Preparing for the Arctic Circle - 2016

Courtesy of Quark Expeditions

Time to start planning for our upcoming 13-day Arctic trip. I'm reviewing my winter packing list to determine if any updates are needed. This is a bit easier as much of my winter expedition clothing has been replaced after LAN Airlines lost my checked-in luggage. This incident occurred when I returned to the US from Antarctica last year. 

I pay particular attention to pack hard-to-replace winter clothes in my outbound carry-on bag. This ensures that I'm able to start my Arctic trip with my cold-weather essentials. We really don't have time for shopping for Arctic gear once we're on our way. 

My clothing list is not very long. We attempt to hand wash as much as we can or use on-board laundry services to reduce our luggage requirements.

Clothing (Item and Quantity)

• North Face Thermoball insulated jacket (1)
• North Face Non-insulated GoreTex pants (1)
• Waterproof gloves with liners (2)
• Knit cap (1) 
• Visor cap with spandex face mask (1)  
• Fleece neck gaiter (1) 
• Heavy wool socks (2) 
• Silk/Poly liner socks (2) 
• Patagonia Primaloft vest (1) 
• Long-sleeved travel shirt (1) 
• Polo shirts (1 packed, 1 worn)
• Midlayer fleece (1)
• Base-layer pants (2)
• Long-sleeved base-layer quarter-zip shirt, Marmot and others (3)
• Dri-fit short sleeved t-shirts (3)
• Underwear and light hiking socks (4 packed, 1 worn) 
• Medium weight cargo pants (1 packed and 1 worn)
• Gym shorts (1)   
• Waterproof walking shoes (1 worn)
• Running shoes/sneakers (1) 

Note: Quark Expeditions provides guests with both a waterproof jacket and boots.

Non-clothing items:

• Laptop computer with external 500GB drive for photo backup
• USB 32GB portable flash drive for photo sharing
• Unlocked cell phone, with charger
• Kindle e-reader
• Noise canceling headphones and iPod 
• 10x42 Zeiss Conquest binocular
• Small LED flashlight
• Prescription glasses (1 packed, 1 worn)
• Contact lens
• Sunglasses (1 for prescription glasses and 1 Gargoyle sunglasses)  
• Prescription and OTC medication
• Miscellaneous toiletries, including sunscreen and lip balm
• Eye mask to aid sleeping during long daylight hours
• Laundry soap and microfleece travel towel (XL size to speed clothes drying) 
• Portable clothes line and clothes hooks
• Ziploc bags of a variety of sizes
• Dry-bag backpack, small 
• Passport and drivers license 
• Paper travel documentation, including insurance claim forms
• Anti-Noro Hand sanitizer
• Trakdot luggage tracker 

Camera Bag Contents
When planning a trip, deciding what camera equipment to bring is always a challenge for me. Sure, my Android phone can take a great photo, but there are limits when you want to get more creative in your picture. For the Arctic, I would like to have equipment that is able to take both long distance and wide angle photographs, handle difficult lighting conditions and be able to adjust the depth of field. I don't want to be bound to a single camera as it could malfunction in rough weather but I also want to limit the amount photography equipment in my carry-on luggage.

Courtesy of Canon USA

My Arctic photography equipment list includes my Canon full sensor DSLR and a variety of lenses. My carry-on will also include several filters and backup batteries. For a backup camera system, I'm adding a Canon EOS-M3 mirror-less camera body.The M3 is lighter and smaller than a second DSLR, body and my DSLR lenses can also be attached to the M3. The crop sensor of the M3 will also give me a little more distance reach for the 300mm zoom lens. This capability might be helpful to capture that faraway polar bear.

For Antarctica, I had rented a Canon Rebel DSLR body as a backup. This time, I'm purchasing the EOS-M3 from B&H. If I don't think this equipment will be used much after visiting the Arctic, my plan is to sell it on eBay. While the eBay proceeds will be less than my purchase costs, I'm hoping the difference will be close to the alternative rental cost for the same equipment.

