We were definitely happy for a few different pieces of gear while we stayed in Bolivia. Here’s what noticeably helped us while we were there:

• Spare duffel for stuff. Bolivia was definitely the poorest country we traveled through, and since our flight to Colombia departed from La Paz, we decided to leave some of the gear (what we thought we wouldn’t need) in La Paz. So, we packed it into our extra duffel (which we had been carrying at the bottom of stef’s pack) and left the duffel at our hotel in La Paz. It turned out to be about a full bag of stuff, which was nice. We picked it up again when we returned for our last night in La Paz.
• Sleeping bags. Bolivia is at a high altitude – which makes it cold at night. And it’s poor, which means that most hotels/hostels don’t have very good blankets. There were a few times where we needed our sleeping bags to keep us warm enough to sleep comfortably. Our bags were just right – warm enough to be helpful, light and small enough to be completely packable.
• Spare camera. Normally I just enjoy the fact that I have a camera, but Bolivia was different. Since it’s so poor and conditions are so rough, there were a few times (like in the silver mines) when I just used my backup camera instead – it’s smaller, lighter, and if it had broken, I wouldn’t have felt too bad. Bolivia is a beautiful country – difficult to travel through, but absolutely amazing to see. A camera (at least one) is a must-have for visiting Bolivia).

So that’s what helped us out in Bolivia.

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Our time in Peru was split – half (two weeks) during the first half of our trip and half during the second. This is about the most important gear we had for the whole time, including two weeks of Andes and coast, and two weeks of Cuzco, the Amazon jungle, and Lake Titicaca. Here’s what we appreciated having:

• Backpacks. You could travel long-term without them, but its not easy. You can’t hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu without them. Ours are really comfortable, and they have survived everything we’ve thrown at them.
• Sleeping Bags. We brought them with us for part 2 – and used them every night on the Inca Trail. Synthetic 40 degree bags from REI, they work great and pack into cubes which fit side-by-side in the bottom of my pack.
• Camera. Between the Inca Trail, the Amazon Jungle, and Lake Titicaca, I shot over 600 photographs. The places – and people – that we saw were incredibly photogenic, and having an easy-to-use camera that has awesome image quality made it all the more fun!

That’s what we found useful in Peru!

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We spent nearly two months in Argentina, so we really got the chance to know the country, the people, and the culture. We spent time in pretty much every area, and traveled overland for a significant portion of our time. We got some really good use out of our gear, too. Here’s what we found most useful:

1. Lonely Planet Argentina. Yes, we used the guidebook a lot in Argentina. In fact, we spent so much time in-country that we brought a country-specific guidebook (for the rest of our trip we pretty much only used the book “South America on a Shoestring” by Lonely Planet). It was super-useful, from helping us to identify the primary places we wanted to visit, to giving us tips on which sights were worth it and which weren’t. Yes, we spoke with a lot of different people on the road in Argentina, but we couldn’t fit them in our packs (besides, I’m not sure they would have been ok with that, either).
2. Unlocked cell phone. Again it came in handy (seems like we used it almost everywhere!). From calling hotels and hostels when making reservations for the next night (or confirming them), to arranging meetups with locals, to coordinating tour details with guides, we used our phone several times in Argentina. This time around, we had a Claro chip, and it worked great!
3. Hiking shoes. We hiked a lot here. We visited the national park in Ushuaia, did several trails in El Chalten, hiked around La Cumbre, and walked with our packs from bus station to hotel, hotel to bus station in cities the length of Argentina (which, by the way, is about as long as the US is wide).

So that’s what came in handy while we were in Argentina.

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I wrote about buying a travel camera back in September when I had to replace mine after a nasty salt-water incident in the Galapagos. When we returned, I happened upon some descriptions of a new kind of camera: electronic viewfinder interchangeable lenses (EVIL for short). These cameras basically have the best of both worlds (meaning SLRs and point-and-shoots). They:

• Are pocket-sized, like a point-and-shoot (they fit in a jacket pocket)
• Use professional-grade interchangeable lenses, like an SLR
• Perform almost as well as a DSLR on the key aspects:
  • Focus speed
  • Low-light performance
  • Full-manual control
  • Offer sophisticated RAW file formats

So what does this all mean? This is the “Decisive Moment Digital” (as Luminous Landscape likes to say) or, a “camera for the rest of us”. Some people will still need and use DSLRs, but they will be people who already have a lot invested in canon or nikon glass, or pros who switch between the larger formats and their full-frame 35mm digitals.

