UNFPA
Americans for UNFPA
Jim Cowan

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About

Most useful items:

A long lens: On safari, most of the animals are fifty to a hundred yards away. I took an 80-400 zoom with vibration reduction and used it mainly in the 200-400 range. The gorillas were so close I used a 28-200.

A beanbag. Chuck Cutler told me to take one and it was great advice. I sewed it myself hours before I left home for the airport, first sewing the zipper closed, then I got the zipper on the inside of the bag, then I got it right, put in three pounds of beans, and used it continuously when photographing animals standing up in the roof of the van. I left the beans back in Africa when I came home.

A superwide zoom. I had a 12-24 for landscapes and skyscapes.

Lots of memory cards. I took 4.5 Gb, shot 5mB RAW files, and did ok.

Least useful items:

Tripod. I used it once, to photograph some flowers. Flash. No use photographing animals, would have been disruptive on site visits where I never actually used it, for that reason.

Things I wish I'd taken more of:

Memory cards.

I also wish I'd taken a second battery charger because if I'd lost the one I had (Nikon proprietary batteries and charger) I'd have been in deep trouble. Fortunately nothing went wrong, but it was the weakest link in the chain, after the camera body itself.

Things I wish I'd actually had with me:

A faster lens. I could have used an f2.8 midrange zoom on the site visits to work better with the ambient light.

And if my camera had broken I'd have really wished I'd had a second camera body with me.

I also wish I'd taken my laptop, for two reasons. First, I could have examined my work each evening, and corrected some mistakes early on. Second, I could have uploaded files, burnt CDs, and reused memory cards.

Things I wish I hadn't done at all:

Erased some shots from the orphanage and sex workers site visits. I lost about twenty images with some good ones in there. If I'd had the laptop this might not have happenend.

What I actually did take:

Nikon D70, 80-400, 28-200 and 12-24 all f3.5 or slower, 4.5 Gb of memory, three batteries for the camera, battery charger, voltage adaptor from Radio Shack, lens and CCD sensor cleaning materials, plus the stuff mentioned above that I didn't need.

Most useful accessory:

A PacSafe security device. This is a net-like bag made of steel aircraft control cable steel, with a steel cable loop and padlock. You put your camera bag into the PacSafe, loop the cable through or around something heavy or non-movable, such as the plumbing in your room, or your bed, and lock it. It a serious deterrent to a casual thief, but won't stop someone with boltcutters. But probably nothing will stop someone with bolt cutters, short of a gun.