Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: Ben Rubinstein on March 05, 2007, 06:21:09 pm
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Fascinating review of what worked and what didn't on the trip. (Though not as fascinating as the penguin pool shot, which I keep coming back to!) A few interesting points that are worrying, firstly the weather proofing of the 1 series bodies which should have coped with that amount of rain, and secondly the amount of card failures which again is worrying.
When I shot with a 1Ds I always used a Kata rain cover, not wanting to gamble my investment, I use it now with my 5D which admittedly can still take a pretty good soaking though I get a heart attack every time it happens. It's not easy to use given that it's clumsy in operation and changing lenses and taking the camera of the tripod, etc is a pain in the neck, but it's worth the bother when your camera isn't water proof!
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Not to nit-pick, but did you not also have a 24-105 lens with you during this trip, Michael? Or did you borrow one for some of those images in your online portfolio page here?
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/aa07-portfolio.shtml (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/aa07-portfolio.shtml)
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I got my 5D pretty wet the other day and it never stopped working, but I think I'll buy some sort of rain cover the next time I go backpacking with it. This should also be a reminder to all non-pro's that you can put your camera equipment on your homeowner's insurance for very little cost (at least in the US).
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Yup, I had the 24-105mm. I forgot to list it.
Michael
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Now I begin to understand the advantages of Canon's "non-pro" bodies (5D and below) over the "pro", 1-series bodies. With my 10d and now my 5D I have never expected to be able to shoot in the rain, so I do use a Kata rain cover (as awkward as it is) whenever the weather is seriously threatening. If I had a 1D of some sort, I wouldn't expect to need the extra weather protection -- and I'd be wrong.
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Michael,
That is a very interesting report you wrote about the equipment and failures you have on this journey. I am amazed the Canon’s failed. My 1Ds2 and 1D2 are regularly immersed, and I have never had a lens or camera failure - I even left a 135 f2.0 out all night in a monsoon, and it still worked like a champ.
http://homepage.mac.com/billh96007/.Pictur...ff-500,5860.jpg (http://homepage.mac.com/billh96007/.Pictures/Jeff500,2/Jeff-500,5860.jpg)
http://homepage.mac.com/billh96007/.Pictur...a,f1.2,0429.jpg (http://homepage.mac.com/billh96007/.Pictures/Swimbest2006/Kona,f1.2,0429.jpg)
Did you make a high def video of this trip?
Thanks,
Bill
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Yes, Chris filmed both last year's and this year's trips in HD. There'll be a major video some time soon.
Michael
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Michael, I wonder if you may comment at some point on other gear such as clothing to keep you warm and dry in that harsh environment? Also were there any issues with batteries operating properly in the cold as well as real world solutions for keeping condensation and salt water from damaging the equipment. I would also like to hear about how the Vid equipment was carried around on the trip.
Thanks for any additional info.
Jeff
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Yes, Chris filmed both last year's and this year's trips in HD. There'll be a major video some time soon.
Michael
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=104927\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Please allow me to get down on my knees and beg for some of that HD content. I'm sure the files are huge to download but for those of us that have a big pipe we would love to at least have a small sample of some of that footage. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!
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firstly the weather proofing of the 1 series bodies which should have coped with that amount of rain, and secondly the amount of card failures which again is worrying.
When I shot with a 1Ds I always used a Kata rain cover, not wanting to gamble my investment, I use it now with my 5D which admittedly can still take a pretty good soaking though I get a heart attack every time it happens. It's not easy to use given that it's clumsy in operation and changing lenses and taking the camera of the tripod, etc is a pain in the neck, but it's worth the bother when your camera isn't water proof!
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=104890\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
There's rain and then there is rain...being English there are any number of different types of precipitation. So far I haven't experienced any problems with my canon equipment provided I don't leave it out in heavy rain.
What Michael didn't talk about what what precautions people took moving from an outdor cold dry/wet environment to an indoor warm and moist environment and how people dealt with condensation on their equipment. Whilst Canon equipment is weather sealed it doesn't take too kindly to continual heating cooling cycles which generate moisture within the camera. Normally on a trip in weather conditions such as those expected in Antartic and where there is wet weather you need something like silica gel bags to soak up any excess moisture - otherwise you end up with dead equipment.