Thus, my photography equipment list now looks like this:

• Full sensor Canon 5DM3 DSLR body 
• Crop sensor Canon EOS-M3 body with 22mm prime lens
• 70-300mm DSLR zoom lens .
• 25-105mm DSLR zoom lens 
• 28mm DSLR prime lens
• Polarizing filters and one 0.6 ND gradient filter
• Waterproof Olympus P&S camera 
• Two battery packs and single charger per camera 
• Extra camera memory cards - 345GB total (Shooting RAW is consuming)
• Lightweignt monopod
• Lowepro S&F light utility belt with two toploader cases
• Lens cleaning supplies and several small silicon desiccant packs

Renting High Quality DSLR Lenses

Being interested in bringing back some 'tack sharp' images from Africa, upgrading my DSLR telephoto lens seemed like a good idea. We'll be visiting largely private game preserves that permit off-road travel for animal viewing. Thus, I anticipate that a super telephoto lens is not really necessary on this trip. Considering weight and needed distance range brought me to browsing the specifications of a Canon EF70-200mm "L" IS/USM 4.0 lens over at B&H's website. The sticking point was the price tag of a professional grade lens, a somewhat hefty $1,350.

Given that I don't really use a 200mm telephoto very often and I already own a less expensive Canon EF70-300 IS/USM 4.5 lens, I wasn't really excited about adding to my lens collection. After debating whether to make a new lens purchase or use what I already own, I stumbled on a couple of Internet based camera equipment rental sites. The two that caught my eye were Borrowlenses.com and Lensrentals.com.

The rental program at Borrowlenses was attractive. Signing up for the service is quick and easy. I can request a rental lens to be delivered to a local camera shop and pick-up and return the lens via the same store. The lens optics and operation are reportedly checked by Borrowlenses before shipping, so the chances of an operational problem seems to be limited. The rental cost of this lens was about $10 per day. Insurance for unintended damage is also available. The lens was shipped with a front and rear lens cap, UV filter and lens hood.

As a test run, I'm renting this lens for a five day trip to Hawaii. This will give me a chance to consider the weight, length and performance of a rental lens. If my experience is turns out OK, I will likely consider renting the same lens (or maybe the slightly heavier EF70-300mm L IS/USM lens) for my Africa trip. I picked up a polarizing filter for the EF70-200 lens to further add to my testing in Hawaii.

After comparing a number of images taken around the house today using the rented "L" lens and my personal (non-professional) 70-300mm lens via a tripod, I've found it is difficult to beat the sharpness of a Canon 'L' lens over 70mm, 135mm, and 200mm. I also noted this EF70-200mm lens has an internal zoom mechanism which could help reduce its vulnerability to dust. My DSLR and this lens just fits in my LowePro TopLoader 55 case.

Travel Updates for March - 2014

Hawaii
After not visiting Hawaii for over thirty years, I will be traveling to Hawaii twice this year. My sister and I will soon be accompanying my parents on a short visit Hawaii. Over four nights and five days, we'll relax at the Hapuna Prince Hotel and take a few day trips around the island. If time and energy is available, we might include a day trip to Kauai for a trip to see family friends.

Africa
After I return, my wife and I will be preparing for our safari trip to Africa. At this point, we have all the additional gear for this winter-time African safari. According to the guidebooks and our travel consolidator, the temperatures will be very cold (30F) in the evenings and early mornings and rise to the mid-70Fs during the mid-day. To deal with this temperature range, we're packing several base-layer items along with mid-layer outerwear and gloves. As we're using small charter planes to move around Africa, our travel items for three weeks must be squeezed into a 12x12x24 inch duffel bag.

