Thursday, June 26, 2008

Music Of Jah People

Yup, J&S are exodus'ing off to Africa. We'll be there for 10 days in July primarily to shoot animals, but you can all rest assured that we'll be employing digital bullets only, fired from a Canon EOS!

We are very much looking forward to being there but not at all to the journey, which involves flying from SFO to LHR to Nairobi to Kilimanjaro just to get this all kicked off. Thanks to a BA schedule change, just travelling there will span three days.

In browsing some of the hotels we'll be staying at I was surprised to see mention in at least one of them that Internet access was advertised, so hopefully I'll be able to post at least a note or two while we are gone. Frankly, I do have to remain skeptical until I see for myself whether or not it actually works when we get there, but at least it holds out promise.

In anticipation of some great photo opportunities - I mean, they arrange for the animals to be delivered and posed ready for snap-happy tourists, right? - I'm renting a Canon EOS 1d Mark III for the trip. Whilst I couldn't justify dropping the required $4k in order to buy one, I could however just about convince myself that $600 for three weeks rental was acceptable, so I went ahead and made the booking. Will let you know how it turns out and what the learning curve is like.

To be going on with, therefore, you can all amuse yourselves by trying to figure out where Tanzania is on the above map. I failed miserably you'll be unsurprised to hear!

2 comments:

I said...

Safe travels.
Let me know how you get on with the Mark III. Be interested in your thoughts. Looking forward to seeing photos when you get back!

J said...

Will do. In fact, I was just trying it out on the dog as he was chasing his ball. Seems to focus well so long as you get a good lock at the right place to start with. Resulting images are higher quality than I can get from my current camera, especially above ISO 100. It is heavy, though, and not as easy to hand hold for me (small mitts) especially with a long lens on the front! Glad I decided not to rent the new 1Ds. The image files in RAW are coming out around 13 Mb each from the 10 megapixel sensor on the 1D Mk III already. Not sure I could handle the more like 23 Mb per shot from the 1Ds ...