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Interesting report Michael, thanks for the write up.
I feel really sorry for all the folks who suffered equipment failures.
I had my 4x5 camera fall from a small cliff 2 years ago during a WS with Alain in Utah, not a fun experience at all.
What I learned from that experience though is the importance of a back up, and also that it is key not to take too much risk during the early days of a key assignment. Rain might not have looked like a risky situation, but that judgement call can in fact only be made based on previous personnal experience in similar conditions. Besides, rain and wind are different from just rain, etc...
This being said, isn't the image quality of a working D200 significantly better than that of a dead 5D? Statistics I guess.... just kidding of course.
Cheers,
Bernard
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I usually don't care about rain or snow but after shooting for more than 3 days under continuous and heavy rain last spring, I managed to get water droplets behind the rear LCD on my 1D2 body. The camera continued to work but this was surprising. Later, I found the the LCD cover is glued to the body using a simple thin adhesive tape.
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Temperature and condensations weren't issues on this trip. The average temp was around the freezing point. Pretty mild.
Also the ship isn't overheated, so I never saw any condensation.
Clothing was straightforward. A parka, jeans, waterproof pants, sweater, rubber boots, gloves, hats; just normal winter wear.
It was colder in Toronto in February than it was on the Antarctic Penninsula.
Michael
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It was amusing to realize that we had brought over $1 million worth of gear on the trip but only 3 people thought to bring a $75 camera rain-coat! Since Antarctica is a desert, I suspect none of us thought of rain. Of course, the Falklands and South Georgia are not deserts, and that's where we got rained-on.
In fairness, I was astonished to watch a lot of my tripmates blithely wander around shooting in moderately heavy rain for a couple of hours with cameras pretty-much completely exposed and water dripping off them. Given the levels of soaking the gear endured, the attrition rate was not that unreasonable in my mind. All this gear is so reliable that it engenders a really high level of confidence.
A lot of people also got sea-spray on their gear during Zodiak rides. While this would seem to be a greater hazard tan rain-water, no gear appeared to go down as a result, which is a real testament to the quality of the weather-sealing to protect against incidental splashing.
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In fairness, I was astonished to watch a lot of my tripmates blithely wander around shooting in moderately heavy rain for a couple of hours with cameras pretty-much completely exposed and water dripping off them. Given the levels of soaking the gear endured, the attrition rate was not that unreasonable in my mind. All this gear is so reliable that it engenders a really high level of confidence.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=104995\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Well, thank you for that - as you can imagine, this gear report is starting to be discussed rather heavily on various forums, and of course, there is a bit of a ruckus brewing...:-)
I was looking to ask, before reading this last post, what could account for the failures - a sense of invulnerability begging disaster, or perhaps multiple lens/card changes - any way to characterize the failures towards user neglect rather than pure equipment fault?
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Well, thank you for that - as you can imagine, this gear report is starting to be discussed rather heavily on various forums, and of course, there is a bit of a ruckus brewing...:-)
I was looking to ask, before reading this last post, what could account for the failures - a sense of invulnerability begging disaster, or perhaps multiple lens/card changes - any way to characterize the failures towards user neglect rather than pure equipment fault?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105005\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Well, it was pretty wet. I had a towel over the camera the whole time; I was okay with the 1D mark II. Rain gear for the camera would have been a good idea ;-)
(http://blloyd.smugmug.com/photos/132036564-L.jpg)
Oh, and the rainy day was on South Georgia, not in the Falklands. The Falklands were sand showers. 30% chance of sand blasting lens and body, with partial clearing expected for later in the week.
(http://blloyd.smugmug.com/photos/132034937-L.jpg)
;-)
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Interesting to see what worked and what didn't; even more interesting to see what peoples' expectations can be regarding the use of equipment in hostile conditions.
Hundreds of years ago, when I travelled the nicer parts of the world on shoots, I would take out extra insurance for professional indemnity, film and the cost of doing a re-shoot in case that old Murphy guy had seen me coming. I remember very clearly that there were exclusions for equipment being used in hostile conditions, one of those being the seashore, which was exactly where I spent most of my time working. It therefore surprises me to see the suggestion made that someone's insurance company might be willing to pay for an owner's madness...
