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Author Topic: July Circumnavigation of Spitsbergen  (Read 2459 times)

Tim Gray

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July Circumnavigation of Spitsbergen
« on: August 07, 2011, 05:50:55 pm »

I just got back from an 11 day trip circumnavigating Spitsbergen Island in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.  I shot more than 90% of the 7000 images with a GH2 and mostly with the 140-140, plus the 200-600 and some macros with the 45mm 2.8.  The 7-14 saw some use but not much.  My “backup” was a Canon 1DS3 with the 24-105 and 70-200.  I left the 100-400 and 300 2.8 at home.  My experience to date, and confirmed on this trip, was that compared to the Canon setup, the image quality from the GH2 was not as good, but was still “good enough” – ie: sufficient to do prints as large as I go which is 17”-25”. I’ll get into the pros and cons later.  I do admit however, that I'm still enamored of the tactile experience of a Canon series 1 shutter release.

The trip was very good, not as good as the Antarctica trip I made in 2009, but still very good.  I did roughly 7k images compared to just over 10k in Antarctica, even with more shooting days.  But being able to start shooting on day one of a 11 day trip without extended sea time is a definite plus. I attribute the larger number of shots from Antarctica to the larger buffer and burst rate in the 1DS3.  :)

I think we had weather that was unusually good.  Most days had good sun and only a couple were extremely cloudy but with no real rain to speak of.  Wildlife sightings were excellent.  We saw 12 or 13 polar bears and in 2 instances they were as close as we could reasonably expect - they were near the shore and we were on zodiacs.  In a couple of instances they were basically just a few pixels and in others, close enough to still make a shot.  In one instance while we were hiking a bear came between us and the zodiac and was scared off by a flare, I think I have him starting to take a munch out of one of the zodiacs.  Some great walrus shots - a couple of them came up to us very closely while we were on the beach, a distance from the ones hauled out.

It was light 24 hours a day so nothing in the way of dramatic sunsets.  Waiting for the time of year when the sun actually does set means that the flowers have gone and the nesting season is pretty well over so the birds have left the cliffs.

Other highlights included sightings of Belugas, glacier calving (one of significant proportions - in an area where we had been just half an hour earlier), a sun-dog one evening and some fun guillemot (bird) shots.  The guillemot has similar underwater capabilities to penguins, but can fly - mostly.  Someone described their flight capability as cruising at 50kph with a stall speed of 49kph.

The photographic component of the trip was organized by David Burren, who I was with on the 2009 Antarctic trip.  He's done a number of trips with Aurora and has semi-official status.  The benefit was that when we were in the zodiacs there was always one reserved for the "photographers".  I'm not sure we would have been able to get the landscape/iceberg shots we wanted without having a dedicated zodiac to move when and where we wanted.  In any event David was very helpful – and in addition to giving me a couple of cool IR processing tips was able to tear down, clean and return to a functioning state a Canon (I think) DSLR that had a run in with some hot mulled wine.

The Polar Pioneer was comfortable, but the facilities and foods weren't as good as the Ocean Nova (Quark) in Antarctica, but the intimacy of a smaller boat was a plus.  The staff were knowledgeable and I think their expertise with local conditions was one reason we got such good sightings.  At the end of the trip in a café in Longyearbyen we overheard another group of similar size bemoaning the lack of interesting wildlife sightings.

We were the first Aurora trip of the season to make it though the icepack on the eastern side to fully circumnavigate Spitsbergen and we got into the northern pack ice as far as 81 degrees north - about 600 miles from the North Pole.

The icebergs certainly weren't up to Antarctic size, but the shapes and tonalities made for some very worthwhile compositions.   

Equipment wise I shot almost exclusively with the GH2, but used IR on a converted 7D for some great IR shots in Frogner Park in Oslo (fortunately we were on the boat when the terrorist hit).  I had 4 lenses for the GH2, a 7-14 (2x multiplication for 35mm effective fov) 14-140; 100-300 and 45mm Macro.  The 7-14 was the least used.  I had 2 tripods – a gitzo and Arca Cube were never used and the Benro travel tripod was used only for an early morning shoot in Frogner Park.  A monopod was never used.  Due to the good light I could easily shoot at 2 or even 3 times focal length even at base ISO.

The Pluses - I always had the appropriate lens with me.  Particularly on the zodiacs you could easily require the full range.  We had one pro with us with a full complement of gear, 2 Nikons with lenses up to the 500mm as well as a PhaseOne P45 and lenses.  Obviously he couldn't take everything with him all the time so occasionally he would have preferred a lens that was still on the boat. Image quality at ISO 200 or 400 - at prints up to 17"-25" should be fine, based on experience before the trip.  I did take the Canon 1ds3 and 70-200 2.8 one afternoon for some reference shooting (mistakenly leaving my GH2 kit on the boat and thereby missing the only arctic fox shots our group got - which needed at least 400mm, and 600mm would have been ideal).  One of the other photographers bitterly regretted leaving his Canon 300mm 2.8 at home - at 400mm he felt the 100-400 he had was too soft.  The Panasonic VR/IS is pretty decent, but does take a second to settle down for the longer focal lengths.  Sensor dust, which has always been a problem for my 1DS3 was a non issue.  The ability to easily change the focus points from the back screen - and change the size of the area was quite useful.  Having a histogram in the evf makes the evf a useful compromise over an optical viewfinder, and having an articulated screen made it possible to get some interesting macro shots and viewpoints that would have been tough otherwise. Oh, and no overweight luggage hassels!  The entire GH2 kit came in at just over 2kg, a bit more that the 1DS3 body alone, and significantly less than the 300 2.8 – lens only.

