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A stove is a common necessity on the trail, but not all stoves are built equally. If you really want to lighten your load, this is an area for weight savings and decreased volume. I tested out the MSR PocketRocket 2 stove and you can find my thoughts on it here.
Drobo recently announced a new Thunderbolt 3 enabled storage unit called the 5D3. As it happened, it came out right as I was contemplating a new storage setup due to increasing needs so I ordered one right away from B&H Photo. If you want to read more about my entire photo backup strategy, I recently wrote an update to my guide over on Shutter Muse, but here on this blog I just wanted to give you guys a quick heads up about this new product. I’ve been using Drobos for longer than I can remember, but they really started coming …
In my quest for a lighter pack, this is easily one of the cheapest and most noticeable changes I made to my usual backpacking kit. Click through to find out why these things are so awesome!
Ok, some of you are going to think I’m crazy by doing this, and some of you are going to think this is definitely taking things too far, but bear with me…
You might be carrying way more weight than you need to if you haven’t paid much attention to the type of rain cover you’re using no your backpack. I was pretty shocked at the weight differences when I put these things on the scales!
As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of my goals this summer was to develop a lighter backpacking kit that would more easily enable me to get into the backcountry with my camera gear. I already had good quality equipment, but as I had acquired the gear over many years, I hadn’t paid too much attention to how light and easy to carry it was as a whole. I have increasingly found myself wanting to get off the grid for some of my photography, but I was always plagued by the decision of what camera and lens kit to …
There’s been so much buzz around the Sony A9 recently that I’m sure you’re aware of the camera even though I haven’t talked about it myself on this blog. The blazing fast 20fps autofocus system has many sports photographers excited, but Sony’s lens selection is currently, at the time of writing this, severely lacking. There’s no 300mm f/2.8, 400m f/2.8, 500mm f/4 or 600mm f/4. All lenses that are used in droves by professional sports and wildlife photographers – the exact people Sony are targeting with this camera. Aha! You might say. The short flange distance of the Sony FE mount means …
Quick release plates are necessary if you’re going to use Arca Swiss standard quick release plates on your ballhead. All of my ballheads are from Really Right Stuff, and whilst I love their gear, there’s no denying that you pay a high price for it! I recently discovered some VERY reasonably priced QR plate alternatives from Breakthrough Photography, so I thought I should share them in this week’s Gear Check article. Their QR plates are available in three different sizes, and whilst they don’t feel quite a satisfyingly dense as some other plates I’ve used from more expensive brands like …
No Whether or not you should use a protective UV filter on your lenses is always a hot topic, so I get this question on my inbox from time to time. I personally believe you should not use a UV filter on your lenses for general protective purposes, and by this I mean leaving a filter on the lens all the time. Good lenses are precisely calibrated, and even if you invest in the absolute best UV filters on the market (most people don’t), they can still have a negative effect on image quality. Why would you want to spend …
A 16-stop neutral density filter allows you to do extremely long exposures even during the middle of the day when the sun is shining. Let’s take a look at the firecrest 16-stop filter from Formatt-Hitech.
I currently own a GoPro Hero5 and I’ve had a Hero4 Black and a Hero3 in the past. To be honest, I rarely use them, but occasionally I get one out to capture a behind-the-scenes perspective of something I’m working on. When the Hero5 came out last year I was pretty excited by the prospect of RAW photo capability so I quickly upgraded from my Hero4 Black. Unfortunately the GoPro Hero5 lacks a vital feature that literally every other camera in the world has: a self timer. For a camera that is designed to be used to take photos and …
I’m still loving the experience (and images) from the wonderful Fujifilm X100F! The X100F has a 23mm f/2 lens on it which provides a field of view that’s equivalent to that of a 35mm lens on a full frame camera. It’s a great lens, but Fuji also make a couple of conversion lenses (WCL-X100 II and TCL-X100 II) that allow you to change it to a 28mm FOV or a 50mm FOV (Field Of View). I contacted my friends at B&H Photo and asked if I could borrow these conversion lenses for a few weeks to put them through their paces. When Fuji …