National Geographic “Around the World by Private Jet” 2103, Samoa & Great Barrier Reef

October 18, 2013 in Uncategorized |

Welcome to Samoa Olympus OM-D E-M1, 12-40mm f2.8

Samoan fire dancers Olympus OM-D E-M1, 12-40mm f2.8 3200 ISO

It’s early morning in Port Douglas, Australia. Having arrived Wednesday from American Samoa, we had a choice of the Daintree rainforest or the Barrier Reef..my choice was the reef. Waking to a driving rainstorm, it didn’t seem the day was going to be particularly spectacular for diving. But, during the hour and a half trip to the dive spot on the reef, weather cleared to a stunning day. The catamaran we traveled on was quite fast, and distance covered was about 50 kilometers.

I decided to shoot my underwater photos with the Olympus Tough camera, with a super-wide adaptor. With a 40-foot maximum depth rating, this would cover my bases as most of the interesting and visual reef growth (and good light, as red is quickly reduced from the visual spectrum the deeper one dives) occurs in this zone.

A short dive, but enjoyable, followed by snorkeling in the shallow waters near our anchor point.

American Samoa was a rich event, albeit short, primarily used as a technical stop for the aircraft. Visiting a women’s council in a nearby area was a highlight, and gave an interesting view into the structure of a village. Women are the core of the families or clans, and create that strength that help hold the groups together.

We’re soon leaving for Siem Reap, Cambodia, and Angkor Wat. The E-M1 has been a fantastic camera for this assignment. The handling is superb and the image quality is spectacular. I’ve been really impressed by the noise-handling of the camera — 3200 looks tremendous. Plus, the 12-40mm f2.8 has become my favorite lens to use, especially if carrying only one camera.

The positive reviews continue to come in from everywhere on the camera and lens. So many photographers, from aspiring to pro, are discovering this system and the huge benefits of the smaller size, great lens selection and awesome quality. My cameras are with me when I need them, not sitting in the bag because they are too heavy to carry constantly. I’m also using the BlackRapid strap system, which allows me to carry my usual two cameras while out.

Here are just a few of the rave reviews that the E-M1 and lenses have received, you can click on the link to read:

As many of you know that have heard me speak, I am a tremendous fan of the Micro Four Thirds system, I think Olympus has it “right” in the design of this, moving towards the design ethic that 35mm photography was originally designed around; small, unobtrusive and available to you when you need it.

Workflow on the Road

Shooting on the road also demands a workflow system, and at the heart of that is a small and portable RAID unit. This is a small hard drive, that on my laptop, is able to be bus-powered, meaning I don’t need to have additional power for the unit. This is a major feature, as I am often downloading photos in places where power is not available — a major consideration. I’d provided input to the designers at Wiebetech (which is a part of CRU-Dataport) giving them my thoughts on a perfect backup system for the location photographer; if you travel and shoot, you fit this criteria. The result was the “Tough Tech Duo,” a very small and portable hard drive, that works via “RAID 0” or “RAID 1”. Two hard drives are contained within, in RAID 0 the drives provide storage equal to the size of each drive combined. I use RAID 1, which is a “mirrored” drive. When I plug the unit in, it appears on my desktop as a single drive. I drag my file of folders to that icon and the photos are copied to both drives simultaneously. If failure on one of the drives, I get a warning, telling to replace the bad drive. As soon as the new drive is inserted, the unit immediately starts backing the existing photos on that good hard drive to the new one. This provides me two copies of the originals. At the end of the day, I’ll then pop out one of the drives, and put in a third….the unit “discovers” the new drive, and asks if I want to copy the existing drives content to the newly inserted drive. Okaying this, I then have my images on three drives. One of those stays on me if I go out from my room for the evening, the two are in the room safe. This gives me two physical areas where I’m protected. Remember, backup, backup and if I didn’t mention it, backup.

Hope you enjoy this group of images, more later.