Tips For An Adventure Photograhy

Adventure Photography

I like photography, i have an Samsung GX-1S DSLR. This DSLR is same as Pentax K110D. I like shooting around. I also like to read those photograhy and camera forum. When i browse the web for photography, i found a nice thing to share with all here. This is some tips that not only for professional photograher but also normal shooting at outdoor for beginner.

If there is one photography discipline which is very abusive and unfriendly to cameras, that would be adventure photography.Here's a few major issues and tips you need to be aware off to minimize damages to your gears and your self when you do adventure.

1. Sweat is bad for camera
Sweats running down your arm and trickling into your hand will find its way into your camera. The salty sweat usually seeps into the shutter release button and corrodes its internal circuitry. It would cost you anything between RM600 to RM1500 depending on what circuits shorted or corroded.

Wear a half glove. It keeps off sweat from running straight to your camera. Not only that, it protects your palm and fingers from spiky things, sharp and rough edges.

2. Bring the smallest and lightest macho looking SLR
After the first 3 hours into the rural, you wish you have a point & shoot to shoot with instead of the behemoth in your hand. And when you are out walking in the forest or mountain, you have to hand hold your camera. If it is packed in your backpack, you would be too tired to take it out when you see something worth shooting. Dangling your camera from your neck is also not a good idea. You wouldn't want your SLR to wring your neck when it snagged on something when you slipped.

3. Lightest & sturdiest tripod
Bring the lightest tripod from the best maker, that fits the weight of your camera and its heaviest lens. You will never know when you need it. Many a times when we didn't bring ours with us, the moonlit landscape made us scrambling,looking for rocks, boulders, tree stumps and trees to place our long exposures. A monopod is also a good hiking stick. Besides, it is also your first line of defence, keeping bay feral animals, snakes & anything that thinks you are its lunch/dinner/snack or simply bad.

4. 2 Lens and a walkabout lens
Just bring two good lenses and one "trek lens". An example would be a 17-85mm ( or wide with fixed aperture like F/2.8) and a 70-200mm with a fixed aperture(F/4). Jungle and rainforest is daunting twilight place and you need that fast lens (F/2.8) . A "trek lens" is the lens that you walk with along the trail and usually a zoom lens that go from 18 to 250 or 28 to 300. You never know when you might see something worth shooting and you don't have the time nor the energy to unpack your backpack to get the better lens.

5. Battery
A battery usually last 1 day in the forest/rural, regardless of makes and models, for obvious reason. As it would be your first time in that territory, you would be shooting just about anything you haven't seen before. Sometimes, things you haven't seen before seems to be interesting and worth shooting even though it might not be. And if your SLR can take AA, bring more than enough. Go field test your SLR first on its energy consumption rate. You need to know this. It is not like there's Carrefour, Tesco or Giant in the rurals. Bring your battery charger along as well. You will never know when there's a village with TNB or solar powered.

6. Cold Drains Batteries
If one day you are shooting along the summit plateau of Mount Kinabalu, or any mountainous region expect your battery depleting its charge 50% in 3 hours for doing nothing. Keep your battery from the cold. But the funny thing is, there seems to be less noise at high ISO when the weather is cold.

7. 4GB minimum per day
Generally you be shooting something like between 4 to 8GB per day. Bring your portable storage device with enough space for the duration, based on your shooting rate. 5 days in the field means 40GB at least.

8. Organize your memory cards
Keep the blank memory cards in its containers and keep them in your pant pocket and the filled ones, in your vest upper pockets. That way you wouldn't mix them by accident. When your camera's LCD says you have 15 shots left, replace the card.

9. Shoot Raw
Shoot native raw instead of TIFF or DNG. That's NEF for Nikon, CRW for Canon, PEF for Pentax. When the camera is saving into any other format, some definition are lost during the conversion. When the camera is saving raw, it saves everything that it saw.

10. Swiss Army/Utility Knife
Get the one with the longest blade. Usually this type has less tools along with it. In the last CB4, it was demonstrated that a 4 inch sharp blade can shave off a young coconut faster than a machete. Make sure you have one on you at all times except in the city. Make sure you remove this from your vest when you are out shooting street. It's illegal.

11. LED Torchlight & Lighter
Another utility tool you need to have on you at all times in your vest or cargo pant. It is almost futile fumbling for a torchlight or anything for that matter, groping in the dark at night. As for the lighter, you can use that to start a camp-fire to cook something when you are lost or stranded in the woods.

12. Compass/Map/GPS
Except for Mount Kinabalu or other tourist-centric mountains, study the rain forested region you are trekking. We called this back in the military days "Direction Awareness". Try to remember certain visually obvious landmarks on the terrain in relation to the compass heading. Go at least to 5000m above the terrain on GoogleEarth and print that mosaic. Mark which side is North/South/East/West. This is your map.Use it with your compass. As for GPS, get the type that can read signals indoors. Most hand-held GPS are pretty useless inside the dense rainforest and you need to find an open window in the canopy above you to get a good reading of your current location.

13. Two Man tent
You will be sleeping outdoors and you need a rainproof wind resistant tent. Two Man tent is big enough to keep you and your things in but light enough to carry. Go see Coleman's Sun Dome.

14. 60 litres backpack
This is the volume of things the backpack can keep in. Try to put everything very important first, you need into this bag. Any leftovers, you probably not need it unless you have a porter. You could get a bigger backpack like the 70 litres but the bigger the backpack, you probably end up with a broken back or a slipped disc.

15. Fit & Healthy
This is the only way you can enjoy the adventure.