My (Repaired) Camera Bag

I have my much loved ThinkTank Mirroless Mover camera bag back in service (with a repaired zip). It is perfect for my little OMD 10 mkiii Olympus mirroless camera plus two extra  lenses. (I also acquired a forth lens along the way which also fitted in easily). It was never overcrowded and very light compared with carrying my older Pentax DSLR and just one lens.

The big bonus for me is I have enough room to carry an A3 sketch book (or two) and also my mini Cotman sketchers palette and a couple of pens and water brushes giving me the ability to sketch anytime I was out with my camera, which was always. Even if I just sat down for a coffee or waiting for a lunch order, I could sketch.

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Hervey Range Tea Rooms :: #sketches in #watercolour (#waterbrush & #cotmansketcherspocketbox) & #pencil

A post shared by Norm Hanson (@normhansonart) on Aug 17, 2019 at 5:00pm PDT

As I was only carrying one camera body I made sure I had my smartphone and the old but reliable pink FujiPix compact camera as backups (not required). Again I can report that I used everything I took (see my Flickr posts)

The small tripod is really small and just ok for my light Olympus, importantly it fits in my suitcase, as does the various chargers and cables on the pink microfiber cloth. I didn’t normally carry them around.

Building a Loose Leaf Sketchbook (for my camera bag)

http://apimageo.tumblr.com/post/172777515721/building-a-loose-leaf-sketchbook-for-my-camera

I'm not only revitalizing this blog. I always liked the idea of a behind the scenes place to post ideas and works in progress stuff, and I originally felt tumblr was a better place to do that than in here. So there is stuff going on over there occasionally but it will be reposted here as a embedded item

My Camera Bag Diet

I’m not obsessive about my gear, but I do like it to be safely stowed, I have been very happy with my thinktank bag I bought last year for my trip to Canada. Even though its a Mirrorless Mover 30i it has plenty of room for my bulky Pentax K20 with my big tamron zoom and a 300mm zoom sigma lens, also on the large size. However I have been slowly trimming the ancillary stuff to give plenty of room for my sketcking gear. I have the mandatory clean small towels (aka face washers). I also have two lens cleaners, an old fashion blower brush and a lens pen. There is also a polarizing filter and a case for SD cards. I am rotating the SD cards, so there is a temporary backup of photos there as well as on the two external backup drive (back at my accommodation). I also have an old HTC phone that has no sim card but it has a good gps receiver so I just need to turn it on, start My Tracks and put it back in the camera bag to get a continuous wayfile. I also have my trusty but redesigned string monopod.

Art gear wise I still carry an A5 sketchbook, and a couple of pencils and/or pens, often a water brush style pen. And of course my small Cotman sketcher box. I am now even move convinced a sketckbook is a great camera accessory (for seeing).

Day 7 :: Getting ready for the next Endless Summer Project

Repacking my camera bag in preparation for my next trip. Rather than pack on the last day I repack a couple of weeks out so I have time to realise if I am missing something important. During my year long art project travels I have been progressively trimming down the stuff I carry around.

My revised camera bag packing list has, starting at the top right and moving clockwise.

1. My Pentax K20 (my favourite camera, with my favourite lens a Tamron 18 to 200mml zoom Note this camera now has a wrist strap, rather than cumbersome neck strap.
2. In the side pocket of the camera bag I have cables, spare batteries etc in a zip up mesh bag.
3. My Sigma 70-300 Zoom Lens
4. A couple of white "Face washers" (to clean the cameras not the lenses)
5. Blower Brush
6. Lens pen (microfiber cleaner and brush)
7. Business cards & pen
8. My home made string monopod
9. My ThinkTank Mirrorless Mover 30i Camera Bag. Although it is designed to carry a mirrorless camera system & Ipad mini I find to perfect for my gear in a relatively small shoulder bag. I also a small kit of sketching gear in the Ipad slot (not shown here but includes an A5 sketch book, couple of pencils & pens, waterbrush & small Cotman's watercolour Sketchers Box)
10. Sealed packets of alcohol lens wipes (I haven't used these for a while prefer the lens pen)
11. Spare SD cards (I'm taking 4 16GB cards & 6 8GB cards of my next trip, 20 days)
12. An old Smartphone (with no SIMS card, but the camera and GPS still work fine)
13. A polarizing filter
14. Tone Reference cards

