Traveling with Technology: Alaska, Part 1

I expect this will be an interesting little series of posts over the next month. In less than 3 weeks, my wife and I, accompanied by my two sisters, a boyfriend and my parents…are leaving for a 7 day cruise up the Alaskan coast.

If you don’t follow the blog closely, you might not know that I am an avid amateur photographer. I have been preparing gear for this trip for quite some time, and I am looking forward to putting it all to use. I have done geek bag show and tells before, but this is more focused. I want to talk about the gadgets I will bring and how I expect to use them, then over the course of the vacation, I will blog about each day and what I actually used or needed, or wished I would have brought!

This will be a very well documented trip. Besides your standard point and shoot camera, a Sony 7.3 Megapixel in this case, and a decent digital SLR setup:

• Canon 40D 10 Megapixel Digital SLR with Battery Grip
• Canon 100mm f2.8 USM Macro Lens
• Canon 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS USM Zoom Lens
• Canon 50mm f1.8 Lens
• Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 Ultra-Wide Lens
• Bogen 3001NB Tripod Legs
• Bogen Ball Head
• Bogen Monopod

I had a hard time deciding if I was going to get a long zoom lens for wildlife. I am perhaps still waffling a little bit, but I decided against it. I do have a 75-300mm Canon lens that will be going in my wife’s bag that I can use in a pinch.

I am also bringing my Macbook Pro with a camera card reader for downloading photos, two 2GB and one 4GB Compact Flash cards and a Garmin handheld GPS for geo-tagging photos.

Of course the usual array of MP3 players, game devices, hard drives and other junk will tag along.

Follow this series to see what and how I use it, and what I wish I would have brought!

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• Our Alaskan Adventure So Far…