[John Bennett]

Incredible.
My favorite images are those showing the relics from those early exlporers. Thin leather boots, and equipment that contrast starkly to todays high tech stuff.

[John Bennett]

My stuff is on schedules ( some carriers call them riders), it’s rides along with your general home owners but is blanket coverage for the amount you insure. I pay 1% of the insured value, so I can insure any item, for any amount, be it 100% replacement or 75% of the value. Because your insuring the item for $x.xx bill of sales go in, so theres never any doubt somewhere down the road whether you owned it or not.

If anything happens, including me throwing it over a bridge or into a volcano I simply make a call and open a claim. Once it’s determined that the item is a writeoff versus repairable, I get the amount of money I insured the item for.

I was on a bear hunting assignment last summer for example. One afternoon we were back at the shack. Id placed my MKiv on the skinning table, then when the bear was ready I grabbed it to make room, brain cramped and placed it on the back of an ATV and turned my back. At some point someone hopped on the ATV and took off down a bumpy, gravel road. The MKiv with the 580ex and 24-70 got bounced off at 40kph somewhere a long the ride. In the end, body/lens survived, the flash not so lucky.

I covered the flash repair out of my pocket, the mkiv ended up being a very minor repair so I paid that out of pocket as well, but had it been costly or a write off, I’d have received $6,000 no questions asked.

We do a lot of high risk stuff, and I’ve had dozens of very close calls, from slips and falls on wet rock, waves, getting swamped in a yak, storms, travel, you name it.

If you look carefully you can see a Pelican behind my chair and in the front hatch I have two more camera is a plain Jane tamrac bag. Id have to brain cramp to turtle but stuff happens. Just moments after this pic was taken we had a bozo pass us within 15feet, creating 2-3foot swells.It was close.

Not unlike this.

It, more than any case, or bag, lets me sleep at night and take the risk with my gear that I do.

[John Bennett]

Thanks Zach, the past year I’ve concentrated more on hunting than anything else. My editor has said more than once if he sees another grip and grin he’s going to scream :). So have picked up some UW stuff, and a few other things for a roaming studio and have trying to learn all I can about UW.

The reel is a Vintage Pfluegar 80 that I picked up to pair with my cane. Nice little unit
🙂

[John Bennett]

[John Bennett]

Boils down to your activity. I have a handful of bags and carry cases. Like others I find water proof back packs largely a pita. My larger bag ( a lowepro) has rubber seals and is resistant, in short anything inside should survive a quick dip. I’ve been caught in torrential downpours and its held up. I keep a couple green garbage bags inside the laptop slot, should I ever feel the need for an extra layer.

Smaller lighter bags like my think tank stuff, basically the same. Its easier to protect that, or individually seal lenses/bodies inside watertight bags, inside the back pack.

When the risk level is high, whether Im canoeing, kayaking, catching a flight, thats when I bust out Pelicans.
Insurance covers everything else and lets me sleep at night. I’ve had way too many close calls and one incident when I trashed a 580ex and nearly trashed my mkiv and 24-70.

I’ve been using Black Rapid since about the time they came out, and also use a cotton carrier for a hip holster when needed. Ive yet to have it fail on me, despite how much weight it holds (16pounds), if people are reporting failures, chances are they are negligent, its takes 1 second to ensure the screws are tight before heading out.

Typical set up for me.
1Dx and 500f4 on the Black Rapid
1dMkiv and 70-200 f2.8 on the cotton carrier right hip.

So about 25 pounds well distributed and easily grabbed.

[John Bennett]

Yeah you do Matt, the we celebrate your new hardware and cheer the results.

I do appolgise if you feel it got a little sidetracked. It started off with the very very hard decision to make a trade off or 3 for something else. I don’t care what system someone has, it’s painful. The more into one system (body’s, lenses, strobes, cable releases) the more painful it is. Can be painfull enough that your better off just stepping up from a 5D to a Mkiv or Dx or to a N D4. So when someone like David makes the gut check and does it. It’s surprising.