I also seem to recall that even in the days of film cameras one took great care to keep them out of the rain; it was rumoured that only the Leica M series were capable of being weather-proofed to the degree necessary for work in the climatic conditions of the far north or south.
Frankly, when you consider the unfortunate combination of different metals, salt water etc. it's amazing nobody on the trip managed to produce their own Leclanché cell or, at least, with Michael's boat experience, see fit to install some form of cathodic protection... (joke).
Ciao - Rob C
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Well, it was pretty wet. I had a towel over the camera the whole time; I was okay with the 1D mark II. Rain gear for the camera would have been a good idea ;-)
(http://blloyd.smugmug.com/photos/132036564-L.jpg)
Oh, and the rainy day was on South Georgia, not in the Falklands. The Falklands were sand showers. 30% chance of sand blasting lens and body, with partial clearing expected for later in the week.
(http://blloyd.smugmug.com/photos/132034937-L.jpg)
;-)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105024\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I think these two shots are rather nice and they prove something (to me) which I've always believed, though possibly as a minority of one or maybe, now, two: sharpness from front to back is NOT always the way to go for a pleasing picture in the landscape idiom, though I suppose some will say these are not landscapes at all but figures within the landscape. Every shot has a principal area of interest - why mask/confuse it by making everything look equally crisp?
Ciao - Rob C
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What is perhaps more worrying, far more worrying than the 1 series bodies not coping, is the M8 having so many problems. Hell it used to be that the Leica was the one camera you could count on working come what may even after everything else had given up the ghost. The camera you could take to warzones and into the jungle. These problems together with the IR issue at the beginning are exactly what Leica did not need to happen...
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I think these two shots are rather nice and they prove something (to me) which I've always believed, though possibly as a minority of one or maybe, now, two: sharpness from front to back is NOT always the way to go for a pleasing picture in the landscape idiom, though I suppose some will say these are not landscapes at all but figures within the landscape. Every shot has a principal area of interest - why mask/confuse it by making everything look equally crisp?
Ciao - Rob C
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105042\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I too agree. I thought that is what DoF, and knowing how to determine and control it, was all about. I especially like the second image.
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What is perhaps more worrying, far more worrying than the 1 series bodies not coping, is the M8 having so many problems. Hell it used to be that the Leica was the one camera you could count on working come what may even after everything else had given up the ghost. The camera you could take to warzones and into the jungle. These problems together with the IR issue at the beginning are exactly what Leica did not need to happen...
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105043\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
My M8 is now making its second trip back to Germany for repairs, since I bought it in mid-November. If I get it back in mid-April, which is when I expect it, it will have spend more time in Germany than in my hands.
The camera is so nice to use that in a moment of insanity, I considered buying another body so I'd have one while the other is being repaired. I am instead (or first) going to take a look at the Pentax K10d and three limited lenses; I can get the body and the three lenses for less than half of what a new Leica body would cost, and the K10 is not much bigger than the Leica, when the Leica is equipped with the optional grip, which mine is. And with image stabilization, the Pentax may be almost as effectively as fast as the Leica, although the lenses won't be quite as sharp.
The Antarctic trip sounds like it would have been a hoot; wish I could have gone. Nothing is more fun that a really difficult trip, once you're done with it and looking back. But on difficult trip, it pays to be extremely meticulous both in preparation and execution, or you will surely get bit on the ass by Murphy. Wandering around in a heavy rain with unprotected electronic equipment early in the trip sounds unwise...I might have let somebody else go first. But then, I wasn't there.
JC
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There's no such thing as "going first". The Zodiacs leave the ship to do a landing, you get on our you don't. At the end of 2-3 hours they come back.
If you're afraid of the rain you get no shots.
Michael
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Michael,
Fascinating story and pictures.Quick question. How did you and other photographers handle white balance in general? Whibal? custom? auto?clouds? It seems to me that many shots dispayed some surreal light and I wonder If white balance was tricky on the trip in order to reproduce those unbelievable cyan and blue hues in the deep glaciers.
