London Calling

As always: packing left for the last day. Thank God this is summer games, so it is basically shorts and t‑shirts … and heavy rain gear — if it were winter it would be full skiing stuff, crampons, plus things to keep you warm and dry down to — 30°C.

Cameras are simple: two working bodies (plus 1 remote with all the necessary this and that…) and lenses from 8mm up to 800mm. Extenders, couple of flashes, two mac’s, iPad, bag full of cables, daisy chained card readers, couple of extra LaCie Rugged disks, etc. Normally I might take more stuff for remotes, but wireless does not work in the compe­tition venues (it’s actually forbidden) so I will not try to set up any fancy remote systems this time.

It is stuff you learn along the way which make a diffe­rence. I am often asked how do I transport the stuff I use — i.e. hand luggage or checked in. So: no way you take all this as hand luggage. Perso­nally I use a set of different size of pelicases — and I want to give special credit to Matti in CC-Case in Lahti for custo­mizing me the interior you see in the image. Really, he did a great, great job with that, really thought about it a long time and it simply works. You can stand on it and not worry about the cams or lenses — the mono works as a special support in addition to the actual case.

The case now holds 200mm, 400mm and 800mm lenses plus one 1D-series body ; plus Gitzo carbon fiber monopod. Notice that I had it done so that you can replace the 200mm insert with another containing 1D series body (as 200mm is a very special and thus rarely used piece of glass).

Small lenses (i.e. under 200mm) plus one computer I typically carry as hand luggage.

The small image is my own design (I made couple of these): i.e. british into euro converter for charging, computers, etc. The amount of juice we need to run our tools today is quite substantial and tradi­tional extension cords would have added to the bulk too much so this little construction powers three normal cables from one “strictly british” outlet.

So tomorrow: London calling… I try to be active with this blog so keep checking it out. Testing couple of new things, workflows and stuff… so I am looking forward to the next three weeks.