Posts tagged photography

Travel Photography – Card to Disk

Photography

I think it’s safe to say that most people would like to travel. Most people would also love to travel abroad. If you love traveling and photography means that you’ll definitely bring along a camera. If you really enjoy traveling and really are into photography, you will probably end up taking a lot of photos. You’ll also wake up earlier and stay out longer.


Back in the old days where photos (not images) were captured on chemicals, the average storage capacity was thirty-six photos. If you lucked-out, you could sometimes get 37 before the rewind kicks in. Rewind? WTF? I remember lugging forty rolls of film to Spain. It was estimated at that time that I’ll shoot on average 2 rolls a day. This is to negate out time spent traveling between destinations (we almost always self-drive), chilling out (hey, you need to take a break and enjoy your time too), recovering from jet-lag and so on. I digress. Fast forward ten years and I can now have 630, yup, over six-hundred photos (21-megapixel RAW images) on my 16Gb CF card. Only that I tend to shoot a lot more and more little things get shot, food, street signs, mundane things, etc. Then came HD video. So unless you’re super rich, buying twenty 16Gb CF cards is not the solution.

My travel buddy has always been Breeze Systems Downloader Pro (DLPro). I also use it for wedding and other large shoots coupled with several card readers. Today’s multi-core computers can handle quite a bit of simultaneous downloads. So far, I average 16MB/sec per CF (8Gb SanDisk Extreme III) with five SanDisk All-in-one USB card readers downloading simultaneously into a striped disk array. Not very fast, but very convienent. I can go shower, have lunch, nap while the download is running. I’ve tried those image tanks or similar devices. Never worked out for me. Some were horribly slow, others just had poor UI and with the costs of today’s disks drives and netbooks, it makes sense to go with that route. For trips where I’m with a rental car (i.e. Australia or the US), I’ll normally take my full-size (14″) notebook but trains, backpacks and mountains don’t really agree with heavy notebooks.

For travel, I’m using DLPro to download from a card reader into two hard drives. Here’s my typical desktop configuration (Quad-core, 8Gb RAM, etc) so I won’t be configuring it to show thumbnails on my Mini9 for example.

Downloader Pro basic job-code, download preferences, IPTC keywords, etc.

Downloader Pro Back-up Plugin allows downloads to be replicated onto a second or even third storage location. My Wedding shoots get backed up immediately to a NAS this way. So here, mine goes to the NAS drive immediately. For my Mini9, I’ll configure it to go to the second hard drive.

You can launch multiple instances of DLPro, hence the beauty of this solution. My Atom powered Mini9 is going to choke on multiple card readers so I stick with one reader for now. I can’t wait for the dual-cores though. For now, weight is the main factor so have to make do with the tools at hand. More to come.

Seagate Free Agents

Travel Packing

Travel

Travel light. Depending on what you like to do, that’s going to be a serious challenge. Photographers have had this challenge for a while now. If you’re also going to do some serious hiking or outdoor activity and more, it’s also going to be even more difficult.

My camera equipment alone weights about 5kg, excluding some smaller non-accessories that I can check in. I don’t check in batteries, CF cards and chargers. Those are essential if the bags don’t arrive at the destination. Then I add my notebook (netbook this time round) and portable hard drives. I use Downloader Pro to copy from card to disk and with the backup plugin, it makes two identical copies to two physical hard drives. Two drives because single drive can fail plus me and my wife can carry one each in case a bag gets stolen.

Since I’m going for some serious canyon hiking, I also have my trusty Garmin 60CSx GPS along with me (Downloader Pro can also load a GPS tracklog and geo-stamp your images). Add a couple of little things you carry onboard and that gets heavy pretty fast. Not to mention my checked in baggage. I’ve never been on one of those tour packages so usually our trips are more photography and activity loaded and less hanging around shopping. With all the restrictions on baggage means my usual swiss army knife, leatherman wave tools all go into the cargo hold. Along with my tripods, monopods, leki trekking poles. My excel spreadsheet pack list has reached 145 items. Of course this includes little things like 2-stop neutral density filter, polarizer, 16 Maha Imedion AA batteries, ziploc bags, first-aid items like anti-diarrhea tablets, band-aids, etc and a lot more little things.