Louis Bouillon
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Michael,
Fascinating story and pictures.Quick question. How did you and other photographers handle white balance in general? Whibal? custom? auto?clouds? It seems to me that many shots dispayed some surreal light and I wonder If white balance was tricky on the trip in order to reproduce those unbelievable cyan and blue hues in the deep glaciers.
Louis Bouillon
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105089\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Lots of people had means for checking white balance -- grey cards, whibal card sets, ExpoDisc, etc. Bill Atkinson and Stephen Johnson gathered together all the means and went out on deck and compared the effects of using all of them, and then Stephen measured the actual light with his GMB Spectropherometer. They gathered results and found that one means was consistently better than the others at being "accurate." I believe one of the Whibal cards (the lighter grey one) seemed to be the closest -- No comments on the rest of the race.
Others used Auto white balance, some others picked modes.
As long as you shoot RAW you can always pick later -- it depends on whether you want to follow the (I need the scene to be exactly 100% color accurate to what it looked like!) Stephen Johnson school of thought, or the (Daylight starts at 6500, and warmth and saturation only go up from there!) Seth Resnick school of thought.
For example, it's possible that this Iceberg shot of mine:
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Michael,
I had another question, how'd you like the DryZone? I had a love-hate relationship with my own in the arctic last September, even with the provided lubrication the waterproof zipper was stiff and at times, during zipping, I'd find that I'd be left with areas where the zipper had separated. (Once the zipper was zipped, I didn't have trouble with it separating after-the-fact.) Did you have any experiences like that?
To be clear, that problem has to be taken in context. Even if the "price" of a dryzone is a little more work at the zipper and a little more time, well, being able to turn your back and camera backpack toward a wave crashing over your Zodiac with confidence ones camera equipment will stay dry? Priceless.
Thanks...
--Joe
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I took a dryzone bag along on that trip and found that it worked very well. The waterproof zipper did begin to separate towards the end of the trip, but it always would seal if I rezipped it. My only complaiaint about the pack is that it was a little unweildy getting on and off the Zodiacs. One reason so many were caught in the rain at the South Georgia Zodiac cruise it that, after manhandling their packs onto the Zodiacs in the Falklands, many left their dryzone and other dry bags on the ship taking just the camera. This allowed greater freedom of movement on board the Zodiac where all the shooting took place that day (we didn't make a landing - just cruised and looked at the incredible scenery and wildlife). In subsequent Zodiac cruises more bags came along, but shooting around them could be aggravating with ten photograpers on a Zodiac.
I made the wrong choice on the day in question, my Canon 5D was fried never to revive. I was glad to have a 20D as a backup which functioned well throughout the rest of the trip.
It was an incredible trip with a great group of people.
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I had problems with the DryZone zipper sealing properly. Generally when it needed some lube and I was going around a tight spot it wouldn't "catch" and thus not seal and it was definitely not waterproof.
I could always get it to seal by unzipping and re-zipping... in the worst case 2 or 3 times. I think a little more break-in with some more of the seal snot and it would have been good.
Definitely worth it for the zodiac trips. I didn't find it unwieldy -- it was just a bit more of a burden than my normal Lowe Pro... with the exception of the fact that the items in the bottom of the pack were very hard to get to.
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On the dryzone 200 question.
When I took part to the San Juan WS 2 years ago, the only participant that had brought one saw the zipper dying on him after 2 days... It seems that these babies hate sand. Pure water and rain is probably an easier scenario for them.
Regards,
Bernard
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Thanks Bill,
I looked at your antarctic portfolio and my favorite shot is the tabular glacier with the gazillion microscopic penguins on top. Stunning!
Louis bouillon
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Hi!
Well, Leica is a small company, they don't have enormous resources for development and testing. The old Leicas didn't have sophisticated electronics and could do without sealing for that reason. Sealing a camera is not really easy, at least this is what Pentax said about the K10D.
I think that the main conclusion may be that you need to be careful even with professional and sealed cameras in harsh environmental conditions.
Best regards
Erik
What is perhaps more worrying, far more worrying than the 1 series bodies not coping, is the M8 having so many problems. Hell it used to be that the Leica was the one camera you could count on working come what may even after everything else had given up the ghost. The camera you could take to warzones and into the jungle. These problems together with the IR issue at the beginning are exactly what Leica did not need to happen...
