Our kit

Kit you can borrow...

So what’s inside our camera bags? Here we go… This is the equipment we have which we can make available for you to use while you are travelling with us.

 

Adam’s camera bag

 

 

Well actually it doesn’t all fit into one bag, but set out below are the contents of my camera bags and some honest comments on what I think of each bit of kit.

I have been a Canon man for most of my shooting career. My first Canon was an AE1 Program back in the early 1990s.  Up to late 2007 I have stuck to Canon. The key for me is that I believe their auto-focus technology is the best and they seem to have the edge over Nikon on the digital sensors, although Nikon have been fighting back with some of their more recent cameras which have exceptional low light capability.

In November 2007 I took the plunge and invested in digital medium format.  They key reason for me was the ability to be able to produce very large prints from my shots.

Camera Bodies

EOS 1Ds Mark II - I took the plunge earlier in 2005 and “invested” in a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II. With 16.7 megapixels at the time it had the highest pixel count of any SLR camera body.  Is this important? Not if you only blow up your pictures to 10 inches by 8 inches. Yes if you are willing to spend the money and want to print at up to A2 size. (You will also need a pretty fancy printer to do this of course).

I purchased the camera for a trip to Uganda and Rwanda to photograph the mountain gorillas. Given they live in a rain forest we went prepared for the weather with rain guard for our cameras. However it was so humid and wet that the viewfinder on the EOS 1Ds Mark II fogged up for four days and I couldn’t see anything aside from a blur through the viewfinder. Very frustrating and worrying until it cleared.

In Botswana 2008 the Mark II started to produce some odd error messages and at crucial times would not allow me to take a sequence of shots.  The fine people at Fixation, where we send out kit to be sorted, found that the shutter needed replacing as it had reached the end of its useful life.  A pretty straightforward job for them, but it does show that we take it for granted that our cameras will work all the time.  Hence Julie and I always travel with two bodies each.

EOS 5D Mark II – Late in 2008, the week before we left for Antarctica, we managed to source a couple of these gems from a good contact in Japan.  Absolutely fantastic.  Image quality is great with 21.1 megapixels.  It also has a video capacity which has to be seen to be believed.  It is much lighter than the 1Ds Mark II and does not feel quite so robust.

The only serious issue we both have with it is that the control dial on the top left of the camera can easily be knocked; hence suddenly you find yourself in manual mode rather than program.  

Hasselblad H3DII-39 – For our expedition to the Congo at the tail end of 2007 I took the giant leap to digital medium format.  With exceptional lenses and a 39 megapixel sensor this camera can producing breathtaking images.  Large prints have to be seen to be believed.

It is pretty simple to operate and the controls are similar to a digital SLR.  So anyone who has used digital SLRs for any time would not have a problem with this.  There is a very good LCD on the top of the camera and a useless colour monitor on the back, which in sunlight is impossible to see.  Hence, I simply rely on checking the histogram on the LCD.

I suspect the Hasselblad was not really designed for the bush, or indeed the Antarctic.  Seals against dust or moisture are much less effective than the Canons and some parts of the camera do not feel as robust as the Canons.  In South Georgia last December the Hasselblad simply stopped working, OK it was in driving rain.  After a couple of days of looking through the manuals I discovered that one of the pins which connected the camera body to the lens had failed and was not making a connection.  I was not able to fix this in the field and so the Hasselblad was an expensive door stop for the rest of the trip.  Again a lesson, assume a camera body will fail on any major expedition.

The Hasselblad has pretty limited low light capability, I rarely use it above 200 ISO, which limits its use in jungle.  It also does not race through a sequence of shots like the Canons.

Despite all of these moans, and much frustration and missed shots along the way, when I am able to take good shots they are so so good.  Some of the people portraits from India in March 2009 are my favorite shots from that expedition.  The detail in the skin, the shallow depth of field and the colour all mean I will keep lugging around another 15Kg of Hassy kit everywhere we go.

Canon G10 – A large “pocket” camera and a useful standby when everything else is going wrong.  I first used it properly on a short trip to Mumbai.  The results are pretty good, but like the Hasselblad, you very quickly realize how you miss the ability to take quick sequences of 5 to 10 shots.  With the G10 it is one at a time! 

