Category: Antarctica

ANTARCTICA 2011 PACKING LIST – PART ONE: CAMERA GEAR

Posted in Antarctica, Equipment, Landscape Photographs, News and Updates, Photographs, Travel Photography, Uncategorized11 Comments

I started a blog post about my packing list for the Antarctica expedition in November this year and quickly realised that it was going to be a very long list indeed. So, rather than try and squeeze it into a single post I am breaking up the list into different components to make it a bit more manageable. These lists are as much for my own reference as potential advise on what other polar travellers might consider taking. They are not completely exhaustive and I will continue to add to them as things occur to me or are otherwise suggested.

I am choosing to take both a Canon 1DS MKIII and a Canon 1D MKIV as my primary cameras for this trip. This gives me both a full frame 21.1 mega-pixel camera and 1.3 crop 16.1 mega-pixel camera capable of a blazing ten frames a second (for wildlife). Both of these cameras utilise the same battery system; which means I only need to take multiple of the same batteries; rather than multiples of different types. It also means I only need to take the one charger. Worst case scenario if my charger packs up I can always share with my room mate who also shoots a 1DS MKIII. Both these cameras are also all but waterproof and virtually indestructable. They should be right at home in Antarctica.

At first blush this is going to seem like quite a lot of gear (and indeed it is); but I don’t want to travel all the way to Antarctica and not have the lens I want to hand. So, I am taking pretty much everything except the proverbial kitchen sink. After much pondering I have decided not to take my High Definition Canon video camera. The mind and skill set required to shoot video is very different to still photography and experience has shown me that I struggle to shift gears into video mode when working in the field and I prefer to focus my efforts on my still photography first and foremost. The Canon S90 I am taking does have limited video capability and of course the 1D MKIV has amazing video capabilities should I change my mind or find myself in a situation where video is just a ‘must’.

I may not take the 35mm F1.4L even though it is included below as I can attain almost this focal length by putting the 24mm on the 1D MKIV with its 1.3 crop factor. If space and weight is becoming too much of an issue this will probably be the first lens I choose to leave behind. Likewise the 85mm F1.2L MKII’s focal range is already well covered in the 70-200mm F2.8L IS lens. The 85mm however has a creamy bokeh that I dearly love and it will be struggle not to take this lens with me. I have a few penguin portraits in mind and I think this lens would fit the bill nicely.

Amazingly all of this camera gear (except the tripod, laptop and accessories) fits into just my Gura Gear Kiboko Camera Bag and all of it will be taken as carry on luggage (except the tripod). If by chance you are not familiar with the Gura Gear line of camera bags then be sure to check them out – they are the best camera bags I have ever used and there are several previous posts on my Blog about them.