Can you tell yet that I’m excited about this? I sold all my other camera gear and bought a Panasonic GF1 in December. I have two lenses with me (a 20mm F1.7 prime, and a 45-200mm F4.0-5.6 telephoto zoom). So, what has changed? Let’s review the old criteria:

• Big pixels. Better! These cameras (using the Micro Four-Thirds mount specification) have a sensor that’s 8-10 times larger than any of my previous cameras.
• Wide-angle lens. Worse. My new camera has a normal lens – it’s effective angle-of-view is 40mm (anything between 30 and 70 or so is considered normal).
• Fits in a pocket. A little worse. This camera is still small, just not as small as my prior cameras.

So why’d I do it?
There are a couple of reasons:

• Flexibility. Interchangeable lenses allow me to take advantage of different featuresets with only one camera. My GF1 fits in my pocket with its tiny 20mm pancake prime lens, but I can switch lenses and get amazing long-range bird and wildlife photos (yay! Antarctica!) with my 90-400mm effective telephoto.
• RAW+JPEG mode. Makes it easy to get uploadable photos while traveling, and large printable ones for when we return.
• Great movies. This camera shoots great 720p HD video.
• Lots of scene modes along with 4 programmable custom modes.
• Full manual mode for extended-exposure night shots.
• Auto-bracketing – this is great for making HDR photos – pictures that have way more colors than any camera (or even our eyes) can process at one time.

This makes the fourth (and hopefully final) camera for our trip. Watch for photos of Argentina (and beyond!) coming out of it!

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So, we brought a lot of other stuff besides packs, clothing, medicine, and electronic gear. This post details all of the other stuff. Here’s what ELSE is in our packs:

We each have:

• Sleeping bag in compression sack
• Travel towel
• Silk sleep sheet
• Money belt
• Journal
• Wedding ring
• Digital watch
• Spanish language notebook

For the both of us, we carry (some in Stef’s bag, and some in Matt’s):

• Finance notebook
• Continent guidebook (South America on a Shoestring)
• Antarctica guidebook
• Argentina guidebook
• Spanish-English dictionary

Matt brought:

• Sunglasses (with sunglasses case)

Stef brought:

• 1 biteplate
• 1 pair earrings
• 2 pairs prescription glasses
• 1 sunglasses add-on for glasses
• Sarong
• Eye mask
• 1 set of sleep socks
• 1 bag personal supplies

We each have 3 drybags, and Matt carries two more (one for the spare medicines, and one for the camera).

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When you travel for a year, you have to think carefully about what you’re bringing with you. When your trip includes a month on the beach, the Ecuator, the Amazon rainforest, the Andes, and the South Pole, you have to make sure all your bases are covered. Some of them are preventative; some curative. Here’s the list of all of the medical supplies we brought with us (from the states):

• Doxycycline – best long-term malaria prophylaxis (we brought enough for a year)
• Dex – altitude sickness prevention medicine (prescription)
• First-aid kit:
  • Bandaids (multiple sizes)
  • Neosporin
  • Rubber gloves
  • Tweezers
  • Ace Bandage
  • Second Skin (burn/sunburn healing)
  • Moleskin
  • Medical tape
• Standard toiletries (most travel size as we buy full-size ones after we leave the US):
  • Shampoo
  • Toothpaste
  • Razor and razor blades
  • Skin cream
  • Suntan lotion
  • Aloe
  • Insect repellent
  • Deodorant
• Ibuprofen
• Migraine medicine
• Water purification tablets
• Immodium AD
• Benadryl
• Icy hot cream
• Muscle relaxants (actually, we picked these up in Ecuador and Peru – much cheaper, and you don’t need a prescription!)
• Sanitizer sprays

