Twenty kilograms hand bag

When I brought an Ortlieb Rack Pack 89 (XL) to Antartica earlier this month, I had the idea that it would be used to bring the f-stop Satori EXP backpack safely ashore in the rubber boats. But as our landings never included much walking I decided to leave the backpack on the ship and only take the Monster sized Internal Camera Unit. The rack pack is VERY roomy (89 litres) and had plenty of room for the camera gear in addition to Lastolite soft box and reflector, a big Gitzo Tripod with the Acratech GP ballhead, warm mittens, down anorak water bottle etc. The roll closure is great and I much prefer it to any type of zipper as a roll closure is indestructible. The shoulder strap is nice and wide with a padded shoulder piece but the bag really needs to be fully rolled up and secured with the fasteners at the ends for the shoulder strap to be used. That is a disadvantage as it is nice to walk with the bag open for fast access to the gear. I therefore mostly ended up carrying the bag by its handles. This was a bit tiring as the bag often weighed about 20 kilograms. It was nice to be able to put it down anywhere not considering wet snow, penguin shit or pee, and it made for a great giant bean bag giving relatively good support for those low angled shots of penguins. I ended up using the tripod very little and would consider not bringing one on another trip or exchanging it for a ground pod or a skimmer. I have discarded some images due to camera movement that could have been prevented by use of more stable support. Speaking of support, I enjoyed using the Novoflex Pistock-C modified with an Arca Swiss type Sunway quick release clamp for handheld operation with the 200-400/4 lens. I am confident it helped me on the keeper ratio. 

Gear lust

I  just saw the new camera GPS ECO Pro-F by di-GPS mentioned. I have a hot shoe and cable mounted GPS from the very same company but the cable broke and this is the second one. First one got replaced for free but I had to pay customs again... The new design is promising; no cable, the flash shoe is free and the power consumption is very low. I don't really need this as we have started using small GPS loggers that continously log our tracks while moving around in the field in Zackenberg. They have an impressive battery life of about 30 hours. It is relatively simple to geotag photos in Lightroom with a plugin by Jeffrey Freidl, but it is one more step in a workflow. Speaking of workflow, I will probably get a licence to Photo Mechanic to speed up the ingestion and early cull of images. Having cards to empty from 3-5 cameras (TrapCams, Timelapse and handheld) every day will make a speedier workflow very welcome.

Fill light - photographic resolution # 1

Of my photographic resolutions, using more fill light was # 1.

Although the sun is generally low in the arctic, the light can be a bit harsh especially in the middle of the day. Fill light can counter this and a nice effect is obtained by under-exposing the background a little and making the fill light not only fill but actually take care of the exposure of the main subject in the foreground. Flash is probably better suited for this as it gives more control on ratios than reflectors.

I got the 45cm Lastolite 8in1 TriGrip last year but have not used it very much. It had the huge handle of the much larger TriGrips which made it heavier and bulkier than necessary. I detached this grip and really ought to make a new. It can be used without it, although it is somewhat harder to hold. One of the "8in1" options is actually not a reflector but a diffuser. This can be used as a light modifier for a flash (as a small soft box without box) to enlarge the size of the light source and thereby soften the resulting shadows. It will be quite hard to maneuver though without a third hand or an assistant. I will likely also use the diffuser as such for macro images of plants and insects.

I am also bringing the smallest Lastolite EzyBox Speed-Lite (a proper little 22x22cm collapsable softbox) which nicely attaches to the flash.

For the TrapCams, I am also preparing for some fill light possibilities. I got a Pixel King i-TTL transmitter and receiver for wireless balanced fill flash. Also I plan to bring a huge spherical mirror to use as a sort of reflector. Or at least some way of providing animal subjects with a bit of a glimpse in the eye. I should probably test it a bit before I ship it to Greenland.

Memory questions - XQD or fast CF?

With all my planned camera trap activities for this season, I will need to buy some more memory cards for my cameras. I got a few relatively cheap 32 GB Sandisk SDHC 1 cards for the D3200 but my other trap cameras will need CF 1 cards. The file sizes a about half size of the 12MP cameras D700 and D300 so I am going with 16GB cards. Now I already had 3 of those but I will also need something for to use in the D4 and this is where the question arrises. Should I upgrade to the ultra fast XQD cards or go with cheaper but almost as fast CF cards like the Lexar 16GB 1000x ? If I go the XQD route I will also need a new card reader... The new readers are USB3 but my laptop only supports USB2, so I will not gain anything in reading time! I am considering a Firewire 800 reader but I will still have the USB2 bottleneck to the external hard disk intended to store the images... My laptop has a very fast thunderbolt connection but the peripherals to make use of it have been slow to show up on the market... On the other hand the new macbook pros does not have Firewire 800... Oh well!