  • Gura Gear Kiboko 30L Camera Bag
  • Canon EOS 1DS MKIII 21.1 Mega-Pixel Full Frame Camera Body
  • Canon EOS 1D MKIV 16.1 Mega-Pixel 1.3 Crop Camera Body
  • Canon Back-Up Batteries for 1DS MKIII and a 1D MKIV x 3 (5 Batteries in total including those in the cameras)
  • Really Right Stuff L Bracket for Canon 1DS MKIII
  • Canon S90 Point and Shoot (For Happy Snaps)
  • Canon 14mm F2.8L MKII Wide Angle Lens
  • Canon 17mm F4L Tilt Shift Lens
  • Canon 24mm F1.4L MKII Wide Angle
  • Canon 35mm F1.4L Wide Angle Lens (From Borrow Lenses http://www.borrowlenses.com)
  • Canon 50mm F1.2L
  • Canon 85mm F1.2L MKII
  • Canon 70-200mm F2.8L IS
  • Canon 300mm F2.8L IS
  • Canon 1.4X MKII Tele-Converter
  • Canon Macro Extension Tube
  • Canon Cable Release
  • Bubble Levels x 2
  • Waterproof Camera Covers x 2
  • LEE Grad Filter Holder and Step-Up / Step-Down Rings
  • LEE Grad Filter Pack with 1 / 2 /3 Stop Hard and Soft ND Grads
  • Sing Ray 3 Stop Reverse ND Grad Filter
  • Polarisers x 2
  • Rocket Blower / Lens Tissue and Lens Cleaning Fluid / Sterile Wipes / Micro Fibre Cloth
  • Zip Lock Bags (To protect cameras from rapid changes in temperature when coming in out of the cold)
  • Gigabyes of Sandisk CF and SD cards *
Amazingly all of this gear fits into the standard Gura Gear Kiboko Camera Bag.
  • Gura Gear Chobe 24L Laptop / Camera Bag **
  • MacBook Pro 17″ Laptop with Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS5
  • Sandisk High Speed Card Reader
  • 1 Terrabyte External FireWire 800  LACIE rugged Hard Drives x 2 for dual back-up
  • 500 Gigabyte External FireWire 800 LACIE rugged Hard Drive for Time Machine
  • Battery Charger for Canon 1DS MKIII and a 1D MKIV
  • Battery Charger for Canon S90
  • Laptop Power Power Plug Pack
  • Iphone and Headset
  • Arctic Butterfly and Sensor Loupe [EDIT ADDITION]
  • Gitzo Tripod Bag
  • Gitzo GT3530LSV 6 x Carbon Fibre Tripod
  • Really Right Stuff BH-55 Full Size Ball Head with Quick Release Lever
* Both the Canon 1DS MKIII and a 1D MKIV have the capability to shoot simultaneously to both CF and SD cards. This is my preferred method for recording my RAW files in the field as it provides an inbuilt redundancy should a card go bad or fail.  Both cameras will therefore be dual loaded with either 16 or 32 gigabyte CF and SD cards for storage and redundancy. The 1DS MKIII will store around 1200 frames on a 32 gig card. I could double this to 2400 by setting the cards to record sequentially; but as above I prefer to have more cards and record simultaneously to the second SD card. Its inbuilt RAID protection and another level of redundancy. Once I dump the files down to the two hard drives at the end of each shoot I will erase them and re-use the cards.
** This is Gura Gears brand new Laptop / Camera bag which I am ordering this month
The gear heads amongst you will probably notice that there is no flash amongst my gear list. Although I own a Canon 580 Flash I rarely if ever use it (I actually cant remember the last time I even got it out of the cupboard). I prefer to shoot with available light wherever possible. I do envisage some low light shooting during this trip from the deck of the ship; but the low light performance of the 1D MKIV is so amazing I have no concerns about bumping up the ISO as required. You also probably noticed that there is only one zoom lens amongst my whole line up (excluding the S90 of course). I just prefer prime lenses for the better image quality they offer and am prepared to shoulder the extra weight. Part of the reason I am taking a second camera body (as well as back-up) is so that I can shoot with two cameras with different lenses side by side.
Well thats about it for the camera gear list – Part two of this article will focus on clothing and miscellaneous accessories.

ANTARCTICA – T MINUS 3 MONTHS : WILL I BE TAKING A NEW CANON PRO DSLR?

Posted in Antarctica, Equipment, Landscape Photographs, News and Updates, Photographs, Travel Photography, Uncategorized1 Comment

I realised this morning it is now only three months until I leave for Antarctica with Quark Expeditions; which means it is definitely time to get a wriggle on in terms of a packing list and preperation. I have a pretty good idea already on what I plan to take with me but I still need to buy a few things to round out my ‘kit’ for the trip. I need additional memory cards, more thermal clothes and just possibly another lens or two to round out my available focal lengths. The big question is what do I take with me as a second camera body to supplement the 1DS MKIII?

I have been hanging off purchasing another camera body pending either the announcement of a 1DS MKIV or a 1D MKV. The rumour mill has been really spinning up over the last few weeks that an announcement would soon be forthcoming. Specification lists are appearing all over the internet for both the 1DS MKIV and 1D MKV; most of them are clearly no more than wish lists by keen fan boys eager to fuel the rapidly spreading rumour fires. A few of them seem to have some real credibility to them, but it is hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. Of course those who actually know are under strict NDA agreement and can’t say.

