Utah Gear review, winners and loosers
As a summary of our photography trip to Utah, I thought I would also provide a list of the gear winners and those that did not quite measure up. We ended up not doing an overnight hike so I am not able to comment on back packing gear.Winners:
F-stop Gear's Tilopa camera pack with a large internal camera unit (ICU):
First of all, let me be clear. I have never used a production camera bag. I have tried bags from all of the manufactures but they have always been lacking when it comes to being a true back-pack; i.e., that that fits on the back and carries the weight well. As a result I have always found a back pack or day bag made by Marmot or Osprey and taken the inners out of a Lowepro. The Tilopa is the exception to this trend.
The purpose of buying the Tilopa was to provide a quality bag for lugging around the Phase One 645DF body and the P45+ back along with the various Mamiya lenses. Since this equipment is not light, it was important to start with a bag that was. The Tilopa was 4.5 lbs with the ICU making it a good starting point and allowing me approximately 25 lbs with all of my camera gear, but before adding the Gitzo 1228 with a Really Right Stuff BH-40.
The blue bag in the picture above contains all of my graduated neutral density filters and as you can see I can get access to them either through the back or from an access zipper at the top. The bag has more than enough compartments of accessory gear both in the top compartment and in the two front compartments. I found the top section particularly handy for a GPS unit and/or a SPOT unit (to be covered below.)
I found it a little hard to get use to accessing the camera gear from the back and carrying the Phase One P45+ batteries in the front. Ultimately, I carried one battery in my pocket most of the time making rolling the bag back and forth less likely. I still have not quite decided wether it is my preference to have a camera bag with access from the back like this. I know it is a toss up between keeping the section of the pack clean where one is going to place it on your back versus having all of the gear available from the front. However I did avoid opening the front flap when not having an accessory zipper closed and dumping a bunch of items on the ground. As one can see from the image, one has total access to the camera gear.
With the bag dimensions at 12x24x10, I was a little concerned about getting it on a plane. However, with my first trip on Alaska Airlines I had no problem. Also, with the Tilopa, there is an extra pouch for a laptop to fit into the bag. I have not used it yet and choose to travel with a brief case. But for those who travel light, this is definitely an option.
The ICU I used was their second generation ICU and it is definitely an improvement from the first. Now the whole unit is felt lined allowing one to fully customize the partitions to suit ones specific camera needs. Further, a very nice feature of these bags is the interchangeability of the different ICU's from small to extra large. The ICU's come with a zippered top so theoretically, one could have two different camera configurations for one trip and switch between the two. One could also have the smaller ICU with less camera gear and have more room for clothing, food and other stuff. All in all, a very versatile bag with a "lot" of options for the investment.
I was a little disappointed, though with the waist buckle as it did not stay fully latched. I will be replacing mine with a heavier duty attachment. Also, I think F-stop should move to a waist system similar to the Osprey packs, but I am being nit picky here.
Final word, this is GREAT camera bag with lots of options and great versatility. It is not too heavy, has lots of room and it is ready to go anywhere. I am keeping mine.
The more I use the PhotoTracker the more I really like it. Ok so obtaining GPS coordinates is becoming all the rage and tagging one's image with GPS coordinates is another workflow step in a long line of stuff to do on ones computer after the fact. However there is a lot more useful information that comes out of this device other than GPS coordinates.
First of all, the PhotoTracker is small and lightweight, approximately 3"x1 3/4" x 1" and weights 2.4 ounces. Secondly, the internal battery lasts for about 32 hours on continued use and it has more than enough internal memory to keep track of all the GPS points one will acquire during that time and beyond. What I do with this unit is turn it on when I get ready to take pictures or get in the car, put it in one of my pockets and leave it there. Now, not only do I have my GPS coordinates for the pictures, I also have a GPS track of where I have driven and/or where I have been. So when I get home, I connect the PhotoTracker to my computer, download the data into a GPX file that can be a) matched to image files via Photo Mechanics and b) loaded into Google Earth, Garmin's Base Camp, National Geographic's Explorer or your favorite software. Because of my wife's commitment to her undergraduate college, we take trips to Pennsylvania 3 times a year. While she is in meetings, I wonder the country checking out various things. With my PhotoTracker, I can keep track of my various paths as well as where I got good pictures and need to return.
One piece of advise, GiSTEQ's software is over kill and don't pay for the upgrade.
The SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger and tracking system:
This is a great unit for the older photographer who has a wife at home who doesn't like it that her husband goes off to someplace remote with little if any access. It definitely buys some peace and makes getting away a little easier when they know that they can go to a web site and see where you are and that if trouble arrises, one can call for help. It is also applicable to the younger person who disappears into the wilderness and has some family members wondering where their son or daughter is.
The item runs on three AAA batteries with decent life. Having it run on batteries allows the wilderness adventurer to stay int he wilderness longer and not have to worry about getting someplace where it can be recharged. By the end of our trip we had all the wives, family members and some friends keeping track of us via the SPOT Adventure web site.
I found the whole package, SPOT unit, plus service, plus tracking to be expensive and I believe that sometime in the future they should have competition from Garmin. Yet, we were in some very interesting places and the knowledge that we had access to help if we had needed it was a definite benefit. I should help me get away in the future on some trips I have in mind.
By far the most impressive unit among the guys was the Jetboil. A handy unit that disassembles into a package 7" tall and 4 1/4 inches wide. Within its 1 liter/32 oz water bowl goes the heating element and a 3.5 oz isobutane canister along with the plastic stand. The unit has its own ignition system, so no matches are need and it will boil 16 oz of water in about 2 minutes. We put the unit to a fair amount of usage during our 10 days and by the end of the trip were almost done with one 3.5 oz canister, not bad usage. Very highly recommended.
Unimpressive; Garmin Oregon 450:
I purchased the Oregon 450 specifically for its Topo mapping capabilities which lead me to discover its initial shortcomings. The firmware of the Oregon is such that it cannot recognize a MicroSD card greater than 4 gig. This means that if one purchases topo maps for more than one geographical area than one has to load each area onto a separate Micro SD card. For this trip this meant one MicroSD card for the NW and another for the SW. Secondly, it seemed that every time I changed the battery, the MicroSD card fell out.
The unit acquires the satellite very fast, but I was never quite able to figure out how much or little it used the batteries. From its reporting I got the feeling that it used batteries fairly fast and I always traveled with spares or I was replacing them often.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment for me was the comparison to my old Garmin etrex. When at the Delicate Arch I madly searched the 450 to determine the compass degrees that I was pointing the GPS to determine where the sun would set. The Oregon has a lot of stuff that it shows on the Compass setting, but not the simple, practical stuff. Another disappointment was trying to figure out how to obtain a barometric reading. There are instructions on how to set the Altimeter for Barometric plots, but I could not figure out how to see them. Since we were tracking weather conditions, this was important. In short, I was very disappointed and will look for something else.