Wireless remote controlled pan and tilt gimbal

I did not have much luck with the intended purpose for the RoboCam last year. The musk oxen did not like it. They seemed terrified, so I only tried it once. I am in Greenland to observe the natural behaviour of the musk oxen after all - and not to disturb them... Although the foxes did not seem to mind too much, I will not bring the robot for this upcoming season. Instead I have ordered a remote controlled pan and tilt gimbal head from ServoCity. I plan on using it at the fox dens for close up wide-angle shots with relatively shallow depth of field. I got inspired by some really nice leopard shots taken in Zimanga Private Reserve in South Africa. I also want to remotely control the zoom by using a lens gear belt and a gear on a servo. I do have a 8/9 channel radio remote control on order from Hobby King but it seems to take forever to get delivered... I have not given up on using the robot for wildlife shots but I have got some other plans for remote controlled photography. I have acquired a toy quadcopter and is learning the principles of flying it with intentions of one day getting a big model capable of carrying a good DSLR.

Parts for camera traps

Rather than inventing the wheel again, using the Arduino that I planned, I have now gone another route. I discovered that camera trapping is a rather big hobby in the USA and joined a few internet fora to get a few tips. There is a market for PIR sensor control chips for home brew designs, so I ordered a few of the SnapShotSniper II along with a few small pelicases for protection of the camera and sensor. One big disadvantage of the Arduino is it's rather large power consumption. The SSII uses a small lithium battery that is said to last a long time. The control chip of the sensor module is a Picaxe 08M which is programmable. In other words the release and pause times can be set and probably also a threshold number of events for the camera to be triggered like with the Trailmaster 550. I have a few second hand dome ports from underwater houses on the hand that I plan on incorporating as I would like to use fisheye lenses. Lastly, I need to decide on a way of fastening the pelicases to tripod heads.

New photo backpack?

Although I have 3-4 photo backpacks already, I am a bit tempted by the bags by f-stop. Particularly the depicted model Satori EXP. It has a great design concept: opening on the opposite side of most other photo backpacks. Crumpler used to use this concept but for some reason they have abandoned it.  What is so great about it? Well, if your are into nature photography or other outdoor photo genres you will bring your gear into the sometimes dirty, wet and muddy wild. When you want to access your gear, you put your backpack down and lay it on the sometimes dirty, wet or muddy ground or rocks. With a conventional design you would often need to lay it on the side that is sooner or later going to end up rubbing on you pack when you are going to move on - in the process transferring the grit to your back. You can sometimes manage with balancing the bag against a leg while you find that lens you are after, but doing this with the bag in more or less upright position can be risky as gear is more prone to fall out. This is all history with this design! The f-stop backpacks have a few more secrets up their sleeves; modular camera gear inserts or internal camera units as they call them. You can customize the bag and balance how much room you need for protected camera gear in comparison to other stuff that is just as important for a successful photo outing.

RoboCam repair

Today I got my RoboCam home from Greenland. Unfortunately one of these axle carriers had broken while we were testing the robot a bit rough (without camera) in the cold and snow. Perhaps it was too cold for the plastic. Luckily the robot is built on the basis of a serious 4WD radio controlled vehicle for which you can order spare parts. I had done that in advance so it was just a matter of swapping the bad for the good! :) I did not have much luck with the RoboCam and the musk oxen but that is another story...

Lastolite TriGrip mini 8:1

Yesterday, I got the smallest TriGrip "diflector" from Lastolite. It is a very clever design combining a 45cm diameter diffuser with 6 different options of reflecting material and one matte black, basically giving you 8 in 1.

I intend using it primarily for macro photography but it could also be handy for portraits.

Even before I have used it in the field I have got one criticism: the handle is the same size on all the different sized TriGrips. That is a pity as this small model could have done with a much smaller and lighter handle. I am now considering detaching it and replacing it with some home brew solution...