Without a desire to add fuel to the now raging fires here is my revised and considered take on what is probably (emphasis on probably) going to happen with both the 1DS MKIV and the 1D MKV cameras in the next few months. As to when it happens; well in my opinion it may well happen sooner rather than later. Especially if Nikon do announce their new big gun pro DSLR’s later this month or early September. A Nikon announcement of a D3S or D3X replacement will more than likely force Canon’s hand to avoid loss of early sales.

Canon will announce a 1D MKV before a 1DS MKIV. The 1D MKV will be a replacement for the 1D MKIV and the 1DS MKIII. It will in effect be a merging of the two cameras as has long been rumoured. The camera will be full frame high mega pixel (probably low 30 mega pixels) and will use the current 1 series body. It will be squarely aimed at sports, photojournalist and outdoor photographers. It will undoubtedly shoot 1080p video and include several new technologies as well as amazing high ISO performance.

A 1DS MKIV will come to market early to mid next year; but it will come under a new name in a new body and will be squarely aimed at studio only shooters. It will most likely use a larger than 35mm sensor (perhaps similar in size to the Leica S2) and will be designed to compete with Medium Format Digital Backs. It will not be weather sealed and may or may not include video capability.

For those clamouring for the 5D MKIII; you won’t see it this year. It will likely come to market in March or April next year and will be a cut down version of the new 1D MKV. Most likely sporting the same mega pixel sensor as the 1D MKV without the rugged body, blazing fast frames per second and auto focus capabilities of the 1D MKV.

I stress again that these are just my current thoughts on what is going to happen with Canon’s Pro DSLR range of cameras – Don’t take them to the bank!

History has shown that it is very difficult to get a hold of a new Canon product soon after its announced, so irrespective of what happens with the 1DS MKIV and 1D MKV if there has not be an announcement by the end of September I will almost certainly be taking an additional 1D MKIV body with me to Antarctica.

ANTARCTICA – LAPTOPS AND THE FILE BACK UP PLAN

Posted in Antarctica, Equipment, News and Updates, Travel Photography, Uncategorized2 Comments

Last year I schlepped my 17″ Macbook Pro, power pack and accessories all the way from Australia to Iceland (along with 25+ kilograms of camera equipment). I learnt an important lesson from this exercise: I should not have purchased a 17″ laptop for field work (international or otherwise); a 15″ would have been more than sufficient and saved considerable weight and space. I will not make the same mistake again of selecting such a large laptop. I was seduced by the increased real estate of a 17″ screen and the proposition that I could actually do some image processing in the field. The reality however, is that laptop screens are a very poor substitute for my wide gamut 26″ professsional image editing monitor in my studio. Even calibrated with a high end colorimeter the colour on laptop screens just sucks – period.

Given the price of a fully loaded 17″ Macbook Pro with 8 gigabytes of RAM and a 256 Gigabyte Solid State Drive is a dime or two more than chump change I am resigned to living it with until it reaches the end of its useful life and is subsequently replaced with a 15″ (or smaller) model. Unfortunately, (or forutnately for my bank manager) my 17″ MacBook Pro is going to still be well within its useable life cycle when I leave for Antarctica in November this year and I cant justify ditching it early just to save a bit of travel discomfort.

Unlike Iceland, New Zealand or Tasmania (or pretty much any of the other trips I have done) this time I will be based on a ship with only short zodiac excursions and the occasional shore landing.  This means that once housed in my ship quarters I can pretty much set-up the laptop and leave it that way for the duration of the trip – a very appealing proposition instead of carting it from location to location.  Yes, I am going to have to haul it all the way from Melbourne Australia to Ushuaia South America; through quite a few airports with lots of security checks with all the annoyances that comes with the pleasures of airline travel these days. But, at least on boarding of the ship it will become a static operation.

