Preparing for a birding trip to Thailand was an adventure, to say the least. Rick, Bob, and I solidified our plans in late December 2016 and then, well, then things got tricky.
I had to have unexpected surgery on an umbilical hernia on January 5th - just six weeks away from this amazing trip. There were several times I almost backed out. Why? First, I don't want to blow my guts out. Right now, I have a Kevlar doily holding my abs in place. It was unpleasant to say the least. Second, I did not want to bog down my two friends. That would really stink for them. I was prepared to pay my way and not go if I had to.
To say that I have taken it easy since the surgery is an understatement. I have not birded since New Year's Day with my friends Mary, Keelin, and Ashley. For a while there, I couldn't do some pretty basic functions like turn my body, sneeze, cough, etc... Forget about lifting stuff. But... the doctor was confident that I would be able to go with a little help from friends lifting and carrying the heavier stuff for me. With less than two days to go, my gut feels better yet I am going to have to rely on folks to lift a few things for me.
Why do I bring this up? Well, it altered how I prepared for the trip. I just couldn't throw my stuff together and go, I had to buy some stuff to hopefully not re-injure my hernia. Additionally, hernia or not, I had to figure out a way to download all the photos I take so they are backed up. I will share with folks how I addressed these two issues. These could be useful to folks who take one of these trips for the first time.
Optics, photos, and storage. First the scope. I use a Vortex Razor HD. It broke on January 1st. Thankfully the good folks at Vortex were able to get it repaired and back to me for the trip. Kudos to them for their lifetime guarantee. So I didn't need to by a new scope which is good. I use Zeiss rubber armored 10x40s that were made in West Germany - yup, before the merger. Old but one of the best pairs of field glasses out there. They are heavy and rest on my upper abs (hernia spot). I bought a new strap that allowed me to have them hang lower and so I didn't need to buy new binos.
Photo equipment... I have two D750 full frame bodies and a Nikon 80-400mm zoom and a Sigma 150-600mm zoom. Those puppies are coming with me. Having traveled by plane to bird SW Louisiana, you carry all your optics. So here I have two bodies, two long zoom lenses, a spotting scope, a pair of binoculars, and my Canon SX60 (I gave my SX50 away to a budding 15 year old photographer). How the hell am I going to carry all that? Well, the answer was an Osprey Porter 46 back pack that I picked up at REI. Not cheap but roomy, carry on approved, excellent support, and roomy enough to carry on my personal items and my storage system. What storage system? This is where I went all in...
The Nikon D750 is an amazing camera. With it, I have been able to take some amazing photos especially in low light conditions. Back in the fall, my D750 started to show signs of wear. I have taken over 75000 photos on that body and eventually the shutter system will give out. I traded in everything not mentioned above to Adorama and got a Nikon D500. Their crop sensor top of the line DSLR. It was not even close to the performance of the D750. Low light, color, saturation, Bokeh, etc. The D750 is supreme. So I sent it back and up traded for a second D750. I shoot Nikon RAW and each file is a little over 24 MB. On a good day at Race Point, I shoot about 2000 photos of alcids/jaegers/shearwaters. That's a lot of digits. Going to Thailand, I figure I will shoot 2000-3000 photos a day. Where am I going to put these images???
This is where thought and $$$ come in. I didn't want to buy a bunch of SD cards. I figured that would be silly and have no post trip use. I have used an external hard drive for work but that would require one to have a laptop. Which I didn't have. Cue the research project. Figuring out what laptop/tablet/whatever to buy these days is harder than Chinese algebra. I needed something really light (hernia remember), that had huge storage (or could accommodate external hard drives), had great graphics (don't want to look at crappy photos after a day of birding) and didn't break the bank. That doesn't exist. I ended up purchasing a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 with two 2TB Seagate hard drives, a portable keyboard (with the Patriots logo on it of course - Go Pats!), and a 1:4 USB distributor. Cha-ching. I dropped $2k at Best Buy and now I have a means to download all my photos from my SD cards to redundant 2TB Seagate hard drives. Works for me.
I also looked into various microphones that can be used with iPhones. I want to record some of the sounds we hear (rails, bitterns, etc) so I went and purchased a RODE microphone. I tested it on my iPhones. I used an Eastern Whip call at 35 feet with and without the microphone on my iPhone 6 and iPhone 7. Guess what? It stunk. The microphones on the iPhones were better than the external RODE mic. Back to Amazon it went... I am not using the voice memo recorder that comes with the iPhone. I downloaded RODE's LE app (free) and it makes a world of difference.
One more thing I wanted to do was use broadcast vocalizations to get responses from various marsh birds. Rick is downloading over 200 songs and calls from Xeno-Canto to bring along but we would be limited to how loud and clear we could broadcast. (If you know the three of us, you know that we will do any broadcast vocalizations responsibly.) A Philips SHOQBOX SB7220 seemingly fits the bill - another Amazon purchase. This blue tooth enables remote speaker is ruggedized and water resistant. It has a good range - about 30 feet. I will be able to provide feedback on it as the trip progresses. I am hoping that it works great because it sure is nifty.
I think that covers the optic/digital part of things. If I can think of any more, I'll add it. Next up will be packing/clothes/footwear etc for the trip - keeping in mind my limitations due to the recent surgery.
No comments:
Post a Comment