Photography

For many years now Ben has been a enthusiastic travel photographer (enthusiastic: yes; more than average: no). None the less our appartment was decorated solely with pictures of our travels and in order to continue that trend, many pictures shall be taken.

Never enough redundancy

Living in constant fear of data-loss (already an issue back in non-digital times: my EOS 50E film-SLR and 10 roles of film full of our first joint vacation were stolen from out car outside of Montepiler), a great plan has been devised in order to minimize the risk of loosing our pictures. Two cameras (EOS 550D and F200EXR) will churn out lots of bits on SDHC-cards, these will be copied to our netbook and a mobile harddisk, which will be stored apart from each other to minimize the threat of theft. Copies of the files will be sent (via “cheap” SD-card) to a friend back in Germany who will copy the data onto two harddisks, confirming per Mail that those pictures have reached him. If nothing goes missing or broke, there will be five copies of each file available.

The Hardware

First off, the fabulous Canon EOS 550D equipped with the good Tamron 18-270 mm LD Asph VC lens. The cheap but effective and very light Canon 50 mm f1,8 II lens was intended to accompany us this trip as well, but was forgotten in the big camera bag at “home”… until in Japan the longing became so great that Ben now owns two such Lenses! I ordered both Tamron 18-270 mm lenses, the older and larger LD Asph micromotor version and the newer, smaller PZD piezo-drive version, and found the optical quality to be so much better for the old version that I was willing to accept the greater weight, size and filter-diameter. A Hoya UV-filter stays on at all times and a circular pol-filter is always ready.

For two years now we have had the Fujifilm F200EXR, a camera which got excellent reviews and still today has excellent image quality to spare, for such a small camera. We also own a under-water case so it was the natural choice to stick to this model and not go hunting for a questionably better model for which we would have to buy a new under-water case.

When it comes to securing copies of pictures, and this without using a computer, the HyperDrive is not to be beat. Powered by battery it will copy files from the integrated card-reader via a graphical menu-driven interface on an acceptable color screen onto the user-installable harddrive with astounding speed, checking for errors on the way. If you like, it will also display pictures for you, reading many RAW formats.