Trip Prep: Packing the Gear

This coming Saturday morning I’m going to fly out at the obnoxious hour of 5:30 AM and, two layovers and three timezones later, arrive in Portland, Oregon. After grabbing a rental car and some supplies, I’ll do my best to tackle the jet lag in an airport hotel for the night before driving north to the Olympic National Forest for a week. Afterward, I’ll hop to San Francisco for a few days to visit family and friends, absorbing some of Apple’s WWDC excitement by omsosis before heading home.

I’ve always wanted to see the Pacific Northwest since I have a thing for misty forests, rocky beaches and mountains. Over the course of the week, I’ll shoot thousands of photos and hours of video in the temperate rainforest near Lake Quinault, along the rocky beaches of the Quieleute Nation, and around the crystalline, classically be-lodged Lake Crescent. I’m sure a week will barely scratch the surface.

I’ll mostly be taking still images, of course, but will also be grabbing a great deal of video using both my Canon 5D Mark II (w/Zoom H4n for audio) and a GoPro Hero HD. The GoPro Hero stems from a desire to easily capture hours of “b-roll” type video of my travel, hiking and the environment around me. This tiny water and bomb-proof camera will mount on the front of the car near the bumper and, at times, will be fastened to my chest using a small harness to record the hiking and shooting experience. See my post of a week or so ago with test footage of various angles I’ve tried while driving.

Obviously, picking gear and packing for such an excursion is always a challenge. Having a rental car makes life a lot easier, but the airlines still make the process of affordably hauling everything you’d really want a gigantic pain in the butt. It also means that all of the expensive and important stuff has to be with me on the plane rather than in checked luggage.

My main travel camera bag is a rolling Think Tank Photo Airport AirStream which is designed to fit in the overheard compartment or slide under the seat in front of you with ease. I pack it as tight as I can for the flight and carry my laptop and iPad as my combined “personal item”. The picture here shows the AirStream packed the way I’ll take it on the plane. Once there, of course, I’ll decompress a good bit and hike using a shoulder sling bag that will have been transported in my checked bag.

Unlike my TWiP colleagues, I’ve not taken the time to do one of the bag videos/interviews. In lieu of that, though, I’ve spread out virtually everything photo-related that I’m taking with me on this trip and created a clickable image that you can explore. If you hover over an item with your mouse, a tool-tip will appear with a brief description. Clicking any item will take you to the manufacturer or a vendor website for additional information. Sadly, as much of a fan as I am of the iPad, the tooltips don’t work in a mouse-less interface. You can, however, tap the items to be taken to the extended links.

Click for a larger view with descriptive tool-tips and links.

I hope to be blogging and uploading photos throughout the trip. That is subject, of course, to both available internet connectivity and the mental wherewithal to be creative after a long day in the woods. Either or both might well be in short supply, but I’ll know in a few days. With minimal connectivity, though, I can at least keep a decent twitter stream going.

More to come!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 26th, 2011 at 7:32 pm. It is filed under Gadgets & Gear, Photography and tagged with pacnorthwest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.