Camera Lenses

 

Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS lens - This is a real beauty of a lens. It produces very crisp results and is tough enough to stand some knocks. However I do not actually use it very much while on safari in Africa, in cities or indeed anywhere else. I think the key reason is while on safari my style is to fill the frame with the animals and birds. Hence I almost always use the 600mm and sometimes the 1.4 converter as well! The times when I have used the 80-200 has been when there is a lot of action. The best example is when we came across a pride of lions chasing a herd of buffalo. Our truck was chasing the herd and there was a lot of dust and confusion. I managed to fire away a few shots. So a nice lens, but at about £1,000 I need to use it a lot more.

Canon 400mm DO lens - This is an amazing lens. For those who have not come across this, DO is short for “Defractive Optical’’ elements. This is essentially a lens which manages to be much more compact and light when compared to a more conventional lens. For me the real advantage is for hand held shooting of birds in flight. You may think that that this seems very specialised. For many years I have focussed on birds sitting on branches. Some of these I think are rather good although I am happy to be told they are not. More recently I have started concentrating on birds in flight. This is not so easy and I am still not happy with the results.

Norman Knowitall adds – "Actually Adam, you forgot to mention that Canon’s Multi-layer construction is made up of two single-layer optical elements with opposing circular diffraction gratings. The most significant characteristic of the diffractive optical element is that the positions where the wavelengths combine to form an image are reversed from those of a refractive optical element. By combining a Multi-Layer Diffractive Optical Element and a refractive optical element within the same optical system, chromatic aberration (colour smearing), which adversely affects image quality, can be corrected even more effectively than with a fluorite element. Also, by adjusting the pitch (spacing) of the diffraction grating, the diffractive optical element makes possible the same optical characteristics as a ground and polished aspherical surface, which effectively corrects for spherical and other aberrations." Thank you Norman … that is quite enough!

EF600mm IS F4 lens - I purchased this just in time for our trip to Antarctica in January 2006. It looks pretty well the same as my old 600mm but it of course has image stabilisation.  Quality is outstanding.
The soft case I use for the 600mm lens is made by Domke. Weight of 600mm lens - 5.4 kilos.
Hasselblad 300mm F4.5 – Hasselblad’s longest lens.  This equates to about 200mm with 35mm kit.  Sharp as a pin, but does need a tripod as there is no image stabilization at all.  The lens is build like a tank, but the lens hood has a plastic mount which I naturally broke.

Hasselblad 210mm F4 – A fantastic portrait lens.  Like the 300mm, sharp as a pin.  It produces absolutely stunning results.  Possible to hand hold, but only at fast shutterspeeds.

Hasselblad 28mm F4 – Unusually for medium format, a proper wide angle lens.  Much sharper than the Canon zoom and a joy to use.

Binoculars Zeiss 10x40B - I have had these quite a time. They say made in "West Germany" which must make them mid-1980s. Excellent kit. They have taken a few knocks, soaks and salt spray over the years without any problems .. .although see below. They are quite heavy but I really like them and have no plans to change them for another 10 years.  While in Antarctica early in 2009 the focusing mechanism stopped working.  For the first time in over 20 years I had them serviced which included having the mechanisms decoroded, guide rods unbuckled, threads reground, cleaned, relubricated, adjusted, reset, collimated (I had to look that up in the dictionary) and tested…  Now, just like new!  Repairs performed by the fine people at Optrep Optical Repairs.

Beanbag - Most of the shots on safari on the database are taken with a long lens resting on a beanbag. The beanbag I settled on is the excellent double beanbag from Warehouseexpress.com. The beanbag comes with two liners. My view is the bigger the better. It takes a couple of kilos of rice. On most trips if I can get away with it, I fill it up at home and hope not to be too overweight on my check in baggage. One reason to fill it up is that on most trips you get to the camp without passing a supermarket! You have to hope that the kitchen has enough rice to give it to you, which is a sore point for Julie – she feels it’s a touch insensitive to be conspicuously using rice for non-eating purposes in poor countries. In any case, the beanbag is essential kit for any safari. Sometimes tour companies have beanbags available on the vehicle but these are usually not big enough for a 500mm or 600mm.

