The gear so far

Five and a half months ago, before I started this trip, I did a little gearing up. I bought a new camera, a lens and some other odds and ends to add to my already considerable camera-harem (the collection can be seen here). The trip, which has so far taken me through 13 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, North and Central America and the middle of the Pacific has been a little rough on both me and my kit and I thought now would be a good time for a little update on how everything is going:

Cameras: I bought a 1D for the trip, planning to use my much-loved 20D as a second camera, shooting with both bodies most of the time. Alas, most days, my 20D sits unused, waiting until disaster strikes. And after years of shooting aperture priority on my canons, I've started shooting manual much of the time. A combination of harsh sun, dark skin and even-changing conditions that my aperture priority just couldn't keep up with. I find myself often setting my camera for the light conditions and then tweaking slightly for shadow or highlight detail. I'm getting much more control and much more consistent results... except when I step out from a dark hut into the bright sun and shoot a few frames of something that catches my eye before realizing that I've just over-exposed everything by 12 stops. But that's only happened a couple of times, I swear. Oh, and I noticed the other day that whenever I change cards in my camera, I instinctively shield the open CF slot from the sun. Anyone else do this? Or is it just me?

Lenses: I'm using a 17-40 f4, a 135 f2 and a 50 f1.4 (all Canon lenses). I expected to use the 17-40 the most (it's just the perfect lens for the kind of work that I'm doing) and, sure enough, I'm shooting almost 80% of my photos with it. It's been holding up fine, but I'm beginning to think the 16-35 f2.8 would have been worth the extra money. Also the 50 f1.4 (which I've been using less than I thought, but is still indispensable in low-light) was damaged in turkey (my first country!) and replaced in london a couple of weeks later. It's most likely repairable, I just don't have the time right now to get it fixed.

Cards: I'm shooting 2GB cards. I know I can get bigger ones, but it just seems like a good balance between not having to change them too often and not losing too many shots if I damage a card. I'm also backing things up to a battery powered 80 GB drive while I'm in the field, meaning that I can leave my laptop safely behind and go out shooting for a few days at a time. While the batteries on the drive will die long before I fill it up, I've discovered that, when things are busy, I can shoot 80GB of photos (about 10,000 shots) in 2 weeks.

Flashes: I packed a portable studio made up of a pair of light stands, umbrellas and vivitar 285s triggered by light slaves because I knew I'd be shooting in a lot of dark interiors. Well, one of the triggers died a few days into the trip (luckily I had a spare) and one of the 285s blew up a couple of months ago. Still not quite sure what happened, but it smelt like burning. I've also been having a tough time with the light slaves, they're just not as reliable as I need. So I just bought a pair of pocket wizard radio slaves. So now I can tuck a flash just about anywhere and trigger it from really far away. Like the moon. I also picked up a Bogen super-clamp before I left. I wasn't really sure what I'd do with it when I bought it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, it really proved it;s worth in Zambia and Malawi when I was able to clamp a flash to just about anything to light up dark hut interiors without having to worry about my light stands showing up in the shot. The only down side was that I only had one of them, but that was rectified a couple of months ago.

Computer and Hard drives: computer has held up like a champ, but the hard drives are waaaaay too small. Sadly, I can't buy a 5TB, 2.5 inch, bus powered fire-wire drive, so I'll have to make do with what I've got and just keep burning DVDs like a madman. Oh, and I ditched Aperture after the first few countries. Once you dump 10,000 images into it, it really starts to drag. I'm using lightroom now, and even with over 50,000 images in my current library, it's still running pretty smoothly.

Audio gear: the mic and recorder are performing great, though I haven't been capturing as much audio as I hoped. I'm trying to make more of an effort, but it the shooting is definitely the priority.

And the piece of kit that I'm using the least? my ipod. go figure.