Sketching Kit Two (Think Tank Bag)

Despite having a fairl hefty Pentax K20, typically with a weighty Tamrom 18-200 zoom and polarizing filter, I actually bought a Think Tank Mirroless Mover 30i before the trip to Canada last year. Despite being designed for a mirrorless system but it holds my camera and my sigma 70-300 zoom plus a few small accessories, battery extra cards etc. It also has a slot at the back probably designed to take an ipad mini but it is just fine for an A5 sketch block or A5 Visual diary, so I also slipped in an old tin of Neocolour II water-soluble crayons. I like using them, they have good intense colours once activated by water and I’ve had these for several years but haven’t been able to fine a local supplier so I tend to use then on and off. The discovery of water brushes means I don’t have to carry water but I do also pack in a couple of brushes, pencils and/or pens. All this takes up very little room and almost no extra weight (depends on thickness and paper weight of the sketch book mainly) so I can leave it in my camera bag at all times.

Packing for Travel

 
I’m about to start a period of extended travel and I’m doing a final pack. I intend to take a trimmed down version of my fold out studio, two cameras, a tripod and a laptop. The challenge is to get the “studio” (darker blue travel bag) and supplies (in the light blue folio) and the portable tripod (black tubular bag) into my case. Not a lot of room for clothes! That space also has to house battery & phone charges, wifi modem, spare cables and a chromecast dongle etc. However it all fits and only 16kg all up with clothes and shoes, should be airline friendly. I will be carrying my laptop, USB drive (for ongoing backup) and extra camera body in a backpack and the lenses and first body in my camera bag (collectively another 6kg). So I can easily hand carry everything if necessary. However the proof of wise packing will unfold as I go along. Let’s hope I have all that I want and not too much more.

CreativeSpaces :: Sketching Gear in my Camera Bag

Yes I always do carry a small sketch book in my camera bag. Why?

They are not full of finished art works, mainly there are squiggles that are really little more than doodles. There are also notes on the lighting, time and conditions. Maybe I have sketched the horizon and marked where the sun/moon rise or set. Perhaps I have scouted around for an interesting foreground silhouette. Occasionally there will be records of some key colour aspects of what was happening. Most are just me trying out some composition decisions, often this is just getting a feel for shapes and tones (not exactly notan but similar).

I prefer to have the mini A7 visual diaries. Every now and then you might find the local art supplier has a selection of sample pads made up at A7 size, at a very attractive price. There will be watercolour and various drawing surfaces and perhaps fewer pages than the normal pads but they will be attractively priced. They are idea for the camera bag. I also include and old/used (ie short pencil), perhaps a pen and I have been experimenting with woodless pencils, they can be sharpened or broken off and used as a crayon, They are also very black.

Sometime ago, I had seen a video by Matt Kloskowski talking about the 50/50-rule. Which basically suggested spending 50% of the time to capture what you want but then spend as much time again doing something, original, creative or experimental. This was a nice coincidence because I had years previously made some notes or more key words on different things to try out, scrawled on the back page of an early little sketchbook. Here is my list of alternative ways begin to see a photo.

• What is the first thing you see? Do you return to looking at it or something else?
• What should be left out?
• Which details are help tell the story?
• Is the Light? Hard, Soft, Low Key High Key, Direction
• Is there a way to balance the mass/tone. Avoid symmetry
• What is the important Colour? Emotion? Atmosphere?

The best reason of all to have a sketch book in your camera bag is it forces you to look and find an image (not just focus on perfecting a crop in your viewfinder). An Artist has to see their subject and figure out where to put it on a blank page. You don’t have to spend long just a few squiggles will give you an idea of what to capture. This really seeing is likely to modify how you position the camera and take a photo, much better than just lifting the camera to your face and finding an image in the view finder.