Really right stuff ball heads and mini-tripods – I am now finding that I simply cannot pack a large tripod and a heavy Wimberley head together with all the other kit.  I have switched to a really right stuff ball head (rock solid) and their excellent mini-tripod.  Without question, the Wimberley is outstanding when using long lenses on a tripod.  However I have found that I was using the beanbag more often than the Wimberley which I now leave behind.  I also pack a monopod which comes in pretty handy.

Peli 1510 hard cases and the Kiboko rucksack – The Peli case is fantastic.  It has wheels (useful for Heathrow Terminal 5 where we always seem to have a long walk), no airline has ever challenged us bringing them as hand luggage … despite being regulation size the average weight we carry on is about 20kilos!  It is waterproof and dustproof and all in all a really good investment.  The Kiboko is exactly the same size as the Peli and so can take a 600mm F4 lens plus a load of other kit.  It seems very strong and was my bag of choice for our 2008/09 Antarctica expedition where there was a fair amount of walking and where the Peli would have not worked! 

Underwater photography

The kit…

The only real way to take top photos underwater is to use a housing. This is usually a metal custom-made case into which you lock your SLR camera and a lens. The housings have a variety of ports (the glass through which the lens looks). Some are flat and are suitable for a macro lens and some are rounded for use with a wide angle lens.

The housing has clever mechanical levers and dials which connect through the housing and rest against the cameras dials and buttons. Hence when you are underwater you can adjust everything on the camera. This is very good, except that usually only one model of camera will work in the housing. If you change your camera, you have to change the housing. A very expensive exercise. The kit is heavy but it can take quite a bit of punishment.

Flash is the other essential bit of kit. Water absorbs light like a sponge. It is pretty dark down below 10 metres and you need a strong flash. Like the underwater housings, underwater flashes are big expensive bits of kit.

I use a Seacam housing and Seacam strobes (the name used for underwater flashguns). Top quality engineering from Austria and pretty expensive.

Summary thoughts…

Underwater photography is a real challenge. Aside from learning to dive, keeping an eye on your air, time and depth, you also have to use your camera. The size of my housing makes the camera more like a bulky medium format set up. Down below is often quite dark, so much so that the usually very reliable autofocus on the Canon 100mm does not work. Hence some of the flashguns have a torch built in which you shine on your subject allowing the autofocus to lock in. To get really clear shots it is important to reduce the distance between the subject and the glass on the housing. Often you will be shooting perhaps four inches from the subject. You can see this on some of my photographs of Nudibranches. However when you move away from the subject and use a flash, then the flash highlights any muck in the water. Despite the difficulty, some of the images you can obtain are in some cases much more arty than say on a safari, or is that just my view?

Storage – I almost always take a MacBook Pro laptop and three or four external hard drives. Currently we are using little LaCie 500Gb drives which seem fine.  Whenever I download photographs from a card, I copy the image to two different hard drives so out in the field I always have two copies of everything.  Back home, I have three copies of everything!

Kit I have purchased, but never really used...

Gitzo metal legged tripod - For about five years I used a light Manfrotto tripod which was not sturdy enough for a 600mm. I stayed with it for a few years until a trip to the Manu reserve in Peru. I was on a barge in a river taking pictures of macaws at a clay lick with another professional photographer. He had a Gitzo and was having much more success at taking the macaws in flight. He advised me to buy a much better tripod. I went off and purchased a metal Gitzo. Wonderful quality but far too heavy. Try walking around with that, a 600mm lens and a rucksack and you soon start sweating. Julie has a Gitzo with carbon legs and it is so much lighter. Hence the point of the story is if you travel; get a Gitzo suitable for the size of your lenses, with carbon legs or if you do not mind lying down and shooting from a foot off the ground one of the excellent Really Right Stuff mini tripods.

Canon 2 times teleconvertor - I occasionally use this but my feeling is that the results tend to be soft, in both contrast and sharpness. Hence I use it for record shots where I cannot resist taking a shot of a bird or whatever.