And seriously grats and please do post pics so we can see and cheer the switch

[John Bennett]

While we wait for Matt to post some pics, hopefully a “little” hardware talk won’t be too bad.Its not like were posting pics in his thread or something. 😉

Jay you obviously missed the point and the compliment :(.
An oven is an oven is an oven and there are lots of slightly different ovens out there, all will get you to the same place. Consider what I said a slightly tongue in cheek (nanananana) 🙂 to underscore the point. One system is known for its strobes, the other offers something a little different.

Either you believe those words said to the gent with some mild “lens envy” or you don’t :)…They are all ovens.

David switching is a shock, given what he does, he “owned”…No more less, no less, for a guy that does a fair bit of outdoor strobe/studio stuff the 600s released last year (along with new bodies) might have been very interesting.

Jay, honestly, I have my TT5s and like anything, anything, be it Canon 7D or a Nikon 5100, a D4 or Dx there are tradeoffs.  Heres but one related to PWs or RPs or X.

Each TT5 takes up more real estate in the bag.  Each TT5 requires more batteries. Four “units”, you need 5 TT5s and 10 batteries plus spares.

Now I don’t know about you but when Im slugging 40-60 pounds of eq through brush and that before slugging a 8 pound rifle/shotgun, duck decoys, pop up blinds any other other gear  ounces matter. As does the real estate inside bags. Or when Im catching a beaver and am limited to 100 pounds of gear total…One assignment last year I hard time keeping my camera to 60 pounds, by the time I added fishing gear I was at 110. Didn’t leave room for underwear or a toothbrush.

As I said Jay, let me know when you can make adjustments from your camera to all your slaves, turn one group off…or on, change this or that.. ..You can’t, not without busting yourself, or getting in the line of fire..or pissing of hunters/anglers/models  blah blah

PWs are not always reliable (they are good, very good but do misfire) and further hyper has been known to fry units  :D…Been there, done that, it’s not heresy.(its a dirty little secret PW doesn’t advertise, but they are happy to repair your unit free of charge)..so thats what I think of hyper..aka not very much.

So RT units (note Im not saying any brands) and high speed sync  just fine thank you and 10 stops of light reduction via a variable ND allows me to shoot wide open up in full sun. Surprised you didn’t know that 🙂

Now given David does a fair of stuff where those kinds of “trade-offs” come into play. Yeah, it’s surprising. No more, no less.

Matt post some pics 🙂

[John Bennett]

5 groups, 15 channels. All controllable from camera. For me it’s huge of a number of reasons. The less I carry the better, I can’t very well go fiddle with a unit when duck hunters are waving shotguns around, or game might get spooked etc. Will allow me to set units up, then operate, turn groups off on /all whatever. Painfull part is selling PWs, old units and re-equipping.
Suspect its the way of the future, only a matter of time before its widespread.
http://pixsylated.com/blog/canon-600ex-rt-first-impressions/

Re “stuff”. They are all just ovens after all, and one oven is much like the rest have been for a long time. 🙂 But still shocking one when makes a switch, figured this latest stuff released in the last year s was/is right up Davids alley. Curious minds.

Always around but these days we’ve all come so far, fewer questions, threads discussing bodies, how to’s, technical aspects. Good to see the crowds still around

Post some pics Matt

[John Bennett]

Thats great Matt.
Liveview can have it’s uses for stills, it’s not something Ive used a lot for stills but when I have I’ve appreciated it.
Night skies being one, few others

Wow Ben pops up to 🙂
Trust me I just about fell over reading Davids news. Each “system” has its minor advantages. Flash maybe being one but then again I have radio triggered wireless in the 600 RT. No more pains of optical or dumb triggers like Pws…full ettl if I desire, 5 groups of up to fifteen, can control any and all individually or as groups, from the camera menu. Can have some in manual, some in Ettl or change any combination on the fly. nanananna 😉

[John Bennett]

Some great stuff. Im just starting to dabble in video, hats off to anyone that put clips together.

[John Bennett]

Grats Matt.  🙂
New camera’s are always great news no matter the name brand, which frankly these days means squat.

David, you though I’m surprised to hear have made a switch. I can’t imagine the aches glass are going to cause :(.

