Ann and Dan's Grand Fall Adventure - Gear Edition

If you haven’t explored our website and found the “Gotta Get the Gear” video - STOP - you should head over to the MORE on the top menu bar and go to the OUR GEAR dropdown menu link and watch the Portlandia - Get the Gear video (linked page - so you don’t even have to navigate there).  It explains everything.  Well, pretty much everything about the next two posts.  Now that you’ve done that, let’s talk about the camera gear and back-up solutions Ann and I will be using this trip.

If you looked carefully at the “Dan’s Got the Gear!” caption to the photograph on the same page as the video, you’ll notice something about the way I use my camera when I’m photographing landscapes.  If you didn’t (shame on you) you see the same thing below.  The point is, I rarely look in the viewfinder of my camera anymore.  Let me explain.

Ann and I use what are called mirrorless cameras.  Unlike the old SLR cameras, there isn’t a mirror that pops up when you make an exposure.  Instead, the sensor is exposed nearly all the time and projects an image via a mini-monitor in the eye-piece (it’s not a reflection off an SLR mirror - thus, mirrorless) or on the LCD.  Some sophisticated digital SLRs had a “preview” mode that would flip up the mirror and let you look at the LCD, but then you couldn’t look in the eye piece without lowering the mirror.  With mirrorless cameras, the rear LCD can be on all the time (or turn off automatically when you put your eye to the eye piece to save battery power, or stay off all the time).

Once I discovered that I could look “at” the 2-1/2” by 1-5/8” image on the rear of the camera, much like I used to look at the 4” x 5” ground glass on my view camera, and didn’t have to look into the eyepiece, my whole thinking reverted to my view camera days (without the tilt/swing/shift movements unfortunately, but at least the image isn’t up-side down and backwards).  Still, I almost always look at my images when doing landscape work and rarely ever look into the eyepiece.  

Which leads me to how I have “doctored” my Fujifilm X-Pro 2 and how I had to make adjustments since a recent firmware update.  

So when I’m composing an image, this is pretty much what I’m looking at and how I compose my images.  Now, my camera has an interesting function that, in the eye-piece, I can get frames for different focal length lenses to appear, and occasionally I will use that if I’m wondering if I should change focal lengths.  But other than that, composing the image occurs with the camera on the tripod and using the rear LCD screen.

Look to the right of the LCD screen above and you see two small strips of tape on the top and bottom of the frame.  To put it bluntly, I despise the 2x3 format that most SLRs and mirrorless cameras use.  The strips of tape indicate roughly where a 4x5 format (aspect ratio) and a 3x4 format (aspect ratio) are in the frame.

Now, for a long time I had a piece of tape that ran across the entire frame, so all I could see on the LCD was the frame at the proportion I’d set the tape (5x7 aspect ratio).  If you look carefully at the photo below, you can see the tape running across the top edge of the LCD screen (and me looking over my glasses at the image itself).

Two things have happened since that photograph was taken.  First, my extensive photographing in a square format has made me feel like 5x7 is still too “linear” and, for images with one side longer than the other, I’ve decided to try and use the more proportioned 4x5 and 3x4 formats.  Unfortunately, the second thing has made my previous solution - placing tape all the way across the LCD to aid in framing the image - impossible.  Through a software update (which Fujifilm is famous for doing to improve its cameras), Fuji has added an RGB histogram (thank you) that unfortunately extends into the area covered by the tape.

For those who don’t know, histograms help in evaluating the exposure of the image and the key aspects are the very extremes - the far left are dark areas leading to black, the far right are light areas leading to white.  The last thing you want are blown out highlights - which you tell by looking at the far right of the histogram - which means the most important part of the histogram would be under the tape - ugh! 

You can see it in the image below.  (And for those who are wondering - yes, the histogram shows that the exposure would be about a full-stop underexposed, and I could brighten it significantly if I wanted to.  However, for purposes of this example, I thought it better to not have an LCD screen as brilliantly lit as the background around the camera.  So, you can see that the image is underexposed with a lot of dark values [i.e., the histogram spikes on the left of the histogram]).

What confounds me is that Fujifilm offers the ability to electronically alter the aspect ratio of the camera.  However, they only give you the option of the standard 2:3, a 1:1 (square, which I’ve been shooting with lately) and a 16:9 (typical for movies).  

As you can see below, the histogram (and other information) sits on top of the 1:1 image just fine.  And yes, I can easily turn off the information so I can concentrate on the image at 1:1 without the overlying information.

So why doesn’t Fujifilm offer me 4:5, 3:4 or 5:7 in the drop-down menu as well?  It’s just software programming!  Face it, they already do it for their medium-format camera, why not these cameras?   So if you have an inside connection with a software developer at Fujifilm - go out, buy him/her a few drinks, and convince him/her to add the other aspect ratios to what they already offer.  I’ll pick up the tab.  

That rant over with, that’s how I use my camera - looking at the rear of the screen.

So what gear do we tend to carry?  I’ll start off with Ann’s stuff, although we duplicate much of what we carry.  First off, Ann carries her gear in a new Shimoda backpack recently developed through a kickstarter program.  She wanted a backpack a bit larger than the one she had been using, and this one fit the tasking, and her size, perfectly.  Inside the bag you can see several black pouches with spare batteries in them.  The blue pouch in her bag is where she carries her filters.  When working, she can pull out all the filters and have them with her while photographing.  There’s a hook on the tripod head she can hang the bag while concentrating on working the camera.

