In The Bag: Antarctica 2007 – What Worked? What Didn’t.
Michael Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape writes about some of the hits and misses–equipment wise–that 3 weeks on an Antarctic Expedition might bring. I had my own equipment problems; losing 2 lenses due to moisture and an LCS on a camera.
From Michael: I traveled on this shoot with three camera systems – a Hasselblad H2 with a Phase One P45 back and three lenses (35mm, 50-110mm & 210mm); a Canon 1Ds MKII with three lenses, a 24-105mm IS, a 70-210mm f/2.8L IS and 100-400mm f/5.6 L IS; and a Leica M8 with a couple of lenses. In addition I had along a Macbook and four portable hard drives totaling 250 GB of storage. My software of choice for raw processing and editing was Adobe Lightroom.
I traveled with two camera bags, the new Thinktank International, and a Dryzone 200. My tripod was the new Induro C413 with a RRS BH55 ballhead.
Over a three week period in the Falklands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula I shot 7,024 frames totaling 182 Gigabytes. I shot roughly equally with the Canon and the Hasselblad. (More on this below). I ended up with some 92 frames which I consider worth printing, and a dozen which are portfolio / exhibition grade. Three of these are among the best work which I feel that I have ever done.
There were nearly 50 photographers on the expedition, including the instructors and expedition staff. These ranged from our well known and highly regarded teachers, to several photographers with international reputations, as well as a variety of semi-pro and amateur photographers from around the world, including the USA, Canada, Finland, England, Australia, Ireland, Hungary, France and Peru.