Are you headed overseas well here are some gadgets you might want to bring with you
Adorama TV presents Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace
Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of Exploring Photography I'm Mark Wallace well as
some of you know if you've been following me for the past two years I've
been traveling all around the world and I'd like to share some tips with you
about taking care of your gear and some things you might want to take with you
if you go on an international trip. Some of these things are pretty obvious
but others might surprise you so the first thing I want to talk about a
question all the time is how do you clean the sensor on your camera and
what I prefer to do always this is to take my camera, it doesn't matter if it's a Leica
or a Canon or Nikon to an authorized service center and having them do it I
don't like touching my sensor and so that's how I clean my sensor but with
if there's a dust spot or something on there, what I do is I use this little
blower. Now this little blower is something that you should absolutely
have regardless if you're traveling or not and one of the things that's very
important is; do not get a blower with the little brush on the end. You don't
want that why?
Well as soon as you take your lens off of your camera and you go in there to start
doing things, well those little brushes can break up inside your camera and that
is extremely bad news. You don't want to do that the other thing you want to do
is if you're cleaning your sensor, so normally you turn on the in the menu the
sensor cleaning you push the shutter release and the shutter opens and then
you can blow off that sensor. Don't do it like this with your camera normal
want to do that because the dust is just going to blow around in there. What you
should do is put it on a tripod make sure it's facing down and then be very
careful. You don't want to jab this way up in there where it hits the sensor so you
need to get underneath there, look at what you're doing,
Give it a few gentle blows let the dust fallout repeat that and do it as many
times as you need to get that sensor looking nice
and clean. The same thing of your lenses don't touch the lens itself.
Make sure it's facing down so that that dust falls down. It is pretty obvious but I've
seen just so many photographers doing sensor cleaning where they sometimes
even have their camera facing up. You don't want to do that so use a tripod
makes your cameras facing down and then don't jab your camera with the little
bulb there. Another thing that I use a lot. Now this one is one of my favorite
things. This is a little bicycle tool and you get these at sporting goods stores.
It's got just a few little Allen wrenches, hex wrenches, little screwdriver et cetera and
the reason that I use this is if you travel a lot. In your bag, in the luggage
your tripod is going to start shaking loose eventually, and so these little
screws here that hold the legs nice and tight. They are going to need tightening and guess
what this will do the trick. You can get in there and you can tighten up those
legs just fine and it also has several tools if you need to put on a tripod
plate or take that off that will work just fine and its tiny and really
lightweight it does all kinds of stuff. You'd be surprised how many times you
will use one of these bicycle tools so it's got a screw driver plus all the
Allen wrenches and that will help you tighten all your different parts of your tripods
and those types of things. The other thing I would have to mention is I always
travel with a Leatherman because you just use these constantly for fixing and
slicing et cetera so it goes without saying but I thought I'd throw it in here
anyway
A Leatherman is just something I just wouldn't travel without, alright
the other thing when you have a video camera or a charger doesn't matter
make sure you get a dual voltage charger almost everything that sold these days
is dual voltage you need to make sure you check because if you plug in a
110 volt appliance into a 220 volt, it is going to blow up so these guys
will work with both European, South American, North American. It'll work just
fine but you're going to need to be able to convert all your plugs,
into different plug types so you can do if you're lucky you can get plugs
that have different shapes like this it'll work in different parts of
the world might get one that has even a cigarette lighter adapter, some of the
chargers have that which is really nice you might find some that are USB but if you
don't you only have one kind of plug you need to get some adapters so that you
can make sure you plug in all your stuff all over the world of these make sure
you do that before you leave because sometimes they're hard to find those or
the ones that you do find aren't very good quality is a matter of fact here's
one that's not very good quality that I bought and if you look closely you can see that
this is all nasty and corroded if I plugged that in it probably would light on fire, I just kept
it so I could show you that these guys they're cheap aren't necessarily so good
that's the kind of stuff you find at normal maybe a little market outside of
a city somewhere so get the good stuff and that will really save you in the long run.
Some people have a big block that you can flip out different adapters and
stuff. I don't recommend those. I recommend the smaller ones because if you're
an airport or something and you have a big block usually airport outs have been used
so many times they just won't stay in. They just fallout but these guys they're not that bad.
Alright, if you're in a hotel there's a little trick that I use all the time.
We've seen these a million times and we're thinking why do they put these in
hotels now the shower caps well I always steal them because in a pinch if there's
a rainy day outside and I need some extra cover for my camera well guess what?