The Minuses - it's a bit plasticky and I'm not sure how it would have stood up in rain - I had a rain cover and given the size, a small cloth over the camera might have been sufficient.  The big problem was that the control ergonomics simply aren't optimized for the small form factor.  I was constantly finding key setting changing as though they had a will of their own.  Even to the extent of shooting one series at JPG rather than raw - and that's a setting that I shouldn't have been able to accidentally invoke.  A bit of a longer shutter lag than I'm used to.  And I never gave much effort to birds in flight but suspect the AI servo tracking mode is probably not up to what would be needed, but the percentage of keepers might be higher than I expect. One reason I had fewer shots here than in Antarctica was that I very rarely used burst mode, and I might have missed a small number of shots due to that.  Pixel peeping an image (particularly the longer telephotos) suggests significantly more softness than a full zoom with the 1DS3 and 70-200, but at 600 vs 200 this certainly is as expected but not a very fair comparison – I may eventually have a look at some shots in the 200mm range effective for each camera. (I’m sure the 300 2.8 plus a 2 times extender would also have better image quality as well – but it doesn’t matter how sharp the lens is if it’s not on the camera when you need it.) In any event with some attention to sharpening, as I said before, the print quality is acceptable.

I wouldn't hesitate to use this system again on a major trip.  I'd probably go with a pair and double Black Rapid harness - one with the 14-140 and one with the 100-300.  If Panasonic ever comes out with a 'pro' or 'semi pro' configuration I'm sold...  And the new Olympus fast wide angle looks interesting.

One area where I had a personal skill shortcoming was with the use of the 100-300.  By the end of the trip I was getting OK at bringing the camera up to my eye at full zoom and having it pointing to the subject I wanted.  Otherwise it was sometimes hard to hunt for the subject at full zoom, or frame initially at 100 and zoom from there, but only starting at full zoom and being able to instantly frame the subject lets you minimize the missed shots where there is interesting activity/movement.  OTOH, the fact that this system was so much lighter than full frame meant I could keep the subject framed for a much longer period than I could handholding a heavy full frame prime.  In any event, keeping a small subject framed at 600mm in a bobbing zodiac is going to be hard regardless.

Attached are a couple of shots – and there are more on my website: http://www.timgrayphotography.com/galleries/20110807-Spitsbergen/index.html

Even though video is supposed to be the GH2’s strong point, I only shot one short session of video – a polar bear on an iceberg at the Panasonic “extended” zoom range at 600mm – I forget what the effective field of view is, but having limited video editing skills it may be a while before I actually get that processed and up on Vimeo – I did notice that it would slightly lose and then re-acquire focus periodically.

Bottom line: Everything is a compromise and I don’t regret the compromises I made on this trip.  I don’t make a living with photography and not having to wrestle with heavy gear and still get decent shots is an acceptable compromise for me.






















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michael

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Re: July Circumnavigation of Spitsbergen
« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2011, 06:28:38 pm »

Great report Tim. And that first shot above is very lovely!

Michael
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wolfnowl

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Re: July Circumnavigation of Spitsbergen
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2011, 02:39:30 am »

Thanks for sharing, Tim!  The image under the polar bear is my favourite.

Mike.
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Cannes

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Re: July Circumnavigation of Spitsbergen
« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2011, 03:30:23 am »

omg is way too awesome, second last picture is my favourite! Thanks for sharing.
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francois

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Re: July Circumnavigation of Spitsbergen
« Reply #4 on: August 08, 2011, 05:30:57 am »

Wonderful gallery and a very interesting report. Thank you for sharing.
Bravo!
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Francois

Justan

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Re: July Circumnavigation of Spitsbergen
« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2011, 12:36:51 pm »

Beautiful work!

eleanorbrown

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Re: July Circumnavigation of Spitsbergen
« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2011, 04:34:13 pm »

Wonderful work Tim!  There is definitely something to be said for having a long telephoto along on your trip.  the GH2 sounds like a winner.  On my trip we only had 6 full days on ship and there was too much sea ice to circumnavigate the entire archipelago.  I chose to only travel with my Leica M9 and 4 lenses (24 - 75) which had limitations for sure but was really really lightweight!  Shooting wildlife was out of the question for me (too far away for my camera and lenses) so I concentrated on seascapes.... water, reflectons and some of the mountains.  We either had lots of blue sky or fog/overcast.  Thanks for the great review on the GH2.  My husband just bought one so really enjoyed your review also!  Eleanor
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