The only problem is trying to fit all that into the luggage, backpacks and more. Of course there are tricks to lighten my carry-on bag. Worse case scenario sees me hanging my 5D Mark II and 70-200 lens around my neck (whatever you wear on your body doesn’t count it seems). Never had to do that before but my aim is to have my Think Tank pixel rocket (CF wallet) and the Panasonic GF1 in my ThinkTank bum bag. My Mini 9 will be carried separately again with the hard drives and two 580EX flash units and RadioPoppers. That’s already 2.5kg out of my carry-on pack. If need be, since all my lenses sit in the Think Tank modular pouches, I’ll just belt my 70-200 and my pack will pass airline weight and size restrictions!

Speedliting tips, tricks, forums

Photography

If you’re a Canon shooter, you better be heading over to Syl Arena’s new site and forum if you’ve always wondered about using flash with your Canon system (of course, other DSLR owners are welcome too).

There’s also a big How-to section which will be growing. There’s one interesting post which shares 15 tips for using your speedlite, including this gem below:

“1. Understand that the hotshoe is not the best place for your Speedlite.
I know. You paid good money for your camera and your Speedlite. It’s not that you didn’t get the deluxe hotshoe. You did. It’s just that shooting with a Speedlite in the hotshoe is similar to the lighting used to make driver’s license and passport photos. You cannot create interesting light when the main source of light is parked on top of your camera.”

But if you’ve only got one light… don’t fret. Here’s one article for you too!

580EX IIs and RadioPoppers

Gee-Aff-One

Photography

You know what’s the best things about presents when you receive them? It’s not the value. It’s the abso-freaking-surprise when it’s something you really, really want and that the person went through great lengths to research (blog, twitter, social, whatever) what you really want. So, from the bestest brother ever, I get this awesome little thing of black plastic and magnesium alloy.

It’s so awesome but the most hilarious thing is my mom going “like are you sure you’re gonna buy this camera expert a camera? It’s not even a Canon. It’s a Panasonic! He’s already got enough cameras (ahem)!” A small camera, just what I need. This is OMG Awesome. Yeah, so Canon, if you’re listening, I want an EF-S mount (EF with adapter) body the same size as the GF1. APS-C Sensor and HD Video.

Thean Hou in the Morning

Photography

A very different appearance compared to the previous shoot we had. This time round, we were shooting my brother in-law and his family. Despite the clouds and a short drizzle, the weather was hot. Chinese New Year hot. So hot that I got pretty dehydrated before I even got home. Anyways, because of the rain, the lion dance was also pretty tame. In fact, they were mostly going after anyone who waved a hong bao (red packet with money inside I presume) in their face. So tame that even tourists could pose by the lion and take a photo!

Thean Hou in the Evening

Photography

On the fourth day of Chinese New Year, we decided that the evening was just the right time to drop by the Thean Hou Temple in KL for a shoot. As usual, it was packed and being the Lunar New Year, it also features a lot of performances and activities that add to the bustling atmosphere. My first time here in the evening and I’m already loving the light or the lack of it. Makes the use of small flashes all the more important but also trying to jostle light to add a bit of sparkle to the already vibrant scene.

With the year of the Tiger, there were many tiger lanterns made from wire and canvas. In the darkness, they glowed beautifully but if you drop by in the daytime, they look faded, dirty and uneventful. Tripods were a challenge in a crowded place like this so I ended up shooting handheld with the McNally grip, high ISO (up to 6400 but mostly on 1600 and 3200), and wireless flash and radiopoppers. We also had another shoot the following morning. I’ll post that later and you can see the difference.