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105043\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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Hi!
Well, Leica is a small company, they don't have enormous resources for development and testing. The old Leicas didn't have sophisticated electronics and could do without sealing for that reason. Sealing a camera is not really easy, at least this is what Pentax said about the K10D.
I think that the main conclusion may be that you need to be careful even with professional and sealed cameras in harsh environmental conditions.
Best regards
Erik
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105156\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Erik
Yes, they are small and have been all but annihilated time and time again; the experience should have ensured that they play safe and not rush to market with flawed goods. Why should anybody imagine that the public must be the trial monkey (at its expense) whilst the manufacturer just smiles and churns out prototype after prototype?
In my view there really are no good excuses, just reasons of desperation.
Ciao - Rob C
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...It therefore surprises me to see the suggestion made that someone's insurance company might be willing to pay for an owner's madness...
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105041\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
My insurance company gave me a "no questions asked" policy, but I am not a pro. It is a rider on my homeowner's insurance. Insurance liability is totally different for a business or self-employed individual, you can't put these things on your house.
I specifically said "If I'm standing in 4 feet of water in Barton Creek and trip and dunk my camera, or if I'm in -30 degree weather in the mountains and it freezes or I drop it off a cliff, you'll replace it?" and the answer was yes.
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After coming back and accessing my equipment problems I can trace all of the issues from that one landing in South Georgia...
I tended to use my DryZone bag as a holder for my LowePro Sling bag. I would pack the sling inside the emptied DryZone, zip it up and on shore, take the sling bag out an work from that...leaving the DryZone on the beach.
But in South Georgia, short of a waterproof housing, nothing could have kept the cameras dry. I lost one 1Ds MII info LCD while shooting (it came back later in the day), the main LCD on a Digital Rebel, a 17-40 F4 gave constant Error 01's (and still does) and a 28-135 errored out, then refused to auto-focus. I recently tried it and it's now working normally (but still going back to Canon).
Other than that one landing, I don't think I had any other issues except for the normal problems of keeping track of cards and getting everything downloaded safely while having 8 different cards in rotation-4 4gigs & 4 2gigs. I only had image corruption on one card and it was my own darn fault...I popped the card lid before the camera was done writing. I was in a hurry to change cards.
After losing the two lenses, I was down to just 3 lenses; 24-70, 70-200 & a 400 F4. Other than the 17-40, it was all I really needed to bring in the first place. Course, I would have LOVED to have a preproduction model new 16-35mm. Seth and I both begged Canon to give us early units, but they weren't available, even to us.
If I were to go again, I would opt for a 300 F2.8 (like Seth was using) over the 400mm. I often found the 400 a "little too long".
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And was the gigage record broken? If so what was it?
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And was the gigage record broken? If so what was it?
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=105434\")
I shot just under 200 gigs over 20 days for a total of about 15,950 or so images. The biggest day, Feb 18th, I shot over 2300 captures for about 34 gigs. My previous largest was 27 gigs in a day last trip. One of the reasons I had such a high shot count was I was doing a lot of panos of between 2-20 frames per shot. It doesn't take a lot of panos to really ramp up the total shot count.
My initial "select count" is about 1200 images. I have no idea what my final hero print count will be. . .I'm still editing-hell, I'm still editing last year's shoot too. You can see a first cut of Icebergs all shot on Feb 19th at [a href=\"http://schewephoto.com/Icebergs/slideshow/index.html]ICEBERGS[/url].
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... You can see a first cut of Icebergs all shot on Feb 19th at ICEBERGS (http://schewephoto.com/Icebergs/slideshow/index.html).
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=105486\")
>bergose
MAXIMUM BERGOSITY.
;-)
[a href=\"http://blloyd.smugmug.com/gallery/2518842]More bergage.[/url]
Nice meeting you, Jeff. Oh and nice call wearing the parka to the Lightroom launch party. Oh and I liked the comment "Yeah, there was an Apple guy on the trip as well... he was using Aperture. That was... okay."
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Hi,
I agree on what you say, but...
- People like Michael Reichmann love Leicas, reliability notwithstanding.