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We only spent a short amount of time in Chile – two weeks. It’s an expensive country, and we were on a tight schedule to get to Easter island and then on to buenos aires, so that we could detour back to the states for a bit. We stayed in three places:

• The Atacama desert (in San Pedro de Atacama)
• Santiago (the capital city)
• Easter island

We may end up spending a few more days in Chilean Patagonia later on, but for now, here’s what helped us most:

• Rain shells. It rained while we were on Easter island, a lot, every day (there was a tropical depression that settled on the island for exactly the days we were there). Our shells (mine is a marmut and stef’s is from the north face, in case you’re curious) really pulled their weight to keep us dry. In fact, I had been planning to dump my shell when we came back to the states, but my Easter island experience convinced me otherwise.
• Unlocked cell phone. This was a huge time-saver in Santiago, because we made a few day trips outside of the city, and the cellphone let us coordinate travel and sights without a guidebook or problems.
• Travel towels. Yes! Easter island was so wet and rainy that we had to trade off between our quick-dry towels and the towels in our hostel.
• Travel Clothesline. I don’t normally pick four things, but the clothesline really came in handy when drying out our wet gear on Easter island. Props to it!

It’s unusual to post about four things, but these really worked out for us, even in the short period of time we were in Chile…

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(Note, this is the second post in a series on what we have with us). We are traveling through almost all of South America. We have spent a month on the beach in Costa Rica, a month in the cloudforest highlands of the Galapagos, and a couple of months in the Andes mountains. We’re also going to spend three weeks in Antarctica, so we need to cover a broad range of temperatures. How do you pack for this? Think flexibility. Here are the principles we used when we packed:

• Enough underwear and socks to last at least a week
• 3 layers when outdoors:
  • Wicking – closest to the body (keeps the sweat out)
  • Warming – insulation layer (keeps the cold out)
  • Weather – outside layer of weatherproof gear (keeps the rain and snow out)
• All clothing should match everything else for ease of use
• Button-downs for travel (look presentable!)
• Might need to borrow or buy in certain extremes

Here’s what we packed:
Matt:

• Pants:
  • 1 pair travel pants (quick-dry, synthetic)
  • 1 pair blue jeans
  • 1 pair travel shorts (quick-dry, synthetic, double as a bathing suit)
• Shirts:
  • 2 long-sleeve button-down travel shirts (different colors)
  • 1 short-sleeve button-down travel shirt
  • 1 long-sleeve synthetic t-shirt
  • 1 short-sleeve synthetic t-shirt
• Outerwear:
  • 1 rain shell (3-ply goretex if you’re wondering)
  • 1 pair rain pants (3-ply goretex)
  • 1 poly-fill warming jacket
• Winter Clothing:
  • 2 pairs long thermal pants
  • 2 thick turtlenecks
  • 2 pairs wool socks
  • 3 pairs gloves
  • 2 winter hats
  • 1 balaclava
  • 1 neck-warmer/insulated headband
• Footwear:
  • 1 pair GoreTex running shoes
  • 1 pair hiking sandals
• Other:
  • 7 pairs underwear
  • 5 pairs synthetic socks
  • 1 travel hat

Stef:

• Pants:
  • 2 pairs shorts
  • 1 pair capris
  • 1 pair travel pants
  • 1 pair jeans
• Shirts:
  • 2 long-sleeve t-shirts
  • 2 short sleeve
  • 1 long sleeve blouse
  • 1 3/4 sleeve blouse
• Outerwear:
  • 1 rain jacket
  • 1 pair rain pants
  • 1 fleece jacket
• Winter Clothing:
  • 1 ski hat
  • 1 balaclava
  • 1 pair light gloves
  • 1 pair heavy mittens
  • 1 thermal turtleneck
  • 1 pair thermal tights
  • 1 pair silk long underwear bottoms
  • 1 down jacket
• Footwear:
  • 1 pair flip-flops
  • 1 pair water sandals
  • 1 pair hiking shoes
• Other:
  • 1 dress
  • 2 bras
  • 2 tank tops
  • 7 pairs underwear
  • 1 bathing suit
  • 3 pairs light/summer socks
  • 6 pairs wool socks
  • 1 pair sock liners
  • 1 baseball cap
  • 1 bandana
  • 1 travel cap