So, armed with my 17″ laptop for the trip I will have several advantages over small back-up devices such as the Hyper Drive. Firstly, a much larger screen for reviewing files and second the power to run Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop on location. Since space is really not an issue on this trip there is little to no advantage to additional and somewhat expensive devices such as Hyper Drives. These kind of devices are really space and weight saving options and are ideal for hikes or trips where its just totally impractical to carry a full size laptop. I can do all of my key-wording in Lightroom on location at the end of each days shooting on my laptop and even some initial image selection (should I find enough time). I won’t be doing any actual processing of my RAW files since as I mentioned above I find the quality of the screen not up to scratch for this purpose.

In terms of back-up I plan to take a couple of Lacie external rugged  firewire drives; which I will use to back up my files on a daily basis. One drive lives permanently in my laptop bag and the second drive will stay with my person for the duration of the trip. In the unfortunate event (touch wood) that I loose one drive I still have the second back up plus my laptop. Its the belt, suspenders and a piece of string mentality.

I will be taking a large number of 8, 16 and 32 gigabyte compact flash and mini SD cards with me – more than enough for a couple of day’s heavy shooting (and I am envisaging major giggage on this trip!); and after backing up the cards at the end of each day will erase and re-use them. I don’t advocate taking enough cards to never have to erase and re-use; since I want to import and key-word my files at the end of the day in Lightroom anyway and back them up to multiple hard drives. Plus I find it too easy to forget which cards have been used and which have not.

This approach and methodology has worked well for me over the last few years. The only real downside is the size and weight of my 17″ Macbook Pro – a situation I will remedy when my laptop next comes up for refresh sometime next year. In the meantime, if anyone wants a pre loved, fully loaded 17″ Macbook Pro at a discount please drop me a line!

WATERFALL DRILL AT FOX GLACIER NEW ZEALAND – PHOTO OF THE MONTH

Posted in Antarctica, Arctic, Iceland, New Zealand, News and Updates, Photographs, Reviews, Scotland, South America, Travel Photography, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Some of the most enjoyable photography I have done in the South Island of New Zealand has been by small mountain helicopter. There really is no better way to see, experience and photograph the Southern Alps and glaciers than by helicopter. With the doors removed for better photography, warm clothes and cameras ready I spent just an over an hour this trip photographing the spectacular landscape. One of the goals of this trip was to try and get a photograph of the waterfall drilling down into the side of Fox Glacier. I had flown over these falls several times on previous trips, but had not been able to get the shot I wanted. My pilot from this trip was Mike from Mountain Helicopters. Mike is as good as they come and he was able to position the helicopter in the ideal position for me to lean out and take this frame with a wide angle 24mm lens on the full frame Canon 1DS MKIII. We were less than 30 metres off the deck when I took this photograph. I have flown with Mountain Helicopters several times now and can highly recommend them to anyone looking for very experienced pilots who can position a helicopter exactly where the photographer wants and then manage to tilt it to keep the rotor blades out of frame.

SEARCH FOR THE ULTIMATE PHOTOGRAPHY GLOVES – PART TWO ‘THE VERDICT’

Posted in Antarctica, Arctic, Equipment, Iceland, New Zealand, News and Updates, Photographs, Reviews, Scotland, South America, Travel Photography, UncategorizedLeave a comment

One of my recent purchases that I was very keen to test out in the South Island of New Zealand in Winter was the new Seal Skins gloves I purchased online just before I left Australia. In Part One of this mini-review I made mention that it has been a constant search for the perfect winter photography glove. I won’t restate the story thus far; suffice to say the search has been ongoing. Before I dive into it I just want to make a comment on the fingerless glove with the optional slide over mitten that many outdoor sports people and hunters use. These types of gloves don’t work for me. Although they provide plenty of tactile feel (because they are fingerless) they are not waterproof and far from warm enough in the sort of environments I sometimes shoot in.

The Seal Skins gloves on face value appeared to tick all the boxes for me. They are waterproof, warm (at least around the house!) and yet retain enough tactile feel that I can still operate my camera equipment effectively in the field. So how did they perform?

