The Package

For all you tech dorks out there wondering what I brought on this trip well here’s the post you’ve been waiting for!

SECTION 1.
I brought along my main DSLR; my Nikon D300s. I’ve owned it since it was released back in 09 or was it last year? I’m sure like many other D300s shooters I’m happy with its features, it’s a camera I’m sure ill be using it for many years and will most likely use it as a second body when I get the cash for an FX body (Hurry up D800 or whatever your name is going to be). I’ve got a cheap Phottix battery grip connected to it, I bought it just a few weeks before I left and I think it’s a piece of shit really. I’ve really put my D300s through some tough environments and it’s managed to hold up but during the end of this trip the battery grip seems to be playing up on. It sometimes isn’t recognized when attached and the exposure/aperture dials don’t work now and then even though the shutter works? When I have some spare cash ill purchase Nikons battery grip, it’s three times the price but I know with all Nikon products you are defiantly paying for quality.
My good mate Mal kindly let me borrow his Canon G11 and his water housing. I mostly just used it for all the underwater shots I did and not much “terrain” shots. I find it like an advanced point and shoot camera, they’ve just whacked on manual dials on it to give a SLR feel but on a roided up point and shoot body. Im a Nikon/SLR shooter so I’m used to twisting dials and pressing buttons so I wasn’t really used to the G11’s internal display settings (I thought I couldn’t shoot in RAW until I wrote this post. Fuck). Picture quality is good but of course I prefer my SLR and the lense quality (No matter what body you use; cheap or expensive, its always about lenses guys!). As for the water housing, that was a bitch to get used too. You really had to have a strong finger to push it down so it can set the focus and then squeeze it down a bit further to shoot you image, but then you had to time it right because there was a bit of lag time from when you hit the shutter till the actual camera taking the shot. Another frustrating thing about the body you couldn’t have the G11 set in manual because the housing didn’t have a dial to turn the dial that controls the shutter and aperture setting. So I had to either put it in auto, which I hate doing because I never get the results I personally want, or the two pre-custom settings (C1/C2), which I mostly assigned it to. My experience with that camera just shows I prefer SLR’s, big whoop they’re bigger! From that you get quality and speed. Screw you mirrowless cameras pffft…
That two eyed yellow box is my Blackbird Fly. It’s one of those toy 35mm film cameras, creates some cool colours and some nice textures when developed.

SECTION 2
My SB600 with my cheap Cactus wireless transmitters for any creative lighting I chose to do, which I don’t think, I really did.

SECTION 3
My versatile Nikon 18 -200 VR1 with a Hoya PL-CIR filter screwed to it. This thing is a must when travelling. It covers all the needed focus lengths from wide to long. The adjustable CIR filter is a good combo, adjusting the strength of contrast to what I please really it helps dramatize the colours and removing the glare from the water.
Sigma 10-20. I’ve had this for a while but its time to upgrade to something with better optics. I think I’ve done something to it, I haven’t properly looked into it but It has some error that I cant change the aperture? I think the CPU contacts are dirty… I hope.
My Nikon Nifty Fifty, Always handy to have in the bag,. Its light and small with a good focal length for when I’m walking down the streets wanting to snap up a photo of a stranger without them “kinda” knowing and that low F stop to really centralize the subject.
The handy dandy Nikon 35mm f1.8. I got this lens from mother dear for Christmas and after thrashing the crap out of it on this trip (probably on my body 50% during this whole trip), so I must say if you’re a DX shooter pick one up from the shops. For a prime lens I find the focal length suitable enough if I had to use it for landscape or taking a shot of a single subject with the help of the wide aperture. If you don’t have one already you can pick them at a good price range under $350 so if your just starting into photography, it would be a great lens to learn from and it wont break the bank.

SECTION 4
3 pack of 35mm film for the Blackbird. To keep me up to date with the world I bought a wireless usb thingy. I normally bought P300 of credit and then you message the network carrier the code on the type of deal they have to offer, so I mostly just chose the deal which cost P200 for five full days of interwebbing, no download limit. An assortment of two and four gigs of memory cards, I dont like carrying anything larger then eight gigs just incase the card shits itself before I get the chance to archive them.

