I shot the image above in Patagonia this year, my first real work with the new Nikon D800, which always makes me nervous. So when I saw the weird banding you can see in the frame on the left, I got a little freaked out. In 25 years of photography, I’d seen some weird things, but never this. I was …
Back It Up!
Here’s your New Year’s reminder: back your stuff up. Do it redundantly, with extreme paranoia, and do it now. If it helps, I’ll even say “Pretty please.” You put so much time into your work, and harddrives fail all the time. So really, this is not paranoia. It’s wisdom. My preference is that every file, including my Lightroom catalog files, …
Packing For Antarctica
If there’s an upside to jetlag, it’s productivity. I was up all night so I packed early. Nothing to do now but sit on my thumbs and wait. On Sunday, Nov. 25, I fly to Toronto, then Buenos Aires via Santiago, then on to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, the far southern tip of South America. I’ve got a couple …
Gitzo Systematic Tripod (GT3542LS)
Emily, my Gitzo Systematic Tripod, and Me. 2012. Photo: Al Smith I’ve written before about tripods and my growing insistence on using them for my own work. Here’s a look at the one I favour these days, with a few specs and mostly wild opinions that stem from personal use. Disclaimer: I love this tripod. I had one I thought …
Packed: Mongolia
I’m flying to Mongolia tonight. I have two carry-ons; a Kiboko bag and a Think Tank Retro 30. And I have one checked piece, my dented but beloved Rimowa Topaz. For the curious, here’s what I’m packing. And man am I happy to be going in the summer! Last time it was February and much colder than this Canuck likes. …
Backup Questions Answered
Dave Delnea downloading images in Iceland, 2010. There’s some great discussion going on in the comments of last Friday’s post, Backups Revisited. I think the topic of backups warrants some attention. We talk so much about lenses and tripods and, frankly, spend a lot of money on this art, that it’s insane not to spend some of that protecting our …
The Thing About (Travel) Tripods
Me. And my tripod. Iceland 2010. Photo by Dave Delnea. In the last few years I’ve done a complete 180 on how I think about tripods. I used to lug one around because I should, but never used it. I used to call my tripod unsavory names. Frankly, we were not on the best of terms. But I’ve owned a …
A Year with Sigma
A year ago, on October 22, I posted about my transition to Nikon. It’s taken me that long to write something that gear-ish again. With my transition to Nikon began a relationship with Sigma that I’ve been waiting to elaborate on. Now, as I near the end of that year, seems a good time to talk about the lenses I’ve …
New Plan, Part II
Caveat: This is a post about gear. So many of you will get all glossy-eyed. Worse: it’s not even camera gear. This is a post about the gear I’ve chosen to live with on the on-going (if not somewhat interupted) nomadic adventure with Jessie. You will be forgiven if you just move on, not everyone cares about field kitchens …
OK, New Plan. Part I
I think we can all agree that this year went a little sideways. If things had gone to plan I’d have picked Jessie up in Atlanta over a month ago, spun through the Florida Keys, lingered for three weeks, then come up the Eastern seaboard, and back into Canada. By now I’d be heading east toward the Maritimes, finally to …