Photo of the Day: Tongass National Forest, Alaska
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The Tongass National Forest is just outside of the port city of Skagway, Alaska. It is a sub alpine rain forest and there is a vast trail network that allows to explore all that this landscape has to offer. Glacier fed streams like this one flow into beautiful rivers. If you are ever in Skagway don’t miss hiking in the Tongass National Forest!
Glacier fed streams in Tongass National Forest!
New Photo’s Of India
Click on the Photo’s to see all of the Images!
Southern India Album
Life at Sunset in Goa Album
My Panasonic GH1: The Perfect Travel Companion
Decisions Decisions!!
Before I hit the road for a long travel I usually spread out all of my camera gear and take stock of what I have and what I need for that particular trip.
This is almost always a simple task and more a formality really. But this time is different. We were going to be on the road for close to a year and weight becomes a huge issue. You are not just jumping on a plane, then into a car and driving everywhere you go. You are on busses, rickshaws, trains and any other mode of transportation you can think of and you have to carry everything you need for a year on your back.
So as I sat there looking at my Canon SLR Camera kit, lenses, accessories, tripod etc. suddenly it became obvious to me that I needed to do some serious re-evaluating.
How do I scale down my Camera without sacrificing quality?
Well the simple answer is you don’t. You have to sacrifice something. Now came the moment of truth where I had to decide to either go with a whole other camera system or scale down my massive existing kit. I had to weigh the options. Taylor Davidson had a good review of the Micro 4/3 camera system vs the dslr.
Gh1 vs 7D
After much thought, as you can see from my previous post, I decided to go with a new system. I chose the Panasonic GH1 micro 4/3 system because it allows me to capture relatively the same quality in a smaller package. No heavy body, battery packs, or massive lenses. I now have the closest thing to an DSLR Camera without the bulkiness and it shoots full HD video as well! This is all a bonus for the travel photographer.
The choice to leave the dslr at home was a hard one at first.
But after seeing some of the results of the Panasonic GH1 I can breathe a little sigh of relief. Just knowing that I don’t have to stand out in the middle of a crowded street in Mumbai with thousands of dollars of camera gear changing lenses also gives me a sense of relief.
Walking around with an expensive looking camera system does sort of put a target on your back. Where as pulling out my much smaller Panasonic GH1 is less attention grabbing so it allows me to feel a little more comfortable getting it out in more situations.
Now I am not saying that it can forever replace my Canon 5d Mark II. But I am going to put the micro 4/3 system through it’s paces with a year on the road and see how it fares.
I can tell you this much: As I sling on my pack I am relieved not to have that extra 15lbs of gear dragging me down!
Traveling with a New Camera: The Hurdles
After deciding on the Panasonic GH1 the next step was to learn my way around the camera. It is always good to learn a little bit about your camera before hitting the road. Unfortunately I did not heed my own advice. Packing and organizing my life just took up too much time. So as I sit here in India I am trying to learn my way around a new camera system on the fly. Not recommended.
Panasonic GH1
I was able to identify one problem before I left though.
I had ordered an extra battery off of Amazon.com and after receiving it, charged it up and threw it in the camera. Nothing! Except a little note on the screen that said, “ This battery is not compatible with this camera.” So after a little digging on the internet I found out that Panasonic had made 3rd party batteries non compatible with the GH1. In fact, they were working this into all the firmware on their new camera’s. So all of you looking to buy a new camera just a heads up, you can’t use third party batteries with the GH1. You will have to pay full price for the Panasonic batteries.
After arriving in India I was eager to take some photo’s on the first day. So off we trundled down to the beach in Varkala. It is beautiful here so it was not hard to grab a few nice shots.
Varkala Beach
- Cliffs of Varkala
I will say that working with a new system poses it’s challenges. I didn’t know how to adjust exposure on the fly, and I didn’t know which settings to start out with. To complicate matters more, the awkwardness of using a camera that is unfamiliar to you makes concentrating on all the other things (like composition) more difficult.
I suppose I never realized that using the same camera for years had allowed me to devote my full concentration to the artistic part of the photograph rather than the technical side. I Guess I better get my butt in gear and learn the GH1. It is quite different from my old Canon system.
Despite the few technical challenges I was able to snap a few photo’s of the beach and life around Varkala that I was happy with. So it was back to our guesthouse to catalogue and upload to the blog.
Cliff Walkways
My workflow is simple. I use Lightroom to catalogue and batch process my images and then I do any touch ups that are needed in Photoshop.
No problem.
Until I discovered that the GH1 records RAW format as rw2, which is a format that is not recognized in Photoshop CS4. Great. Yet another thing I probably should have tried out before leaving. I guess my research wasn’t as thorough as I thought.
Luckily, after scouring the internet, I found the fix by downloading the latest version of Camera Raw from the Adobe website. This fixed the problem and allowed me to get on with my workflow. So make sure you do your research. This probably could have been avoided.
After completing my first day of shooting and first workflow with the Panasonic GH1, I am happy to report that after overcoming these few hurdles I am loving the camera.
Hopefully others can learn from my mistakes. My advice to all of you travel photographers out there is to make sure you take your camera for an extensive test drive before leaving. Not just the hardware but the software as well.
Make sure you are familiar and proficient at using you camera’s functions and know most of its little quirks. These may seem like no brainers but it will make your life easier on the road and allow you concentrate more on the art of Travel Photography instead of the technical side.