The shower cap is now a rain cover for my gear. I use that all the time they're
absolutely free, you
paid for the room so why not get the extra shower cap camera protection.
They're really small and tight when you're done you can just sort of threw them away so
it's a really inexpensive way to protect your gear in a pinch. The other thing is if
you're working in really humid places the southeast United States in the
summer, maybe some swamps if you're in South America in the jungle etc what can
happen to lenses is that humidity can get inside the lens and then fungus can
start to grow.
The bad thing about fungus in a lens is it doesn't show up right away sometimes
it can take two or three or four or five years before you start to see the
effects of the fungus but it affects how much light passes through the lens, you will
start to see some vignetting, soft-focus, the resolution decreases. You don't want
that it can really hurt your lens and eventually it can get between the lens
elements and actually crack the Lens. If you spend a lot of money on a nice lens you
want that lens to last 10, 20, 30 years, a long, long time. You don't want
to cash those in every year or two. So a few things to do with a lens in wet weather.
The first thing you want to do, as soon as you're done
make sure you dry off the lens with a nice lint-free cloth. You can use your lens
cleaning cloth. Make sure it's dry as fast as possible if you have a zoom lens
or something that focuses in and out like this. See how that extends out of the
barrel comes back in what's going to happen inside the lens is there's air that is
trapped so make sure that you zoom in and out a few times to get that humid air
out of your lens and the other thing that you want to do if you've been shooting
in humid weather for an extended period of time you need to do this if you just
shooting out in the rain for a couple of hours but if you're on a trip for an
extended period of time
get just a little ziplock bag. Put your lens inside there and then get a little
packet of silica gel. You can get these in a new pair of shoes, in a million things.
We throw these away all the time. Make sure you get a nice new one. Stick that in the bag and then
seal this up so that it's airtight. You want to make sure it is absolutely air-tight and then that will
suck all the moisture out of the Lens. Now one precaution if you have some silica
gel that is old and it's already soaked up the moisture, if you do that it's going
to do the opposite. It is actually going to put moisture into the lens so make sure you
have a nice new silica gel or else you could be causing problems where you didn't
have any originally. A couple more things just for the practicality of travel if
you are doing scenic photography you are going to be shooting at night make sure you have a
nice flashlight because if you don't you might not be able to see where you're going
or what the adjustments need to be made on
your camera so flashlight is invaluable and if you're shooting video or you're
on an airplane you want to have a great ear buds. Now I recommend, these are sort of
expensive in fact I'm not going to lie, they're very expensive. These are Shure headphones and
I put a link in the video. The difference between these headphones and other
headphones is - A. they're extremely high quality so you can actually do audio
monitoring for professional video and they're not like earbuds that just go into
the ear. They actually have these little replaceable tips on there they go into
the ear and they seal the ear so it is a sound isolating technology and so what that
does if you're in an airplane, or in a busy airport, if you're in a coffee shop
you can't actually hear anything except what's in the headphones. They're like
ear plugs but the advantage of a really high quality headphones. The other thing
is if you're working with somebody or traveling with somebody
get one of these little guys just a little splitter, that way you can both watch the same video watch
the same movie or make sure you're monitoring the same audio if you're shooting
video or something and that can just go right into the case but I highly recommend these
guys these are the Shure headphones they are expensive, but if you are doing pro work make sure you
do that. Also two more things to remember make sure you have a nice lens cleaning
cloth and then once you get these dirty, don't use soap on them, just rinse them
out in normal clean water. Let them hang out to dry and they'll be good to go again
and then if you're shooting around dirty areas; if there's mud, if there is hair from
animals be really diligent about your camera case because anything that gets in your
case, guess what ? You are essentially putting that on your camera. If you've dogs or
cats, if you've got pets you know how much animal hair can get into things.
So really be diligent anything that's in your camera bag is going to be on your
camera. Ok well that's a lot of stuff with just some small things that can
make a big difference if you're taking an extended trip overseas in doing some
photography and these are some tricks that I have
learned along the way. Well thank you so much for joining me I hope this helps
you out remember if you want to know more about scenic photography, travel
photography, street photography, studio photography, shooting video any of that kind of stuff.
You can find it absolutely free, tons of tutorials at the Adorama Learning Centre
and as always make sure you subscribe and that way you don't miss a single thing.
Thanks so much for joining me and we'll see you next time.
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