2gig SD card for the point and shoot camera. 2 gig will take 570 stills or 18 minutes of movies.
• Compact flash card reader. I use this to download to my laptop if necessary.
• Vosonic X-Box type of device. A lower cost version of Epson's device. I have used this for a couple years to off load compact flash cards while in the field. This device has a small screen where I can see the images loaded to it. It is just an enclosure that takes laptop hard drives. I put a 120gig hard drive in it for this trip. I carry a charger and a spare battery for this device. The Vosonic can read compact flash and SD cards and connect to a laptop via a USB cable.
• 160gig external hard drive with a USB attachment. This device will be used to backup images from the Vosonic drive.
• 120gig external hard drive with a USB attachment. Just in case.
• Dell Inspiron E1405 Laptop and an extra battery. I have Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 loaded on this. I usually do not have any time to use either program on a trip. The laptop is used primarily for backup of images. I spend some time every evening managing and backing up images off the Vosonic. This also has a built-in SD card reader.
• 4 spare camera batteries for the Canon SLRs.
• 16 Spare AA batteries for the Vivitar Flash and the Canon PowerShot A720.
• 2 battery chargers for the SLR batteries. The 2nd is in case the 1st fails.
• Lightweight Tripod, this is borrowed from a friend. I am not normally a tripod shooter.
• Ball Bungees (10 inch), to quickly tie down most anything. Just a couple bucks from Walmart.
• Lowpro Photo AW Trekker Camera bag, this bag holds everything except the laptop. I bought it before I had the laptop and would probably have purchased this bag with the laptop compartment.
• Power Outlet Adapters, power outlets are different than ours in most countries. Nothing works if you can't plug it in.
• Flashlight and a head lamp. It is possible to be in a very low light situation, like inside with no electricity. It would be nice to be able to see when setting up the camera or flash. Over the holidays I got three head lamps for $15.00 at Home Depot. We gave two to our grand children and kept the third.

Beth is also carrying the following:

• Canon 30D plus manual, this is her primary camera.
• Canon L 2.8 70-200, this has been her primary lens.
• Tamron 18-250mm F/3.5-6.3 AF Di-II LD Aspherical (IF) Macro , this is a new lens for Beth and is designed for the smaller digital sensor in most digital SLRs. It is a true 18-250mm lens on the Canon 30D. While it is not a professional lens, because of its light weight and range it may become her primary lens.
• 1 spare Camera Battery
• 5 spare 1gig compact flash cards.
• Camera rain or storm jackets
• Lowepro Toploader 70 AW Camera bag.

After assembling all this equipment I make sure it works and I know how to use it. I have some concern on being able to learn how to use my flash before the trip. I have been using the Strobist web site (www.strobist.blogspot.com) for lighting education. There is nothing worse than taking some equipment along and the batteries are no good, won't recharge, you don't know how to use it, or it just plain doesn't work.

This seems like a lot of equipment and maybe it is. You could also take less, say 1 SLR body and an all purpose walk around lens and 30 rolls of film and maybe get along just fine. I don't think I would be happy with that but many would.

Don't let anyone tell you digital is less expensive.

Hopefully Beth and I will have many good photos of Bhutan and have an opportunity to show them in the future.