Ann photographs with a Fujifilm X-T2 with a lovely red silk neck strap.  In her camera bag, Ann carries several fixed focal-length lenses ranging from wide angle to a moderate telephoto.  In a bag we keep between our seats in Beast, we store the big 100-400 mm lens, a smaller macro lens and a super wide angle zoom lens.  The edge-colored rectangle and square pouches are her filters.  She’s converted to a system of using a large slide-in filter system with all of her lenses that she is very happy with.  And of course, she has her trusty tripod.  Sometimes it seems like overkill on size, but once you’re in a steady wind, or have waves lapping at your feet, you’re glad you got the sturdier model. 

In the upper part of her bag, Ann has personal items like sunscreen and gloves, headlamp and flashlight, and cleaning stuff. Rain gear and other stuff are in an outside pocket on the back. 

Like I said, my photography set-up isn’t too much different.  I have a significantly larger bag by f-Stop gear that I’ve been very happy with - it has a wonderful harness system so the bag isn’t that uncomfortable (despite its weight) and allows me to carry extras like a good first-aid kit, compass and multi-tool, hat and gloves, flashlights, rain gear and food/water when we’re out for an extended period of time.

Camera-wise, I photograph with a Fujifilm X-Pro 2.  I have a woven leather camera strap that I love not only because it’s a bit springy when I have the camera around my neck, but it easily wraps around my wrist to keep it out of my way when I want to hand-hold the camera while making photographs without the tripod.  

I too carry a range of fixed focal length lenses from a wide angle to my moderate telephoto-macro lens.  In addition, I carry a fairly lightweight telephoto zoom lens so we have one available when we’re away from Beast and the better quality, but very heavy 100-400 mm lens.  I have a range of screw-in filters that I carry in a single pouch (the black one up top).  The grey pouch to the right of that is a system for doing panoramic photographs that allows me to rotate the camera on the nodal point of the lens to ease the “stitching” process.  Hopefully, I’ll use that a few times during our upcoming trip.  Below that pouch are two smaller black pouches where I keep my slide-in graduated neutral density filters.  They’re nothing compared to Ann’s, but they work for me.  And of course there’s the mandatory battery pouch and SD-card holder - batteries and memory are essential for digital photography.  Last, but not least, Ann and I have the same tripod set-up.  Why bother changing a good thing?

When you’re out on a big trip, one of the things you’re terrified of as a photographer is that you lose all of your images.  So field backup solutions are critical.  

Our most recent acquisition is a pretty-cool backup drive from Western Digital.  It has its own battery supply, which it can run off-of, and even power up your phone!  It’s pretty much a no-brainer process - you plug in the SD card and it copies all new data (images) from it and places them in a folder by date.  Great for us is that it also has a USB port, so if you use a USB - SD card reader plugged into the port, it will also download the photos and place them IN A SEPARATE dated folder under a category of USB photos.  That means that we can keep our images separate, but backed up solely by having Ann plug her chips directly into the device and me using the USB port!  And if that is not enough, it has its own wifi, and an iPhone/iPad app sowe can connect to the device with and view/download the images on our iPhones or iPads. 

Last, but not least, it’s pretty darned fast, which means we’ll be able to download photo sessions while we’re driving from one location to another, or over lunch!

Then there’s the serious downloading.  Each of us will be bringing a laptop with Lightroom on it.  Lightroom has an import setting that allows you to simultaneously download the images to a second device.  You can see my set-up below - laptop with my Field Backup Photos hard drive.

That means that if we do not delete any SD cards (we should have more than enough cards to not have to re-use them) and do our proper down-load and backups, we will have 4 copies of the images while we’re on the trip.

Naturally, the Western Digital hard drive will be kept separate from our field backup hard drives, which will be kept separate from our laptops, which is kept separate from our camera bags (where our SD cards will be).  Short of a meteorite hitting beast when everything is in it, or someone stealing Beast when we don’t have our camera gear (in which case we have bigger things to worry about), we should be good to go!

One final thing worth noting, though it’s not photography-specific, is that we carry a Garmin Delorme inReach Explorer with us when we’re out.  Given that we’re often off the beaten track, out by ourselves alone, whether photographing or driving, safety is a big concern (thus the first aid kit in my backpack).  The InReach is a GPS-based emergency satellite communicator, which will let us contact folks if we’re in trouble (i.e. send an SOS) even if we’re not in a cell-phone coverage area.  Like the Western Digital drive, it too has a phone app that eases use of the device.

Not only does the InReach have GPS functionality, it has an emergency beacon and allows one to text-message emergency personnel (and others depending on your coverage plan) from remote areas to let them know exactly what the problem is (is it a snake bite or a flat tire?).  And in case anyone is wondering, we do have search and rescue insurance as well as medivac insurance just in case.  It’s all part of being prepared when you go off into the boonies to photograph.  

The InReach is supposed to have an on-line tracking function where folks can go on-line, look at a map and track where you are.  With any luck, we’ll get it configured and let you know the link to the map so you can follow us over the next month or so! 

Well, that’s much of the gear we’ll be using on our trip.  Hopefully, we don’t need to use the last item!