We'll travel over 24 hours from California to Johannesburg, South Africa, via Heathrow. As we're using frequent flier miles for one set of tickets, we accepted the available flight itinerary. Thus, the flight from the US includes a nine-hour layover at Heathrow. From Johannesburg, we catch a small charter flight to Malamala Game Reserve. A few days later, we'll jump on another small charter flight to Mashatu Game Reserve, a sister property to Malamala. From Mashatu, we'll use additional air travel for a short stay at Victoria Falls. Our final safari stop will be at the Chobi River area before returning to Johannesburg for another long flight back to the US.

I'm trying to keep my electronics down to a minimum on the Africa trip. The laptop computer will stay home and I'll bring my Nexus 7 tablet for journal entries and email. I wanted to backup all of our digital photos but this has raised a small challenge. Each digital camera has over 64GB of storage on the SDHC/Compact Flash cards. 128GB is too much to backup on either of our tablets. So, I'm building a memory card back-up device, using a Hyper++Space Colorspace UDMA2 device for backup purposes.  The unit that I ordered doesn't ship with any storage. Accordingly,  I've added a 500GB notebook hard drive to the back-up device that should provide more space than we'll ever need for images and videos. The Colorspace also should speed up transfers to our iMac when we return. If this device proves hardy enough, it could also be useful for our later trip to Antarctica.

Myanmar
For some time, we've been interested in visiting Myanmar. Friends that have taken recent trips there have shared how much they enjoyed the sights and Myanmar people. Besides integrating a visit to Yangon, Mandalay and Bagan into our trip, we were interested in seeing life along the Irrawaddy River. The river was and, in many aspects, still is very important for transport, food, business and everyday living. We booked a Myanmar land and river trip in 2016. Yes, we know that's almost two years away from now.  Nonetheless, it will give us some time to plan for this trip - which could include a return visit to Siem Reap, Cambodia, for a few days.

For those interested in travel to Myanmar, I recommend reading:

•  The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma, written by Thant Myint-U,
•  The Glass Palace: A Novel, written by Amitav Ghosh

Both of these books provide a reader with background of the social, cultural and political struggles within Burma.

Packing for the next trip

Packing for a cruise to a colder and, possibly, wetter climate from a dry and warm location always raises the question of what clothes to include and how much to pack. The convenience of a cruise trip is that you can take a larger suitcase and be better prepared for a greater range of temperatures and activities. Of course, luggage fees,  cramped overhead bins and commuter jet limitations must also be considered.

This time, we're traveling with rolling duffel bags and carry-on bags. We use the Atlantic Ultralite 28" rolling duffel bags which weigh a little over six pounds each. This is about half the weight of a traditional 28 inch roller-board suitcase. These bags have survived trips to Europe and Southeast Asia and we're generally pleased with their sturdiness. The main downside of the bags is that they require careful content balancing to keep the duffel from falling over when standing as shown in the below image. Packing with cubes helps to keep the duffel contents somewhat organized as the duffel is essentially a cavernous bag.

Atlantic 28 Inch Rolling Duffel

January 2013 update: It seems that during baggage handling, the duffel was grabbed by the lock on the zipper for the thin side pocket. When we picked up the bag from the carousel, the zipper pulls and lock were gone. Luckily there was nothing in the side area of this duffel. We sewed the zipper shut after we arrived at the hotel. We will likely replace this duffel with the same - but perhaps will not lock this side slot in the future!

I'm also carrying a DSLR on this trip which presents some carry-on challenges. My carry-on bag, with my camera, an extra lens, flash unit, Kindle, miscellaneous electronic leashes and laptop computer is likely too large for the smaller overhead bins on a commuter jet that is part of the flight itinerary. Being a bit uncomfortable with placing this stuff with checked-in luggage, I've packed a sling in my carry-on so that I can transfer at least the DSLR and 11 inch computer to a smaller bag that will fit in the smaller plane luggage bin and then let the carry-on be hand-tagged at the gate for last minute check-in.

Lowepro Passport Sling Camera Bag-Mica