- They make excellent lenses
So they give a lot of satisfaction to people. Personally I don't think that Leica enthusiasts should be deprived that experience.
If you need something that works all the time you probably need a couple of professional cameras. The kind that you can drop on the floor. Heavy metal, lot of o-rings, three pounds without lens...
Best regards
Erik
Erik
Yes, they are small and have been all but annihilated time and time again; the experience should have ensured that they play safe and not rush to market with flawed goods. Why should anybody imagine that the public must be the trial monkey (at its expense) whilst the manufacturer just smiles and churns out prototype after prototype?
In my view there really are no good excuses, just reasons of desperation.
Ciao - Rob C
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105228\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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Hi,
I agree on what you say, but...
- People like Michael Reichmann love Leicas, reliability notwithstanding.
- They make excellent lenses
So they give a lot of satisfaction to people. Personally I don't think that Leica enthusiasts should be deprived that experience.
If you need something that works all the time you probably need a couple of professional cameras. The kind that you can drop on the floor. Heavy metal, lot of o-rings, three pounds without lens...
Best regards
Erik
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105510\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Erik
I don't wish to come across as a dog-with-bone person, but to conclude my participation in this thread, I'd be surprised if Leica ever considered their M and R products as anything other than 'professional'!
Buenas noches - Rob C
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My initial "select count" is about 1200 images. I have no idea what my final hero print count will be. . .I'm still editing-hell, I'm still editing last year's shoot too. You can see a first cut of Icebergs all shot on Feb 19th at ICEBERGS (http://schewephoto.com/Icebergs/slideshow/index.html).
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105486\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I don't question Jeff's photographic ability, but after seeing his work from last year's cruise plus the work of the other photogrpahers, its clear Antarctica is certainly one place where F/8 and be there counts. Wonderful light and many opportunities for photos plus great vision by the photographers!
Peter
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I don't question Jeff's photographic ability, but after seeing his work from last year's cruise plus the work of the other photogrpahers, its clear Antarctica is certainly one place where F/8 and be there counts. Wonderful light and many opportunities for photos plus great vision by the photographers!
Peter
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105536\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Funny thing. There was a ton of time when I was thinking exactly that "Oh, this just just F8 and be there stuff... point, compose <just a bit> and you're good to go."
A bit of shame that we never got the clouds to lift while we were along the Antarctic peninsula. I was hoping to get a landscape shot or two, but we never had a clear morning or evening when we were in the vicinity of land. We had clearing one afternoon (only) for a few hours mid-day. So the cloudy skies were great for iceberg and wildlife close-ups, but really I don't know that I really ever brought a lens wider than my 70-200 (on a 1D mark II) out of the bag once we got south of the Orkneys. Seeing and hearing details of the Lamar Strait from the previous year made me a bit jealous.
Oh, that and Michael's 4 am calls "It looks... like... in about 15 minutes the light might be really good!" Those who wandered outside found clouds... and to white balance them grey required a color temperature north of 11000K :-)
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How rough was that passage?
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How rough was that passage?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105552\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
The Drake? Not so rough.
The first 2 days back were relatively calm -- we had trailing winds and so the swells were from behind. The final day we got some winds from the port side (fairly strong) and some reasonable swells... I think 3-4 meters was the call from the captain. There was a "roll" gauge -- we saw 33 degrees on the bridge (which is a total side-to-side of maybe 50-60 degrees). Probably easier to just show you:
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Not so rough?
Easy for you to say.
Michael
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Nice meeting you, Jeff. Oh and nice call wearing the parka to the Lightroom launch party. Oh and I liked the comment "Yeah, there was an Apple guy on the trip as well... he was using Aperture. That was... okay."
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105490\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Nice to meet you too bud...I talked to Jim Heiser about you (also at the mothership) and said you were a really good shooter (which of course, I always found irritating a bit :~). And hands down, you do the best fur seal sound effects on the trip. I'm gonna have Chris try to find a snippit of sound from a real fur seal and see if there's anything of you doing YOUR sound! I loved the way you snuck up on me and made the sound behind my back!
