Two Beers and a Pretzel

The finally tally is:

13 Countries in which I spent significant time: Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Cambodia, India, and USA (14 if you count Los Angeles)

3 Countries where I saw just the airport: Panama, Malaysia, UAE

1 Country where I was kind-of there but not legally:  Paraguay

Cameras:

2 SLR’s made it 2 weeks before I sent them home.

Oddly, I just found my camera bag with the straps adjusted for my former size – 55 lbs ago…

The pic doesn’t even show it that well – it’s like 4″ of extra radius in every direction…

1 Olympus 1030 SW made it through 7 months of pure abuse before the internal LCD cracked.

The Olympus u-Tough 8000 made through 7 weeks of pampering and underwater use before it developed a leak that did not affecting the imaging, but screwed up the battery compartment.  Thankfully that only cost $30 to fix at the repair shop in India.

I just got the original 1030sw back from Olympus, and I’m soooooooo happy.  I really like that camrea much more than the uTough 8000.

The Canon G9 is still cranking.  A great camera for travel, landscape shots, and time-lapse – especially if you don’t want to carry a whole SLR rig, but could use a bit more wide angle.

Over 13,000 pictures.  So anyone who says they “want to see all of your pictures”, you can, but I might not be there to narrate.

Clothing:

Both pair of North Face travel pants ripped.  The green ones were saved by the sewing skill of a Thai hill-tribe woman, but may not make it too much longer.

The hiking shoes died a moldy death after the same motorcycle trip to the hill tribe – but I threw them out at Bottle Beach.

My favorite Yosemite National Park shirt was accidentally left at a Cool Bananas hostel in Australia.

It’s nice being home, but still pretty strange.  Food is ridiculously expensive.  When did a Skyline small 3 way and chili-chese sandwich + water get to $6??  It wasn’t even as tasty as I remember.  And a salad a Chipotle is almost $6.  Jeez – that’s like 50 cents of lettuce and beans and a little chicken.

The best part of being home (aside from family) is having my car back.  I was a bit worried about driving again, but after going well over double the speed limit on my favorite streach of road somewhere south of Louisville, I think I’m back to my old habit of excessive speed in reasonably safe driving conditoins.

I bought a new Olympus u-Tough 8000 – which is the replacement for the 1030sw.

The only real bummer is that the Aussie version of the 8000 doesn’t have the alarm clock option that the US version of the 1030 had.  Other than that, they’re pretty much the same camera with a useless upgrade from 10 to 12 MP and a few other fancy options that sell cameras, but don’t do me any good.  Lucky for me they use the same battery and memory card, and I get a $45 VAT refund when I leave Oz in a few weeks.

The old 1030 finally met its’ match in the bus seat on the way back from surf camp.  It’s still waterproof, but the LCD cracked on the inside.

The stupid thing is that it’s not really dead yet.  It still takes pictures just fine.  However, using the zoom more than 1/2 way shuts the camera down, and the crack in the LCD covers up the indicator that tells you how the battery is doing.

So I’ve shipped it back to Olympus to see if they’ll fix it for a cheap price.  If not, it made it thru a year of absolute abuse that few cameras could tolerate, much less function thru.

I don’t like the 8000 as much.  It feels like the colors aren’t as vibrant.  It has this annoying “Beauty” mode to remove facial wrinkles, and the very nice Available Light mode is missing from the SCN menu.

The 8000 is also missing the dial option for “Favorites” where you can store a few of your best pics.  Oddly, mine were all of girls I’d met along the trip like Ingrid, Rafa, Julia and Marianna, Erin and Katie, Holly, Meghan, Jessica, Corinna, etc…  I feel like you need to listen to David Lee Roth singing “Just a Jiggilo” as you read that list…  or possibly “I’ll be Gone in the Mornin” by Dwight Yokum.

Anyway, in spite of the demise of the 1030SW, I still highly recommend the Olympus tough cams as a great travel camera.  Nothing else I can think of would have survived as long.  The Canon G9 still takes vastly superior pics and is much better for landscapes and artsy shots, but I baby it like an SLR.

Being an amateur photography buff, a lot of my co-workers and friends end up asking me questions about camera gear. I bought a Canon 20D back in 2005… not because I’m opposed to the Canon Digital Rebel, Nikon or any other brand, but simply because I liked the way the 20D felt and really liked the user controls, and wanted 8 megapixels.

I started with the 18-55mm kit lens (3x zoom) and quickly upgraded to the 17-85mm (5x) image stabilization lens, added the 100mm macro, 50mm, 10-22mm superwide, and 70-300mm tele-zoom with image stabilization. Of all the lenses, I think the 17-85 is the only one I currently want to upgrade, but for an around the world trip, I’ll stick with it.

I thought about upgrading the camera for this trip to either the 10 megapixel Canon 40D, or the new 15 megapixel Canon 50D. I decided against both. I don’t like the button layout of the 40D, but the anti-dust features would be nice. The 50D… well, I shoot RAW whenever possible, and I’d eat up a lot of memory on those large images. Considering the max full frame equivalent focal length of my rig is 480mm (300×1.6) I really don’t need the ability to crop.

My photography related goal for this trip is to get better at framing a shot through the viewfinder. A new camera is always fun, but I’d rather improve my technique and take better pictures than rely on the newest technology.

With that in mind, I did splurge a little bit and bought a used Canon 10D (6 MP) and sent it to LifePixel.com to have it converted to Infra-red. It’ll be specifically for landscapes, but I’ll try some artsy shots, and some astrophotography. I can’t wait to get this thing back in a week!!

The one thing I’ll be leaving behind will be my 15″ MacBook Pro. I really like the Aperture 2.0 application for categorizing and editing photos. Nothing against Adobe Lightroom, but I just preferred the layout of Aperture. Either way, I won’t have it with me on my trip, so I’ll rely on a cheapo Ultra Mobile PC loaded with PhotoShop Elements and some portable USB hard drives. I think I’ll miss the multitouch trackpad the most.

Oh yeah… to keep it all safe, I got the LowePro Flipside 400 AW (all weather). It has a very comfortable waist belt and waterproof cover. You spin the pack around your waist to your chest, then it lays like a table attached to your belly. You open up the side that was formerly against your back, so it’s very secure (at least from pickpockets). it also looks more like a backpack or large daypack than a camera back, so you hopefully don’t look like a typical tourist carrying expensive camera gear.