SECTION 5
My out of dateish’ Lonely Planet guide. I didn’t care that it was out of date; I just used it as a guide. Shouldn’t really constantly go by the book, remember you should always get off the beaten track! My little journal, I write all my journals, ideas, sketches, maps, pretty much everything because my memory sucks so its best that I write these things down.

SECTION 6
It can get pretty hot and humid in most of the places I ventured so it was best to protect myself from what Mother Nature had to give.

SECTION 7
I got advised to buy some sanitizing gel and it was a good idea! I found it hard trying to wash my hands before a meal or such so it’s good to have that handy. Like I mentioned I put my gear into some rough terrain and gees did my lenses get dirty. So it’s a definite must to bring some lens cleaning tools.

SECTION 8
My trusty Blackberry Bold 9700. Got it unlocked while I was over, shout to Mal for taking care of that. After my 80 gig IPod crapping itself I had to rely on this. I honestly couldn’t fathom venturing out on long trips to destinations with no beats. Unfortunately i managed to damage it when I went kayaking in El Nido but for some really weird reason in just over a week it would slowly fix itself. Most of the buttons weren’t working and the memory card wasn’t reading. But then it would randomly restart itself and certain features would work again, eventually fully functional. If I wanted to listen to my favorite bands like Bombay Bicycle Club, Shout Out Louds or Neon Indian Id like to treat my ears with the right headphones, so I bought a pair of Sennheiser headphones just before I left. I’ve previously owned a pair of these models but a dog chewed on them. So I know they’re comfy, portable and the bass and clarity is what you would expect from a German brand.

SECTION 9
My 15 inch MacBookPro8,2. Fairly new, it hasn’t failed on me during the trip. I had a 17inch MacbookPro before this one and I’ve noticed 15 inch is the way to go. 17 are just too big and heavy to lug around. Now you guys probably want to know what programs I use to work on my images? I use Lightroom 3, Photoshop CS5 and Nik’s HDR Efex Pro.

POST PRODUCTION PROCESS
I’ll share you how I process my images and its quite simple. I don’t really want to be sitting on my mac while I’m oot and aboot in another country so I try to make it quick and simple like you should because you wont learn anything if you completely edit your images in post production, get it right the first time and that’s taking the actual shot on your camera. I believe you wont learn that much if you rely completely on post production work. This is just my opinion and I hope others agree. Anyhoot at the end of the day or when I get the chance I transfer all my images into Lightroom, archiving them into its on catalog. I’m pretty trigger happy taking a crap load of shots a day so I have a filtering process that I start of with flagging through the ones I approve, then narrow it down by colour coding them green. Once completely filtered I move into develop mode and lightly adjust the tone and such but what i tend to enjoy playing around with is the split toning. If I find that images have some marks from particles on the lenses I drop them into Photoshop using the healing or stamp tools once that’s done the images are finished.

I didn’t bring a tripod because it would’ve been a pain in the ass to carry around. The only thing I would use it for if I had it around would be used for HDR processing, though i found an alternative technique then the tripod to create my HDR shots. I like to call it “Staying the fuck still” method. First off I set my bracketing between 3 or 9 depending my light source, switch my shooting mode to “CH” (Continues High Speed), firmly place the cam into my face, squeeze in my elbows into my body and by holding my breath I pull the trigger and the D300s will automatically stop shooting once all bracketed shots are done. I then throw that into Lightroom, highlight the images, right click then export it into Efix Pro. Efix Pro will do its best at automatically merging all the shots together even though the shots are not all framed the same, it will adjust them. Once that’s rendered I mostly play with all the settings cause the amount of data I get to play with but I don’t give it the whole HDR look, mostly subtle but a sense to show a light enough scene.

So there you go, if you have any questions, knock yourself out, ill be happy to answer your questions.