Re: Compact flash card: bulk buy forower price?


"-hh" <recscuba_google@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1157890956.662333.100810@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tom wrote:

Interesting to hear professional photography defined in terms of Demand
and Capacity (logistics)

Its not just pro's who do it, although they get the chance to do it
more frequently. I'm very sympathetic to Roger, as I've gone through
nearly the same thing to prepare for a couple of vacation holiday
trips.

Overall, I'm tempted to just tell Ian that he's being an idiot, but he
is trying to be helpful (he thinks) because a car battery is a pretty
cheap way to provide power.

I was presuming you would travel the majority of your destination by off
road vehicle. As for traveling too a foreign country with a car battery,
far simpler to buy one there. Far easier to find a car battery than a canon
powerpack. Also your battery would be carried from your vehicle to your
tent. Or even just pop the bonnet and run some leads. I wouldn't expect
you to carry the car batt with you simply leave it at base camp.

Unfortunately, the #1 priority isn't to
save money - the #1 priority is to save weight.

A few additional comments are below.


[RE: Hiking]

A 50lb backpack is a good rule of thumb for a practical upper weight
limit. Too bad a car battery alone typically weighs 55lbs --- it means
hiking with no food, water, tent...or camera!

Leave at base camp silly. Youd didn't really think i meant take the damn
thing with you everywhere you went?


On Peru's Inca trail, you're looking at 3-5 days away from power,
depending on the specific itinerary. You do have hired porters to
carry your stuff, but by regulation, they're restricted to a maximum of
20kg (25kg minus 5kg personal effects) each, and this is measured at
check-in, so you wouldn't be able to sneak in the overage of a car
battery.

RC racers and electric heli flyers have far more compact gel filled or lead
acid batteries. I have a ripmax prodigy II charger that will run off a
battery that will fit in a large pocket. The ripmax will charge lipos,
nimhs nicads and lead acid. microprocessor controlled with lcd readout
voltage and amp output completely controllable. Unlimited number of
connectors you can stick on the end.

I know most battery packs take AA these days i know nicad are unsuitable but
nimh are fine.



Besides, it wouldn't be easy to fly it there on a commercial flight, so
Ian would have all sorts of hidden expenses.

As mentioned earlier buy it when you get there.

While you could choose to hire a friend to carry the anchor yourself,
you're now paying for his airfare to Peru, trip costs, etc. And since
the Inca trail is at altitude ... the entry checkpoint is at nearly
10,000ft (IIRC, 2950m?) before then going higher ... a non-acclimated
buddy lugging your 25kg (55lb) car battery is going to be found either
sick or dead by the time you get to Dead Woman's Pass (4200m/13,800ft).

How many batts do you need to take 5000 pictures per day? disc drive batts
will be negligable.





I have 2 40-GByte hard drives that read compact
flash cards. ... If I can't get power,
I'll have plenty of storage until I can get the power.

That was the strategy I used for a trip to Tanzania this year. I had
good success with a pair of Hyperdrive HD80's. It did take me a little
while at home to exercise the batteries (4 x AA NiMH), but the company
(at least claims) that you can import up to 80GB worth of data on a
single battery charge. My power intermittancy on the trip was never
worse than 2 days, so I never had to do more than 10GB worth of
transfers before I had power again. The main thing for me was that the
HD-80 transfers are very fast: 4GB in < 5 minutes.


Getting to some locations requires small planes and weight
restrictions.

Fair enough. I would suggest going to a hobby shop though. compact
chargers and high density lithium polymer batts for things like helicopters
to charge up not the drives but your main camera. There is also backpacks
with built in solar panels for £200. Charge while you walk. If it weren't
for the insanely huge number of shots he's taking i would recommend film for
such remote environments. Professional rugged standard eos 1V for the a bit
more than the 30D. Plus power requirements negligable in comparison. I
know Andy rouse (reknowned wildlife photographer) took a laptop, with dvd
burner on as he soon filled the hard drive. That was an Amateur
photographer article 2 years ago. No doubt the 80gb and 200gb drives are
what he would use now. I'll look into that as he writes advice column and
has links too www.warehouseexpress.com



Small prop-driven airplanes are frequently found in Alaksa, Peru,
Africa, etc. Typical "total baggage" (including carry-on) are around
25kg per person.

Its hard enough to find an outlet in a US airport to recharge your
laptop. Good luck searching in these 'full featured airports':

<http://www.huntzinger.com/photo/2004/peru/Manu-Airport-(_30_0306).jpg>
<http://www.huntzinger.com/photo/2006/tanzania/ruaha_airport_c(IMG_4856).jpg>

In Alaska, some of the fly-in camps may not have any power at all (the
one I went to didn't). I wasn't shooting digital then, so researching
power wasn't that important. Sounds like Roger can fill in some
details here.

In Africa, the more "luxury" safari camps will have a generator to run
to provide power for ~5 hours in the evening, often run out to your
banda. When you get to the semi-permanent tent bandas, they may be on
a solar powered system, where there may or may not be power run out to
your banda and in any event, the amount of power in the evenings is
limited: the Foxes camp in Katavi NP (Tanzania) prefers for you to
recharge in their dining tent during daylight hours. Figure 2-3 hours
during the midday lunch break...and bring your own 6" extension cord
pigtail to plug into your adaptor to have enough outlets for yourself
(Radio Shack Product: 2361-2755). Of course, the inexpensive 'bush
tent' is straightforward camping; no electricity here at all. YMMV for
all of these for hot water in the morning for shaving, and if you'll be
shaving by candle-light, since breakfast is early because you'll want
to be out on a game drive either by dawn, or shortly thereafter.

In the Amazon, a higher end camp will have hot water, provided by
propane. You'll again be up when its dark for a dawn departure from
camp (two candles is no better than one for shaving) and electrical
power will probably be a "couple of hours in the afternoon" if offered
at all (and if the equipment is working this week), again usually at a
central location, like the dining room.


... 10 1D2 batteries and 20 4-Gbyte compact flash cards are a lot
less weight than your car battery plus a bunch of hard drives.

Purely from a weight standpoint, a Lead-Acid battery has a power
density of ~30 Wh/kg, which is roughly half of a rechargable NiMH
battery (~60 Wh/kg), and 1/5th that of a disposable Li-Ion battery
(~150 Wh/kg).


-hh



.

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