 

Julie’s camera bag

 

About six years ago I bought the largest Lowepro backpack in the shop, knowing that, like a handbag, it would always be full. I carry a couple of lenses and bodies in it as well as cards, spare batteries, laptop connectors etc, which just leaves me to carry my larger lenses in over the shoulder bags (Goretex like fabric).   It’s about time I upgraded my Lowepro to something much better in the waterproofed department.  Having said that for perfect waterproofing it’s the Peli.  Frequently I leave the backpack at home and travel with my Peli case instead.  This is really robust, dust proof and waterproof.  The only trade-off is that you can carry the Lowepro on your back if it’s a walking sort of trip.  The Peli is good for trips where I won’t be lugging everything around, ie it’s great on the seat next to me in Africa.  Mind you, the porters at Indian railway stations have had my Peli up on their heads with a few other Pelis as well so I probably need to do more reps at the gym!  I carry my 500mm lens in a Lightware over the shoulder bag – made to order from the States and I carry a tripod as well but it’s light, given the carbon legs.

Camera Bodies

EOS 5D Mark II – This was bought in December 2008 when it hadn’t even been released I the UK.  A really good contact managed to get two from us in Japan, with days to spare before we went down to Antarctica again.  It is a big step up on my original 5D – it has 21.1 megapixels and shoots excellent video.  I can really only fault the dial on the top which is too easy to knock so you can easily shoot away thinking you are on one setting when you’re not, and you lose a series or a few hours of shots, or you’re just faffing around wondering why your camera’s not performing.

EOS 1Ds Mark II - I have inherited this as a second body from Adam now that he is also using a 5D Mark II and a Hassey as his first choice.  Lower pixel count but still PDG at 16.7 megapixels and what I really notice is that it doesn’t burst as fast as the 5D let alone the 5D Mark II and I am always looking for movement to capture so I have my most likely lens set up on the 5D Mark II and my next lens set up on this body.

Canon EOS 5D - I used this for the first time in the Antarctic, January 2006. It’s a faster camera than the EOS 1Ds Mark II but lower pixel count.  I was very happy with it until the 5D mark II came along which is a big step up if you want to do large prints.  I loan the original 5D to clients now.

Canon EOS 20D - I rarely use this now because the 5D Mark II and the EOS 1Ds Mark II are so much better but I hang on to it and loan it to clients on trips.  The downfall of the 20D is its small screen and its sensor is smaller than a 35mm equivalent but it’s good for wide angle, snap shots and for anyone who hasn’t brought a camera with them but is starting to feel left out with everyone else’s photo euphoria!

Canon EF 1.4x extender – I use this all the time when I am in the mood for in your face close-ups or we just can’t get that close to the action.  The quality is excellent for most conditions.

Canon EF 500 IS - My favourite lens! It cost a fortune but it's worth it. I can pick up eyelashes on elephants and whiskers on leopards and the quality is superb. It's heavy for me to use on a hand held basis but I use it on a beanbag most of the time, otherwise it’s on the Wimberley head on a tripod or monopod.  The image stabiliser more than compensates for any shake as a result of the weight. I cannot say too many times how much I love this lens.  My Precious.

Canon 100-400 IS - A great lens for flexibility when shooting movement.  It’s very light but still needs support on a beanbag or Wimberley when extended to 400mm.  I typically have this set up by my side ready to grab when the 500 is going to be too heavy or I am struggling to keep up with a running or flying animal.

EF 16-35 USM - I don't use it nearly enough because I am typically holding my 500mm but I do like using it for wide angle shots when there's an interesting sky.  I have used it mostly in the Arctic and Antarctic when there have been good skys and sea ice to shoot.

Gitzo tripod (carbon legs) with Wimberley head - I am never really relaxed when I have the 500 lens on a tripod and lugging a tripod around/adjusting it quickly etc is a bit of a bore. I do struggle with my backpack, 500mm and tripod if I am climbing any distance but the flipside is that I don't really want to find myself somewhere where I need it all and I don't have it. The Wimberley really helps with panning a long lens and it can be more comfortable on your neck although in a safari vehicle a beanbag is more practical space-wise and support-wise and you can never get as low as you’d like unless you can lie down in the dirt/Penguin poo with your beanbag.  So there’s the dilemna.

Leica 10x42 Binoculars - A nice balance between magnification and weight.

Epson P-4000 80GB Multimedia Storage Drive has been replaced by 2x500G External Hard Drives and Apple Mac – The Epson was a great piece of kit when bought but I now use the Apple laptop pretty much everywhere plus two 500G external hard drives which means everything is backed up twice and whatever I’m interested in printing has been selected and more often then not processed before I get back to London.  The Epson is slower and doesn’t read RAWs but I sometimes carry it around as a backstop.