OK,
Thanks to everyone who provided me with Antarctica photography tips
in my original post last November, even if the thread wandered around
for a bit!
I came back a few days ago and I have done an initial trawl through
some of the photos and have put them online here:
http://www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/antarctica/
In term of cold, it was around 0 or 2 Celsius so not too cold, except
when it got windy.
My main camera was a Canon 40D and I had a spare 30D for backup. I
didn't actually need the spare.
I took the following lenses:
EF 16-35mm lf/2.8L USM
EF 28-135mm lf/3.5-5.6 USM IS
EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 USM IS
I decided not to take my EF 70-200mm lf/2.8L USM IS as I had too much
stuff already in my carry-on, such as power adapters, PDA/phone,
rechargers, etc.
I took two 8GB CF cards (plus a couple of 2GB cards that I already
had) with me and an EPSON P5000 storage device. Again, there were no
problems. On any particular landing I never exceeded the 8GB of
storage and I shot in full RAW at all times.
I also had a small Velba tripod but unfortunately I didn't have time
to use it.
The battery life for the camera was not really affected by the cold
(as far as I could see) and I never needed to use my spare battery.
My backpack was a 25+5 litre capacity item and I had the insides
lined with a strong "float bag" which was handy when it got wet
either during the zodiac landings/cruises.
In terms of clothing, wellies, Gore-Tex shell jacket and trousers
were essential and these had to be coupled with layers of warm
midlayer clothing (eg fleece), plus a woolly hat, neck gaiter, warm
gloves and sunglasses.
Layered clothing was important! On one particular hike up the side of
a hill the sun was out and it got very hot so we had to pack our
outer layers into our backpacks. Oh, and sunscreen was important as
the UV down there stronger and also the sun was out a lot longer (it
only set for a couple or so hours so I never saw the night sky).
Now, the gloves were a problem. I had thick ski-gloves but underneath
I wore thin gloves but I found that the outer ski-gloves were not
really big enough to fully accommodate the inner gloves...my bad! So
I quickly discarded the inner gloves...most of the time I was able to
use my camera wearing the thick ski-gloves.To assist me, I had a
small spectacle screwdriver attached to the camera strap that I could
use for pressing the buttons on the back of the camera. However,
normally I would just briefly take off my gloves to operate anything
fiddly on the camera.
I also had a GPS logging unit (a weatherproof "TrackStick") attached
to the top of my backpack so at some point I will add to my photos
coordinates and/or links to Google Maps so that you can see where the
pictures were taken.
I did have some problems taking photographs from a zodiac when it got
rough or when it was snowing and I had to continually clean the
lenses. I wasn't too concerned about that but the real concern was
seawater on the camera body. I almost wished I had taken those
flexible plastic splash-resistant covers.
--
Kulvinder Singh Matharu
Website :
www.metalvortex.com
Contact :
www.metalvortex.com/contact/
Brain! Brain! What is brain?!
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