THREE DAYS TO GO

Well I had a nice surprise this morning when I went to the local sorting office to collect a parcel. A skincare company I had approached just after Christmas, had sent me a box full of goodies including moisturizer, Factor 25 face protector and lots of other essential care products. These will be really welcome on my trip so thank you Liz Earle Naturally Active Skincare (mentioned also in Sponsorship post)

Which brings me to the subject of cameras. I would rather talk about cameras and forget about the growing mountain of clothes on the spare bed which has to be sorted through. Cameras are an interesting subject. I love cameras and have many of my own and access to state of the art Nikons with F.O lenses. I have 35 mm, compacts and digitals but I still love film. I hate being weighted down by heavy gear on adventure trips so I just use compact. I have decided on that on this trip I am going to take two compact film cameras with slide film and one compact digital with a big memory card. I have bought three rolls of Velvia 100 which I will use in my wonderful Ricoh GRI. It has a great wide angle lens but no zoom so I will use it for static landscape shots. It is such a rugged little camera and has all the elements of a 35mm so you can adjust the aperture and the exposure. I took it to the Antartic and it stood up well to the cold unlike my Canon 35 mm which just gave up. I also bought three rolls of Provia 400 which I will use in my Pentax Espio 120SW. This camera has a good zoom for a compact and I have had great results from it in the past. So I shall use this more for action shots which I think there will be many. My third camera is my Ricoh Caplio R1 which again takes some great shots especially on macro setting. These three little cameras probably weigh less than one big professional kit and they can be slipped into pockets to keep warm.

When I get back home I will take my slide film to Snappy Snaps in the Strand and get them to process but not mount the slides and put them onto CDs. In this way I can keep them on my computer with the digital images but also have a good old fashioned slide show if I want.

There! I have got cameras out of my system and so tommorrow I shall have to face the clothing situation.