We're definitely not the first people to be traveling for an extended period of time with just digital camera gear. But it's probably fair to say that we haven't encountered too many people traveling with a digital camera, a laptop, and are maintaining a website at the same time.

Photography

Well, as I mentioned at the beginning of the year, the one skill I was hoping to learn on this trip was photography. I was fortunate to have met several professionals along the road who were kind enough to share their tips and tricks with me. In fact, it was fun talking about photography with almost everybody, because everyone has a unique viewpoint and a different way of looking at things.

I can't really say enough about the camera. It kind of feels like a natural extension of my right hand now. The Canon 10D has been a workhorse, has stood up to a lot of wear and tear, and is still ticking strong, notwithstanding my proprensity to scratch the CMOS sensor (see previous Photography column).

I actually didn't shoot all that much at the 10D's highest resolution, usually just Small, Fine. Whenever I saw a shot that really looked good though, and it had great light and poster potential, I would crank it up to Large, Fine, or sometimes even RAW. We never had plans on blowing anything up past 11x14.

As you might have gathered, by the end of the trip I was carrying a bit different complement of lenses than at the beginning. In the end, I was lugging around four lenses: a 50mm prime, 28-135mm IS, 15-35mm wide angle, and 75-300mm telephoto. I really only used the prime when I was waiting for the 28-135mm lens to be repaired and for Ray to bring out the 15-35mm that I had purchased online. In many cases, the 15-35mm was on my camera most of the time. The exceptions to this would be in the Galapagos, where I pretty much had the long zoom on, and when I was walking around markets, where I was going for candid shots at a distance.

In all, I calculate I pressed the shutter about 28,000 times. Of these, I deleted several right away (reframed, recomposed, changed exposure, etc). After editing and deleting, I think we've come home with about 12,000 pictures, filling up about 18GB worth of CD's. I'm glad we did some editing right away on the laptop every other evening or so, because I couldn't imagine wading through so many pictures at one time.

If I were to have brought a film camera along, things would obviously be quite different. As always, there are pros and cons to both. With a film SLR, I might have taken more time composing, as each shutter click has a relatively high monetary value. But with a digital SLR, I can imediately see if I got the shot I wanted, then either retake it or move on.

Power & Memory

The four 256MB memory cards worked fine, and was enough for me to last about 1-2 weeks, depending on how much I was shooting. After the first laptop failed though, I did find myself wishing that I had purchased one of those portable media hard drives. I suppose it would have just been yet another thing to carry though, and would probably have had another heavy charger to go along with it.

The USB flash memory stick was incredibly useful, and allowed us to transfer files from the laptop to the internet cafe's computer with easy. It's sometimes a challenge to find a computer with XP (which automatically installs the driver) as opposed to Win98, but obviously some things take a bit more time in some places than others. (Thanks Tony!)

In terms of battery power, I never had any issues with charging the two batteries that we had for the 10D or the laptop. Both devices have chargers that work on 110V or 220V, which is brilliant. The only other vital piece of equipment is one of those universal power adaptors with the different shaped prongs for the different plugs around the world. Rather incredibly, there wasn't a set of prongs that we didn't use at some point on this trip!

Other Gear

The Crumpler "Formal Lounge" bag that I purchased in Munich has proven to be worth its cost. Designed to carry an SLR, several lenses, and a laptop in its padded compartments, the backpack doesn't even look like a camera bag. I eventually got pretty adept at slinging one strap off, whipping open the zipper on the camera compartment, and pulling out the camera in time to catch the shot I wanted; however, the bag is no quick-draw camera holster.

I found myself wishing once in a while that I had a full sized tripod with me. It was agonizing deciding whether to bring one or not; in the end, I think it was the right decision to not bring one. The dozen or so times when I wished I had a full sized tripod, I was able to make do with the table top one I had. It wouldn't have been worth the weight and bulkiness of lugging a full tripod around for a year.