Also, between the Dx (which blows almost anything other than Nikons equally jaw dropping D4 away, a good pro friend of mine shoots both N and C, has both of them and all the glass, to him theres only a couple things to choose between the two and what/when determines whether he reaches for the D4 or Dx )

and with the new 600 RT (the only radio wireless out there…although Im sure N to will come to market)…

Since picking up a Dx Ive barely touched my 1Dmkiv..It blows, blows the mkiv away and the mkiv is no slouch :)….Im locking onto subjects in near darkness where my eyes have trouble making out subjects and shooting at ridiculous ISOs. Honest to god, I’ve got shots of Bucks I could barely see with my eyes the light was so dim……Fast, bang on focus.

For “outdoors” shooters its…..unbeatable.

Im confused. I am not going to enter some silly C>N or N>C chest thumping debate. Just curious what convinced you to switch.

[John Bennett]

Even .06 per image. With a thousand jpegs your looking 60 bucks for 4x6prints and bulk. For that money Id rather have another portable. Chads idea of a usb flash drive might be the best option.

[John Bennett]

For less than 100 bucks you can probably find good portable HDDs with one terabyte or more of space. I use 1 and 2 terabyte portables (as well as two T external HDDs) for my back up purposes and I have thousands of large RAW and TIFF files on them. One T and probably even far less (500mb) is going to be way more than you need for 1,000 jpegs.
http://store.apple.com/ca/product/H9987VC/A/g-tech-500gb-g-drive-usb-30-slim-portable-hard-drive?afid=p219%7CGOUS&cid=AOS-US-KWG-PLA

In fact I always have at least one portable with my database with me at all times. In short, my entire library can be found at home on externals, on my person (portable) and in a safety deposit (portable).

HDDs fail for a number of reasons, not the least is constant use. CDs and DvDs are just as prone to failure if not more, nor have the same archival intergrity. Once you copy the data to a HDD you should always be able to retreive it short of a nuclear device :). Ask any criminal who has wiped HHDs clean and more, what can and cant be retreived 🙂

take your shots and catalogue the images as you go. Copy the data to a portable HDD and with the catalogued data (descriptions and values) either hard copy (paper) or electronic put in a safety deposit box.

[John Bennett]

Two main things, and then price point made my decision Doug.

I’ve always wanted to do a little UW stuff, however given my local waters (green warm water fisheries prone to algae and suspended particles) and our trout streams being a little less than crystal clear, I new I’d never be serious about it. I used Canons s90 a little and its a darned good camera but lacking a little for UW. I happened to be on blue water photo (my fav site for UW stuff) and noticed a write up they did last spring on the EPL 3 and OLYs housing. Once I did some research on its capabilities dry side/wet side and lens selections (especially the 8mm fisheye and dome port I was sold. Of note the 8mm fisheye is darned sharp corner to corner which is fairly rare even fisheyes that are north of $1,500.

The other thing was availability.
Very, very few had UW housings here in Cda. Once I found a shop that had the OLY housing in stock, that solidified my decision.

Id found a way to do more and better UW without having to pour money into a 5D and Ikelite or better machined metal housing. It’s still not cheap when you add it up, but its far cheaper than another DSLR , And because it really does take very good images dry side without the size/weight and bulk both body and lenses…

[John Bennett]

Ronnie Im usiing OLY’s own housing, which to me seemed to strike a good balance between functionality and price point. There are better, but you pay for that. I’ve also modded it to a 4 inch dome port (easy to remove factory port, and install a 3rd party dome) to accommodate the 8mm fisheye.

http://www.bluewaterphotostore.com/olympus-PT-EP05L-underwater-housing-camera

Whether it’s Oly, Sony, Lumix or many others I love these cameras.
Extremely versatile, light weight and good IQ. As long as you stay within their limitations which are quite wide, IQ rivals that of my 1D bodies.

[John Bennett]

OLY EPL 3 here.

I bought it as my dedicated UW camera. Its also my pocket cam when I dont want a lot of weight or dont feel like lugging my DSLR stuff and it’s also my satelite camera when I want something covering a particular angle/fov away from me, when I wont be able to walk out and tak the shot with my main. For example I will be using it this weekend in a location where.