Yeah, I tried to be even handed (a bit) cause Aperture and Capture One are all great products. It's just that I've been kinda backing the "Hamburg horse" a long time :~)
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A bit of shame that we never got the clouds to lift while we were along the Antarctic peninsula. I was hoping to get a landscape shot or two, but we never had a clear morning or evening when we were in the vicinity of land.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=105549\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
We may not have had the "light" this year that we had last year, but we did have great locations and one of the things I plan on doing this year is really, really look at all this years stuff with an eye towards B&W. I got so wrapped up in the "color" last year I never really got around to doing B&W. I saw a lot of Michael's B&W from last year and really liked it and I do think this year's light would convert very nicely to B&W. It's easy to really pump up contrast on flat scenes...
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We may not have had the "light" this year that we had last year, but we did have great locations and one of the things I plan on doing this year is really, really look at all this years stuff with an eye towards B&W. I got so wrapped up in the "color" last year I never really got around to doing B&W. I saw a lot of Michael's B&W from last year and really liked it and I do think this year's light would convert very nicely to B&W. It's easy to really pump up contrast on flat scenes...
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The iceberg series is stunning. I think many (if not all) of them are great candidates for B&W. I hope you'll show us some of the conversions.
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.... And hands down, you do the best fur seal sound effects on the trip. I'm gonna have Chris try to find a snippit of sound from a real fur seal and see if there's anything of you doing YOUR sound! I loved the way you snuck up on me and made the sound behind my back!
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Mmmf! Mmmf!
Yeah, I think I got a pretty good jump out of you one time with that. I know you were sure that with one more bite you were going to turn into a were-seal ;-)
I also scared Seth when he was shooting something off the starboard deck outside my cabin and I opened the window and fired off about 40 shots in 5 seconds with the 1D mark II like 2 feet from his ear. Somehow I don't think he expected that. The laugh was precious
Every boat needs a prankster. We happened to have more than our quota. Including those who sit on whoopie cushions in launch videos
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I went to Antarctica in December, 2005. I had written this up as my "what worked, what didn't" for a friend. Just my alternate take on the question.
I went on a small trip with Quark Expeditions. We were on the Professor Molchanov which was originally, according to rumor, a Soviet spy boat. It was a wonderful trip, with just 33 passengers, making it possible to do a lot. 10 of us kayaked about 2-3 hours per day, and about half the group camped on Antarctica one night. The ship wasn’t stabilized, and we had a fairly rough passage of the Drake. I was sick one day in each direction. No biggie. I took some drugs and slept. Actually, I was kind of glad we got some rough weather. I wanted to experience the Drake in some of its glory. You can see some of my photographs http://jfiddler.smugmug.com/Antarctica (http://jfiddler.smugmug.com/Antarctica). You can also see an amazing encounter that we had with some Minke whales at http://youtube.com/watch?v=1slYOxaS7V4 (http://youtube.com/watch?v=1slYOxaS7V4), which may help put some of my comments in perspective. Watch the whole thing – it was very cool!
If you have an opportunity to kayak there, I'd highly recommend it. It's an aquatic environment, and you can cover much more distance, get a unique perspective on bergs and wildlife, and experience a kind of peace that is truly special. Of course, photography from a kayak does have its own set of challenges, but we also had plenty of opportunity to walk around and for zodiac cruises. BTW, my trip was organized by my sailing club, http://ocscsailing.com/ (http://ocscsailing.com/), which is partially why the kayaking was available. They're doing another one this year, I think.
The equipment I took was:
A Nikon D70 – Worked well. I’ve since gotten a D200, which would definitely be better for three reasons: it focuses faster, it has a bigger RAM buffer, and it’s more weatherproof. The focus and the limited RAM in the D70 caused me to lose shots, particularly of the whales – not so much the Minkes that are in the video, but another day when we were around a bunch of humpbacks that were moving much faster. When I used the continuous mode to shoot one of them sounding, I always seemed to miss the best shot when the camera paused for a second while offloading to flash. Focusing, particularly on the birds, was tough with the D70. More megapixels in the D200 would also have been nice, but less important for me. Sadly, the D200 wasn't yet available when I went.