I deliberately chose to not bring a flash, and seldom missed it at all. The few instances that I did use the flash in the evenings was pretty much purely for content shots, to capture some friends at a restaurant or a dance, perhaps. Invariably, in low-light conditions, I would find myself cranking the ISO up to 1600 or 3200, and digging out the table top tripod rather than going to the flash. In any case, the built-in flash on the 10D is so short, that you can often see the shadow cast by the top rim of the lens. In the Digital Rebel, Canon made the flash longer, probably expecting that most 10D users would have an additional flash unit.

The Targus motion detector cable lock that we brought along was very useful in several respects. We could leave valuables in the backpack in our hotel room and eat downstairs, knowing that we'd be able to hear the alarm from there if it had been tripped off. Ours is an older model but you can see what I'm talking about here.

Laptop

The second laptop we got, the Panasonic T1, has been working fine (knock on wood). It's a shame the first one (Sony Vaio PCG-SR7K) went kaput; we still can't pull the data off it. I suppose though, our equipment has gone through a lot more than usual. If we do something like this again (and we sure hope that day comes eventually), I would definitely carry a laptop again. Being an ultralight, the T1 was only about three pounds, and was not bulky at all. The charger and adaptor was more bulky in a way, with all the cables.

Security was sometimes a concern, but whenever it was, I made sure to have the laptop in my backback on my back. We never took it out in an area that didn't look safe; usually we took it out in the confines of our room in the evening.

The external CD drive failed after leaving Asia, which was a bit of a pain. I suppose that is one downside to having an ultralight; the external CD drives tend to be somewhat delicate. However, chances are good that one in three internet cafes has the capability to burn photo CD's, which is what we did for the last couple of months. They have memory card readers and for a nominal fee, can backup your pictures onto CD quite easily. I'd be almost tempted to not bring a CD player next time, except that it is of course much more convenient to have the capability of burning your own.

We still burned two copies of each CD, carried one with us and mailed the other one home. This way, there were always three copies of the file... on the laptop, and two CD copies.

One very useful accessory is a PCMCIA Compact Flash adaptor, which allows you to plug your memory card straight into the laptop. It's only about $7, and makes things a lot easier than carrying a USB card reader.

Internet Connectivity

Well, this is the easy part. If there is a phone line, then there is Internet access. It's amazing how available online access is, even in some of the most remote parts of the world. Obviously you can escape it completely if you choose to, but we never felt obliged to cut ourselves off completely! In fact, I think the longest time we went the whole year without popping into an internet cafe was just seven days.

As for costs, well, that varies a bit from country to country, but the average cost of internet access is about a dollar an hour. So think about that the next time you're in a fancy Internet cafe in the States or Europe that is charging you six times as much!

I was only charged extra for hooking my laptop to a cafe's network once. Every other time (only did this about once a month) it was a piece of cake to take the network cable out of an available PC, plug it in and off I was, FTP'ing up pictures. Usually the network configuration was DHCP, which made things a no-brainer; once in a while I had to enter in a static IP.

Believe it or not, there were even a few wireless access points that we encountered... most shocking of all was a high-speed wireless network that I connected to in a back alley in Saigon! I've come to the conclusion that people are a lot more connected than we might think they are.

Website

People have asked how much time is involved in maintaining the website; in reality, not that much once the initial templates were developed. All it is is taking pictures, choosing the ones you want, adding captions, and then running them through the template.

In the Internet cafes, FTP'ing the files up to the web server was quite straight forward, which is something we did only once every few weeks. More frequent were our Blog updates; using Blogger was a great way to keep our diary updated. It's as easy to use as e-mail.

One thing that is a bit weird for us still, is to see how the website has grown in terms of popularity. It's fun to be sharing our trip with friends and family, but getting e-mails and feedback from strangers all around the world is both fun and odd at the same time.

In all, traveling digitally really wasn't all that challenging. Going light certainly helps, not that the 10D and the lenses weren't heavy as bricks. Flexibility helps too; in fact, almost every bit of gear we brought has failed at some point or another. I scratched the 10D CMOS and had to repair it, the first laptop went bust, the CD drive stopped working 2/3 of the way through, and not long ago, Jen's Canon S400 camera developed the infamous E18 error (S400 owners beware!). However, there are enough resources and alternatives out there that you can either have things repaired or find another way to save your data... there really isn't anything to be afraid of bringing your digital gear on the road!