AFRICA PHOTO SAFARI LIVE DIARY
DAY -9, GEAR CHECKS
Hello and welcome to the first post of the diary, giving an insight into one of my African Wildlife Photo Safari trips.
I thought I would give a more complete overview of the ins and outs of being a wildlife photographer and start by talking a little about preparation.
My foregin trips are (usually) conceived, researched and planned well in advance and Africa is no exception. Over the years I have worked there, this of course becomes less stressful and easier; learning exactly what works and what to take.
On each trip I need to think through what I will be shooting, this leads to the where and the how, subsequently you quickly work out what you need to take. It is tempting to bring everything you can and sometimes you need to, but most of the time streamlining your equipment list will make for a much less stressful journey, especially where air travel is concerned. This approach also allow you to focus more on the task at hand rather than wrangling bags and bags of stuff.
Firstly I check the essentials. My core shooting gear is checked over by myself and serviced if looking a little battered by recent usage. Here is my core shooting gear…
We have two D3 bodies, lenses from 14mm though to 400mm and a 1.4x convertor (attached to the 200-400). We will be working from a vehicle so weight is not a problem as long as I can get it on the planes! The two bodies are useless without power (one of the few downsides of digital) so I will have a charger and spare batteries for them in my carry on bag too. This means if my hold bag goes for its own holiday without me, can still shoot, albeit without a change of pants! Lastly for a safari you must have a pair of decent binoculars. I use these mainly for spotting rather than watching. They are Kowa 10×24 which are compact and have excellent optics, especially for their size.
I check this all over with a fine tooth comb, making sure it all works and that it is clean. I get my gear serviced at least yearly which is very important as I don’t think Nikon have set up a service centre out in the middle of the African plains yet! This stage is done several weeks in advance as any repairs need to be dropped off to Nikon in London. I am an NPS member which gives me priority for repairs and so fourth but this can still take a week or more; especially if parts need to be ordered in. All my gear was checked over a while back and is all looking good! I have double checked the battery chargers are working and everything is in good shape. More on packing in the next post!
New gear..
Some folks are in to photography simply for the next best bit of tech, others for the love of the picture. I am firmly in the latter category although I do like playing with new toys every now and then if a need arises. This year’s African Safari sees a few additions and alterations to my workflow, each of which is designed to make my life easier and get a chore out of my way or at least speed it up, leaving more time for rest and relaxation after the drives which is important as the more up and at ’em you are on the next drive, the more creative you will be. Being tired or fed up on a shoot really does hamper the results you get as you always get out what you put in, so need to be at your fighting best.
The first new item will be a macbook air. I ordered one of the new spec models the other day and should have it in time for the off. Why the Air? Well, it’s small!! I moved my workflow from windows over to OSX (the Mac operating system) about 4 years ago and haven’t regretted a day of it. They do (99% of the time) simply just work. They don’t clog up over time, if you are smart about your browsing, don’t get viruses.
The Air was the obvious choice for me this time, the smaller 11″ model specifically. No it is not a super powerhouse beast in terms of power, but I don’t need that. All I need is to be able to run lightroom at a reasonable speed alongside Photo Mechanic and usual email/internet duties as well as some video editing. The new airs can be specced up to 8gig or ram and have fast dual core processors so should rip through my needs when out in the field. The ultra thin, yet durable metal body is perfect for travel too. My current 13″ plastic macbook has done stirling service, but I am after a smaller unit as airlines get stricter and my back older. My mother needs a new computer too so it all fell into place as the old one can continue to serve. I will be commenting on the laptop when I have had a play. Stay tuned for more as the diary continues.
The second new item is aimed squarely at one purpose. More r&r with a beer and friends around the camp fire! On my tours I do my processing and downloading in the communal areas so those that join me can watch and learn should they want to. After a good days shooting I need to download several cards (from different cameras) to the laptop and that means setting one off, waiting, getting back up when it’s done and doing so again. Then after that’s all down, mirroring it to another drive (2 drives are much, much, much, much better than one, trust me).
So what is this device? It’s a Hyperdrive UDMA downloader. My plans are, on the drive back from the plains to the camp, I can offload all the cards to the device. Dowload set #1 done! Then back at camp, I can plug this one device into the laptop and copy everything in one go over to the internal hard drive. No baby-sitting needed, no card swapping. Just tell it to go and then done! One thing I was surprised by was the scarce availability and range of downloaders these days. A few years ago there were many models coming out. I guess perhaps this is due to the cheap netbooks that are around now. I hope these types of devices don’t vanish entirely though as they definitely have a place in a photographer’s world. I used this device on a recent shoot and it worked great, allowing me to have a duplicate backup of my cards very quickly without having to sit down at a laptop. It is fast and the user can change the hard drive inside easily. Great!
Next up, a Novatel MiFi 2352..
As mentioned, I attempted to blog daily from the Mara last year but my phone/hotspot idea simply didn’t work on the African networks and after a few hours of attempting to set up a connection it simply didn’t budge! Well this year I will be utilising a local data sim card in this handily little device. It basically connects to the phone network’s internet service, then allows other devices (i.e. my laptop) to connect to a wireless network it creates and bingo, internet! This may be quite slow so I intend to write the updates offline via a desktop app and allow the upload to happen as I relax later in the evening. It all works peachy here and SafariCom (the African network I seem to get the best coverage with) assure me it should all work ok. The advantage of this method is I can perch the MiFi device anywhere where the signal is good (on top of the lunch tent seemed to work well last ime for phone calls) and wirelessly upload from somewhere a little less precarious . The easier I can make the process, the more I can write and upload for you all of an evening! Super!
Well that’s all I have time for now, stay tuned for more in a few days and of course pictures when I am out in the Mara in just over a week. Getting the itchy travel feet now and can’t wait to be back in the Mara as it is such a special place.
NEXT TIME…
Packing, fitting it all into a flight compliant bag!
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Thanks for stopping by, Richard.