18-200 Sigma lens – I didn’t plan to use this much – I took it mainly to leave it in the ship as a spare (see below) - but I wound up using it quite a lot. It’s hard to change lenses in the snow, in a Zodiac, or with gloves on. It’s impossible to change lenses in a kayak. And, things often happen very fast, such as with the whales. Imagine, you're shooting some penguins in the distance with your 300MM., and suddenly a whale or two shows up next to your Zodiac. You don't want to be changing lenses, especially with gloves on! So, a zoom lens with a very broad focal length range was really, really great to have. The Sigma was pretty good, but I’ve since replaced it with the Nikon (which wasn't available when I went), and it’s better. The Sigma would be fine, though.
Nikon 18-70 lens – I planned on using this a lot, and wound up leaving it in the ship as my spare.
Nikon 70-300 – Mostly useful for birds, especially in the Drake Passage but also in Antarctica.
Sigma 10-20 – I’m REALLY happy I took this lens. Check out the photos in my Paradise Bay / Petzval Glacier gallery for some examples. The scale of Antarctica is amazing, and sometimes you’re too close to capture it with anything but a very wide lens. I’d highly recommend taking one. BTW, I found that the lens corrections in DxO were helpful on some photos with this lens.
A spare Nikon D70 – I borrowed a spare body and left it and at least one lens on the ship all the time. If I had a camera disaster, I didn’t want to be camera-less in Antarctica. Luckily, I never needed it.
Pentax WPi – This is a small waterproof point & shoot. I kept it in my pocket almost all the time. When I kayaked, I clipped this to my float vest so it was always accessible, and kept the Nikon in a dry bag to pull out only when things were stable. It did quite well and took some really interesting photos. Look at my Petermann Island gallery. The main problem with it was that it has no viewfinder, and it was nearly impossible to see the LCD in bright sunlight, so I was often pointing and praying. Still, I think the waterproofness outweighs the disadvantage of no viewfinder.
Nikon SB800 flash – Occasionally useful on the boat, but definitely not a requirement.
I considered taking an incident meter but didn’t, simply to have one less gadget, and I didn’t miss it. I did take an ExpoDisc and used it sometimes for white balance and for quasi-incident measurement, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you already have one. I took a small tripod and monopod, and never used either one.
I used my lens cleaning pen A LOT. Sometimes, when it was snowing, I’d clean the lens with it for nearly every shot. Even so, I lost some shots to water drops on the lens. Highly recommended, and take a spare or two!
I carried all my stuff in a LowePro Dryzone Rover, which has a waterproof compartment. You get in and out of Zodiac’s a lot, and it gave me great peace of mind to know that my gear was safe, even if dropped in the water (it never was). A sling bag might have been more convenient, though. It’s a judgment call.
I took a laptop to offload to, and also a small portable USB hard drive, and a bunch of blank CDs. Some of us on the boat loaded all our stuff onto each other’s drives for redundancy, in case something didn’t make it home, as well as just for sharing purposes. The blank CD’s are useful for the same purposes. I’d recommend this.
There are two things I didn’t take that I wish I had. The first would be a rain shield, something like http://www.kata-bags.com/Item.asp?pid=269&...Id=4&ProdLine=4 (http://www.kata-bags.com/Item.asp?pid=269&cid=61&perentId=4&ProdLine=4). It might have made it easier to work in the snow. The other is a sensor brush like http://visibledust.com/ (http://visibledust.com/). It would have saved me a bunch of dusting in photoshop.
I read a bunch of books of all kinds. For me, the best was The Crystal Desert, by David G. Campbell. If you only read one book, this would be my choice, but of course some of the exploration books are really fun as well. Also, you might want to look at Eliot Porter’s Antarctica book, for some great photographs. There are some good photos online at http://www.pbase.com/chris67/antarctica_the_crystal_desert (http://www.pbase.com/chris67/antarctica_the_crystal_desert) (unrelated to the book) and http://www.pbase.com/jeanmcc/antarctica (http://www.pbase.com/jeanmcc/antarctica). There’s a newsletter at http://antarcticsun.usap.gov (http://antarcticsun.usap.gov), and links to a bunch of things, including real-time weather, at http://uwamrc.ssec.wisc.edu/realtime.html (http://uwamrc.ssec.wisc.edu/realtime.html).