Remember that Spare Battery

Battery life can be a real spoiler for a lot of digital cameras, specifically for those without a separate optical view finder, such as most compact cameras or the newer mirrorless cameras. The problem is you need a fair bit of power to light up the LCD screen on the back. Especially to get it bright enough to read in ambient light. A few mirrorless cameras offer a view finder with a tiny LCD screen. My experience was these has been mixed, the earlier versions of such systems where very “laggy” and not so clear but the technology has improved a lot and perhaps also the power consumption. However with one of these cameras it is pretty likely you battery will run out at a crucial stage. The solution is a spare battery in your camera case

Owners of the traditional DSLR, with the mirror that has to flip up, generally get much better battery life. I changed the battery today after 83 days and 2643 photos taken (but I have taken only a few flash photos). I always take a photo of the discharged battery when changing batteries as a easy way to keep track of my battery rotation (and likelihood of being low on stored energy). I must admit I probably only consult the LCD screen on the camera occasionally, usually on the first few shots in a new location/lighting. Evidently moving the mirror must take a lot less energy that lighting the screen.

It doesn’t matter which sort of camera you have

Buy yourself a second battery for your camera and keep it fully charged and in you camera bag.

Useful Camera Bag Extras

I am trying hard to keep the ancillary contents of my new Lowpro backpack to a minimum, to give extra room for cameras and lenses. Sounds easy but modern digital camera come with a range of extras, some vital others less so. This is a collection of things I always carry. Most importantly I have spare batteries. I also have a few spare SD cards, not a surprise. I have found keeping a small USB universal card reader very handy. I usually have two 4GB USB keys on hand, one blank the other has a number of photo oriented portable apps and utilities. which are great if the only computer around is a cyber cafe. One big hassle is always cables, you seldom need them but then they are always tangled. I found this mess bag with a zip is a great way to keep my contents tidy and generally tangle free. The other important item is a small portable backpack style hard drive, with a 500GB capacity to keep backups updated (each day). At the end of the month I archive from it and clean it up to start a fresh for the next month.

I have an HTC android phone, which has become not only a camera in its own right but also a very useful support accessory. In particular it is the GPS source when I wish to geotag my photos but it also has a number of useful photography oriented apps. It lives in my pocket.

Not shown is my laptop, which does live in the Lowpro backpack as well, and all the charges and power supplies which I don’t carry around in the backpack but fit in my case when I travel.

Everything in just one (camera) bag

In the past I have ended up carrying around a lot of stuff that I seldom used. I had a camera bag (well used and loved), a backpack with my notebook computer and a lot or wires and little devices, a folio of art paper and sketch books and finally one (or occasionally two) carry bags of art gear (pencils, paints, brushes, etc,,etc). There was no way I could routinely carry all this around.

So I firstly went on a search for a decent camera bag (not too expensive mind) that could also handle a laptop computer (15” screen) and have some room left over for art stuff (enough stuff for sketching and simple watercolours). There is a lot of choice in camera bags and the prices vary a lot. I ended up choosing a Lowpro Fastpack 250, although  there were bigger and more spacious backpacks available I was conscious that I would need to carry it around all day.

Next I analyzed carefully those items that I seldom used, and make sure those things that I wanted would fit. It was actually simple. I needed my camera, and separate telephoto lens, extra SD cards two phones, USB memory cards reader, IPod, battery chargers for phones, IPod and camera batteries, a couple of USB memory keys (one containing Portable apps), a western digital backup USB drive (for Backups). Also very important where a couple of power adaptors for foreign power grids. I also reduced my art gear to tubes of watercolour paints, a couple of portable plastic palettes, a small box of water-soluble crayons, pencils and brushes. Whilst I would carry one or two sketchbooks daily the rest of the paper and others sketch books. lived in my one suitcase. Also in my suitcase was a portable tripod.

The good news is I happily carried my backpack everywhere with me and I used every item I had bought (accept I only used one of the extra SD cards, and I didn’t use the card reader). More importantly I didn’t really feel there was anything extra I should have packed.

NOT SHOWN in the photo (above) are my computer (I ended up taking a smaller netbook) and the backpack Disk Drive, which I did carry on planes (and through airport security) boats and trains. However I did not carry routinely then as I wandered around. Also not shown in the photo is a water bottle and small folding umbrella which I did tended to carry on most days.