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As you probably know by now, we’re starting the second segment of our year in South America. We spent the first half traveling in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile (generally going south on the Pacific side of the continent), then returned to the US for a family medical emergency. We’re on our way back to South America now, and one of the positive aspects of our temporary return to the US was that we could tweak our packing a little bit. With more than four months of travel under our belts, we had plenty of experience to draw from. So here’s what we use for packs:

• Matt carries the larger packs (he is physically bigger, after all), especially since he carries the electronics and all of the spare toiletries. His packs are:
  • a 2009 Osprey Atmos 65 (liter) backpack, in grey, and
  • a 2009 Lowe Alpine Houdini 16 (liter) daypack, in black and lime green

  

• Stef carries a smaller backpack. We actually found her daypack in Quito, Ecuador – it was the first pack we bought that folds up into itself. She has:
  • a 1997 Dana Design Bomb Pack XS (about 50 liters), in black and purple, and
  • a 2009 Altus Drop 17 daypack, in black and lime green (yes, our packs match!)

  

We use them for different purposes obviously:

• The backpacks are for traveling between cities; they carry all of our extra clothing and gear, and serve as “dressers” when we stay in hostels.
• The daypacks are dual-purpose:
  • We carry them on our daytrips and dayhikes in cities and outside, when we plan on returning to our hostel at night. We carry water, food, cameras, and guidebooks in them (and sometimes a jacket when we fear rain or cold!)
  • We also bring them on the bus when we travel between cities, then they carry our guidebooks, other reading, some food and water, and anything that we can’t afford to lose in a bus (you can always buy new clothes, but a replacement passport takes a lot more time!)

So that’s what we use to carry our stuff…

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Last week I mentioned the technology gadgets that we brought on our trip. This week, I wanted to tell you a little about what we didn’t bring, and why. We’re trying to travel light without carrying nothing; as this is our first trip of this kind, we feel we’ve done pretty well – we can walk with all our gear into different towns, and there hasn’t been much that we’ve missed. So here is what we didn’t bring:

• Laptop computer. They’re big, heavy, and expensive. Which means that they’re easy to see (making us thief targets), hard to carry, and EXTREMELY painful if lost or stolen. While they would make certain things easier (for us, uploading photos), it’s not worth the expense, heft, and effort. I have been intrigued by the netbooks recently, but have yet to take the plunge.

• Digital video camera. They’re very similar to laptops. I already get decent HD video from my digital camera, but I’m personally not interested in editing video while we travel (not my thing).

• Kindle (or any books, for that matter). We have a decent guidebook (Lonely Planet, the most popular one we´ve seen), but we left every other book at home. How does that help us? We’ve encountered some very good books on the road that we wouldn’t have read otherwise (since we would have been focused on the books we knew). Reading what we encounter on the road broadens our experience.

Not bringing these three things actually worked really well for us. It might not have worked as well for others, but we´re happy to discuss it!

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Most of you know that I’ve been pretty interested in technology for a while (and for those of you who didn’t, well now you do!). As you might imagine, Stef and I had a few conversations about what we would an would not bring on our trip. We were also interested to see my reaction to not having always-on wireless broadband and to spending more than 8 hours a day away from a computer screen. Our trip isn’t over, but I am adjusting to LWBB – life without broadband. I thought I would highlight the three digital gadgets we did bring on our trip, and what we’re using them for:

• Digital Camera. I’ve been really lucky to be in such great places with a camera – we’ve seen some amazing sights and been able to capture our adventures in a way we wouldn’t have without the camera (see our page of photos from our Latin America trip for examples). Like most of what we’re carrying, the camera serves at least three purposes:
  • Digital Still Camera
  • Digital Camcorder
  • Spare Flashlight (and yes, I have used it as such – on the beach in Costa Rica and at the volunteer station in the Galapagos)

  This was a Ricoh GX-200 first; now it’s a casio ZX-100V. The model doesn’t matter as much as what it produces, an that’s been great so far!