The result is a mixed bag. Firstly, the gloves are in fact waterproof as advertised. I spent several hours clambering over Fox Glacier in cold and wet conditions. Experience has shown me that my previous thermalite gloves (which were warm when dry) would have been totally saturated after half an hour of this kind of activity and thus totally useless. The Seal Skinz on the other hand remained totally dry; even when I was fumbling around in puddles of glacial water adjusting my crampons. They shed water beautifully and remain dry on both the inside and outside. Just on the subject of glaciers – I almost came to quite a nasty end at Fox Glacier. I am always extremely careful when traversing glaciers for obvious reasons.I have quite a bit of glacial experience; but you can never take them for granted. They are riddled with hidden dangers; falling ice, wave surges and crevasses are but some of the potential dangers. Glacial ice is pound for pound about the same weight as structural concrete and there have been several very unfortunate deaths over the years at Fox Glacier from falling ice. Fox Glacier is currently receding and this makes it more dangerous than an advancing glacier since it is shedding ice (at a fairly rapid rate). I was keen to get a photo of the terminal face of the glacier so had hiked up the side of the glacial river with a wide angle lens to get close to really give a sense of scale to the photograph. Getting close to the terminal face meant skirting the edge of a very large overhanging piece of glacial ice – not something I would normally do. I could see large boulders and rocks perched precariously on the ice flow 30 odd feet above. However, ‘photo fever’ got the better of me and I chanced it; I scrambled forward against the ice and river; set up my tripod and prepared to take a frame just as several rocks the size of basketballs came hurtling over the top of the ice landing only a few feet in front of me in the river. Needless to say that was enough for me. It was a timely reminder that no amount of experience on glaciers is worth a pinch if you find yourself somewhere you shouldn’t be . I beat a hasty retreat and decided it was far wiser, safer and more enjoyable to photograph the glacier and alps by helicopter.

I have photographed the Southern Alps and Glacier by Helicopter before in winter in 2009. I had chartered a small mountain helicopter with two other photographers. We had the doors removed and spent a couple of glorious hours shooting thousands of frames over the alps. The ambient air temperature was -19 degrees celsius during that flight plus whatever the wind chill factor was and even with several thermal layers I was frozen by the time we got back to the helipad.

I chartered another helicopter this trip and with the door off and harness on spent another hour photographing the alps and glaciers shortly after breakfast. It was not quite as cold this time at -9 degrees celsius; but it was still a good test for the Seal Skinz. What I found was that my fingers still got very cold (almost totally numb after an hour shooting); however, even with near numb fingers, the chopper door off and wind I was still able to change both CF and the tiny SD cards in my 1DSMK III with relative ease. In fact, I was really quite surprised at just how good the tactile feel is in these gloves. I never felt like I was going to drop any of the small cards; even when I had several between different fingers in an effort to ‘speed-change’ the cards. Helicopter charter is $1500 an hour – so you don’t want to waste to much time playing with camera cards and settings. In this respect the Seal Skinz gloves are nothing short of brilliant; giving all the tactile feel required for even the most difficult shooting environments. The downside is they are not quite as warm as I had hoped they would be and I can only rate their thermal protection as average at best.

In summary the Seal Skinz are the best gloves for cold weather photography I have yet tried and are therefore my current choice when I am shooting in these environments. They are waterproof, and give wonderful tactile feel and grip. They are not as warm as other thicker gloves; but I am willing to trade some warmth for ‘feel’. I suspect that in temperatures down to around -5 celsius they will do just fine for quite long periods of time. In colder temperatures I will want to have a warmer over mitten that I can put over the top after an hours shooting to re-warm my hands. This is the best current compromise/solution I can come up with. Seal Skinz do make a version of this glove that is lined with a polar plus material; which would undoubtedly make it quite a bit warmer. However, I suspect that one would trade quite a lot of ‘feel’ for ‘warmth’. The Seal Skinz will be accompanying me to Antarctica later this year so that is a pretty solid recommendation. The caveat is I will also be taking a pair of 66 North over mittens just in case it gets really freezing and I need to re-warm to carry on shooting.