1Dx and 500mm in hand
1Dmkiv and 70-200 next to me on a gimbal (for video)
Oly and 8mm fisheye on a gorilla pod, 5 feet from an active scrape and triggered by remote.

Do I have any nits?
Not one single nit. When used within it limitations IQ is more than enough for print reproduction and near as good as my 1D bodies. Sure Id love it to be a bit better high ISOs but thats the trade off.

Some real world in the field samples

As a side note, when I was on my Bear hunt trip I had planned to use it as a remote down by the bait to be triggered remotely until I remembered bears have a habit of munching on cameras.

Have I sold you on it/them?
If not, hopefully you are sorely tempted to pick one up.

Oh, before I forget.
Two of the above photos were taken with my 1DMKiv and L glass.

Can you tell which?

[John Bennett]

I am or rather have, quickly become a huge believer in the 4/3s, mirror less camera’s. True, they don’t have all the functionality of a DLSR but what they lack, they more than make up for in other area’s. I have no doubt the NEx is another winner.

I picked up my EPL-3 to be my UW camera, and that will always remain it’s primary purpose. However I’ve become so enamoured with it’s utility that that I’ve recently started thinking about how I can make even more use of it, both as a 2nd ready go at hand and also as a remote camera.

I’m heading up north for a week of Bear Hunting/Fishing in 5 days. I have long struggled with both proximity to a hunter while in a stand, the inability to move around and the lack of angles (its not like you can get out and walk around).

So I went and picked up what I needed to that I might use my Oly as a remote camera with plans to place it on tree trunks and directed out to record images of bears as they enter the FoV or have it angled towards stand/blinds to shoot back towards the hunter.

The unit itself is smaller/lighter than my 580 ex. As such with respect to all the gear I need to bring into the field, its no burden at all, yet opens so many doors.

With respect to lenses, I plan to have three.
8mm fisheye (just acquired for UW and as a remote satellite with it’s 180 FoV)
14-42 general purpose
then likely a 45mm 1.4

A few samples.You’ve seen some of the split shots I took back in June

School of baitfish

First “test” shot with the newly acquired fisheye. Pretty sharp in the corners and little vignetting

Packing for next week. The EPL3 has a a tilting screen for those blind over the head shots, or low angle shots.

I’m also considering acquiring a trigger trap for use as a remote/game camera on steroids.

True there no “perfect” camera but so far having the combination of a DSLR and your various lenses, speedlites,etc….and by adding a mirror less such as a NEx you can have a wicked 1,2 punch.

Grats on the new body/system Maarten, your going to love it.

[John Bennett]

The age old debate 🙂

Barbless.
The obvious advantage to fish is reducing the chance of physical tissue harm.
The less obvious and to me equally important advantage is releasing them that much faster. Removing a barbless even when its deep in the craw is always easy…Removing a barbed hook short of tearing it out in one second can take time depending on some varialbles, in some cases minutes.

The faster you get any fish, but especially those prone to post release mortality, off the hook and back in the water, the better.

[John Bennett]

Brian 🙂
So good to “see” you, we need to get together, go out.
And you need to throw the odd shot/report from Argentenia in here

16-35
It’s a must have for these things. No way I could properly frame stuff from within the confines of tin cans/canoes on these things.

My Kit for this which is pretty much my standard pack for travel things
Mkiv
16-35
24-70
70-200
400
1.4 tc
2 flashes
and then my UW dedicated body/equip
Plus accessories

[John Bennett]

thanks guys.

Zach, while I personally FF and prefer it over bait/spin, our FFing market here is a pretty small so these things are usually hardware and hence why I’ve put trip reports from these in the “photo” forum… Fishing is fishing though, so I’ll put future trip reports here 🙂

Next up a week Bear hunting with access to dozens of back lakes for Walleye, SM and Northerns. This ones drive to, so no onerous weight restrictions (100pds) that leave me 35 pounds for fishing gear, clothes and personals after 65pds camera gear.

[Author]

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