• iPhone. Yes, we brought our iPhones – but we use them primarily as mini-netbooks. They really help us out with:
  • Making stateside calls (for insurance and other administrative things)
  • Managing our finances (ensuring that we can keep traveling!)
  • Keeping up with friends and family (through Facebook and our blog)

  Oh, and for each of these and more, you guessed it – there’s an app for that!

  

• GSM Cellphone. Stef and I debated about this one for a few weeks. We had heard that they can be useful, but they are expensive. We ended up getting one, and it has saved us a few times as a:
  • Local Cellphone. this has been surprisingly helpful! After our first experience reserving a hotel over email, we switched to the cellphone. Reservations now take 5 minutes, instead of an hour, and we don’t have to plan three days ahead (since the call is real-time – all web reservations we’ve seen so far actually happen over email, and response times are an issue). Plus, if we know people in the area, we have an easy way to stay in touch if we’d like to meet up, change plans, or anything else. Thankfully, we haven’t needed to use it in an emergency yet!
  • Substitute Digital Camera. Our cellphone has a 2MP digital camera on it which came in handy – I used it as a primary camera after my Ricoh died. Also, if we go out without the camera, I can use the phone to capture quick shots of interesting or funny moments.
  • Backup Internet Connection.We are trying balance our Internet usage. But sometimes, we are waiting for an important email, or it’s just much simpler and a much smaller hassle to check on the phone. (Its more expensive than wifi or an Internet cafe, because with our pay-as-you-go card, data is expensive, but it’s occasionally worth it.)

  We have a Sony-Ericsson Walkman phone – it’s a slider model (the W580i if you need to know).

  

Next week, more on what we didn’t bring with us…

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As you know, we spent a month living and volunteering on the galapagos islands. It was a really interesting experience, and we learned a ton, about natural selection, conservation living and work, and how to chop mora (blackberries)! We lived in the cloudforest zone of the islands (no, I didn’t know that they had one either), and our best gear was protective. What was it?

• Dry bags. These were AWESOME! Even though we were in the super-humid cloud forest for a month, the dry bags kept mold and mildew from piling up on our clothing and gear. If you spend more than a week in a rainforest, bring dry bags to store all your stuff.
  We each brought two dry bags with us on the trip (GraniteGear AirVent Reduction DryBlocs that we bought at REI), and picked up one more each in Quito. They held our winter clothes, our summer clothes that we weren’t wearing at Jatun Sacha, and our reserve meds and toiletries.
• Travel hats (by Tilley and Columbia). We used these every day in the cloudforest. They were great to keep the bugs and the rain off of our heads, and to provide a support for our facenets when we wore them (which was almost every day for the final two weeks). When we weren’t at the station, they were great protection from the sun!
• Bugspray.We cannot say enough about this. We put it on 5 or 6 times per day:
  1. In the morning before we got dressed
  2. Right before the morning work started (8am)
  3. At our juice break (10am)
  4. On our way to lunch (12pm)
  5. Right before afternoon work (2pm)
  6. After showering (afternoon, when work was done) (4:30pm)

  If we missed an area, it was really bad (e.g., on Monday of the last week, stef didn’t cover her wrists, and got about 15 bites in the morning work session). Needless to say, everyone at Jatun Sacha loved OFF and DEET.

So that’s what helped us most in the galapagos. We were a bit surprised, but it worked out really well!

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So I’ve been working on purchasing a new travel camera since my old camera (Ricoh GX-200) died on Bartolome Island on the galapagos (damn aquapac travel camera bag!). I already explained some of the biggest myths I encountered in my search for a new camera; now I’m going to explain what I feel are the most important features of a travel camera. Please note, this is what works for me, as I like to travel light, I know how the primary functions of a camera work (and I have an SLR of my own at home), and I like adventure traveling. A travel camera should have:

1. Big Pixels. This is NOT the number of megapixels a camera has. It is how physically big each pixel is. The bigger the pixel, the richer the colors (and the less noise/graininess) your images will have. It’s calculated using the number of pixels per square centimeter of sensor size, and a LOWER number is better. DPReview has a great index number (called “Pixel Density”) that they use to compare cameras. Compare a typical SLR and point and shoot camera, for example. You’ll notice that the SLR has a much lower pixel density than the P&S. That doesn’t mean that the SLR will make better photos than the P&S, but it does give the SLR a much better chance!
2. Wide-angle lens. The wider the lens (at it’s “wide” position), the more peripheral vision the camera has. If it´s true that a picture is worth 1,000 words, then here are 2,015 words on lens angle:
   Normal Bartolome view (Galapagos)

   Wide Bartolome view (also the cover page on most Galapagos calendars)

   

   
   Wide lenses are considered to be anything smaller than about 28mm. The smaller the number, the wider the lens (Lenses are typically measured in millimeters, and have “effective” measurements that make the numbers comparable to a 35mm full-frame camera – basically an older film camera or a full-frame DSLR). Wide-angle lenses are great for photos of landscapes, mountains, large monuments (there are many more large monuments than small ones, btw), and large groups of people. While it’s true that wide-angle lenses slightly distort close-up portraits, and that you could shoot “stitch assist” pictures (two or three pictures with overlap that a computer program combines into one image), these miss the point – when you’re traveling, you don’t usually have the time to compose and shoot several images, and then stitch them together in software later. What about waterfalls, skylines, the ocean, pools with people playing – all of these have moving parts of the image, and you can’t stitch together two pictures from different times and expect the moving parts to match up!

3. Fits in a Pocket. you’re going to be traveling – moving from place to place, right? The camera should easily fit in your front pants pocket. If it’s dangling around your neck or you need a separate bag to carry it in, walking around the city (or hiking a footpath) all day is going to be tiring (and you’ll probably end up annoyed by your camera at some point). If it fits in the pocket, you can easily palm it when you need it out for fast shots. A small camera in your hand also doesn’t scream out “STEAL ME – I HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY HANGING ON A STRING AROUND MY NECK!!” like an SLR does.

There are a few other nice-to-have’s that I’ve noticed in my elusive search for the best travel camera:

• Waterproof and/or shock resistant. Face it, the camera is going to be more exposed to the elements when you travel (assuming you use it. If you don’t use your travel camera much, well, I guess we’re both wasting our time!), so the more protected it is (from water, dust, drops, rocks, cold, etc), the fewer times you’ll have to buy a replacement.
• RAW+JPEG Mode. With this mode, the camera records two files every time you take a picture – a super-high-res RAW image and a JPEG of your choice of sizes. Why is this good? If you’re traveling for a while, you can set the JPEG to the smallest size and upload only the jpeg – saving you a lot of upload time while you’re on the road. But, you still have the high-res RAW file for printing or adjustments when you go home.
• Decent Movie Mode. Why carry both a camcorder and a digicam? And do you actually need 1080i video (which you can’t even burn to a DVD) of whatever it is you’re recording? Remember that you don’t have the controlled conditions, studio lighting, or steadicam help that even a wedding pro has. Save your hassle and just carry one device!

So that’s what I think. I’m going to follow this up in the next couple of weeks with a set of tips (almost a workflow) for traveling with a digicam. Stay tuned!

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Our time in Ecuador has been a bit different than our time in Costa Rica. We’ve been in the city instead of on the beach, at altitude instead of at sea level, and in a different kind of program. So here is what has come in handy as we’ve moved through Ecuador:

• North Face fleece-lined jackets. Did you know that Quito is at 2900 meters (about 9400 feet)? And it sits in a valley between two sets of mountains, making the weather pretty predictable. Daytime temps range from 60-85 Fahrenheit, and at night it drops to about 40 or so. The TeleferiQo (a gondola that goes up one of the mountains) takes you up to about 4100 meters (~13,300 feet). At that altitude, it gets pretty cold pretty fast, and since you’re at the ridgeline, there is no mountain range to protect you from the winds. So we have been wearing our windproof, fleece-lined jackets a lot (stef every day).
• Stef and Matt business cards. With our picture, website, and email address, these have made it really easy to stay in touch with the people we’ve met. They are standard-sized white business cards with a picture of us, our first names, our website address and our email address. They are so easy to use! Every time we meet someone, we can just hand them a card, instead of writing down our contact info. It has also made Facebook connections a lot easier.
• Daypacks. These have been huge for us in Ecuador. We have two: an REI Lookout 30-liter pack and an ALTUS Drop 17 collapsible daypack. We picked up the ALTUS in Quito at one of the many outdoors shops. What do we use them for?
  • REI Lookout: Serves as our storage daypack; whenever we travel from town to town, we keep our primary clothing and bathroom stuff in here. It makes it really easy to unpack when we get to a new hotel! This is also the pack we bring if we make a large grocery run or generally know that we need to pick up somethig bulky.
  • ALTUS 17: this is our all-around daypack. It goes with us almost every day and carries sunscreen, books, water, and extra clothing (like hats or jackets). Stef loves this bag because it has it’s own built-in carrying case and folds up into something about the size of a fist.

Those have been the most useful things so far in Ecuador.

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So it’s been a little while since we left costa rica, but since I’ll be writing one of these posts or every region we visit, I wanted to make sure costa rica was covered . Here are the three things we found the most useful when we were in costa rica:

• Ricoh GX-200 Camera. The beach is a great place to capture the light of the sun, and not only did we find great colors in costa rica, we also sawsome really cool events, like some fire poi masters, a beautiful moonlit sky, and a storm off the coast. The camera was able to capture it all, as well as our more mundane self-portaits, and a few videos.
  
• Sunscreen. it gets really sunny on the beach, and we both needed SPF 70 to make it through. I missed a few times when I went surfing, and even zinc wasn’t always strog enough to save me.
• Bathing suits. We spent a month at the beach. Of course we needed bathing suits!

So that’s what we were most happy for having brought when we were in costa rica. Stay tuned for more…

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As you probably know, I had to buy a new travel camera in Quito. The camera manufacturers are pushing a few camera features pretty heavily, most of which I think are a bunch of crap.
I will post the list of the top 3 travel camera features next week.

Here are the top 3 myths of buying a travel camera:

1. Megapixels are the best measure of image quality. This has been around for several years, and the myth is just as bad for all types of cameras (not just travel cameras). The truth is that anything over 4 megapixels is great, and I have printed amazing 11x 14 images from an 8-megapixel camera. If you need to (and do) regularly print wall posters (20 x 30 inches or larger), maybe you need 16 megapixels. If you don’t print a poster every week, anything over 10 megapixels is wasted (and actually hurts your images, as I’ll explain next week).
2. A big zoom is necessary for a travel camera. Juat like the “megapixel myth”, this one is rooted in lazy marketing: marketing teams think that following the Texan maxim of “Bigger is better” will convince prospects to buy. While it may do that occasionally, it won’t produce high-quality photos – once you get past 130mm of effective lens length (which is the outer limit of most 4x and some 3x zoom lenses), camera shake hurts image quality (while some anti-shake mechanisms are out there, most of the ones available in point-and-shoot cameras aren’t very good). So, buying a camera with an 8x or greater zoom means that you probably just paid for a feature that you won’t be able to use very often.
3. Face-detection (and Smile-detection) are really helpful features. This means that you can’t recognize faces or smiles, and know when the camera is focused on them. WHAT? If you can’t recognize a face, a smile, or when the camera is focused, you should just go home. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. This is technology, remember, so it’s probably going to miss sometimes. Which means that paintings of people, wall clocks, and yes, streetlights will all be identified as faces without smiles (I’ve seen this happen).

So those are the top three myths that everyone was pushing while I was camera shopping. Here are the others that I heard:

• A video camera takes just as good stills as a point and shoot.
• A camera that looks like an SLR is better because, well, it is shaped like an SLR.
• A camera can automatically tell what kind of picture you want to take and adjust it settings automatically (sometimes called “Best Shot”).

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My pack arrived in the mail yesterday! I will be traveling with a Metolius Crag Station – a 41L convertible duffel that has bomber construction, waterproof sides, shoulder and hip straps, and compression straps.

It’s a great bag – really durable, pretty low-profile, and small enough to make packing a useful, planned exercise. I can’t wait to trial-pack it tomorrow!

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