I had a backyard dry run sunday, pitching the tent, packing everything into the pack etc.
Putting you life into an 80 litre bag is a bit of an eyeopener.
Do I really need this stuff? and yet im finding it difficult to trim it down.
Its putting alot into perspective, about how much "stuff" one "needs" to get by.
If I wasn't making a documentary about the trip the pack would be 6-7 kilo's lighter.
Still, Ive managed to put together a fairly lightweight High Definition camera kit at a reasonable price, and at 7 or so kilogrammes instead of a 60-70 kg kit a tv crew would carry.
As I said before, it's all about compromise, between, budget, weight and quality of the end product. I think Ive managed to score well on all three counts. The budget has come in at under 10k (just) not bad for shooting a 2 month long documentary in three foreign countries.
Weight, well ive managed to keep it around the 16kg mark, a touch heavy maybe for 30 kilometre days in the Alps.....hmmmm. For quality, well that remains to be seen..the equipment isn't in question, I just hope Ive given myself enough time to master the canon 7D with the nikon primes I chose for the job.
There's a list below of (nearly)everything for the trip.
Black wolf 'dragonfly' tent.
Berghaus Expedition 80 backpack with Roman H3 3 litre hydropack water bladder.
Outdoor Expedition sleeping bag ,rated to -10*C.
Primus gravity VF stove with 0.6l fuel bottle.
Garmin GPSII plus & GR maps.
M-Audio microtrack II for audio recording.
HP mini 210, digitizing, blogging etc.
Seagate free agent external hard drive.
Canon EOS 7D 18MP 1080p full HD.
2 x LP6 batteries
2 X Nikon to Canon lens adaptor.
Lomography 38mm superwide DIANA lens.
Nikon NIKKOR-N 24mm 1:2.8 lens.
Nikon NIKKOR-O 35mm 1:2 lens.
Nikon NIKKOR-S 50mm 1:1.4 lens.
Nikon NIKKOR-P 105mm 1:2.5 lens.
Nikon vivitar automatic tele converter 2X-3.
Giotto 324 tripod.
sandisk compact flash card (2 more on the way)
Aputure ap-tr3c timer/shutter release.
TIFFEN lens filters - various X 10.
Thats about it, there were other items on the wish list but couldn't be accomodated in the pack, the budget or timeframe.
Items like the power gorilla and solar gorilla, to power the equipment on the go. maby 2 more batteries, 4 more 16 gig cf cards, that nifty little lantern I saw in mountain design on kent st, and maybe an elephant or 2 to carry the lot.
Well just over 2 weeks till I fly to Dublin, Ireland from Sydney, Australia, and 3 weeks till I fly to Valencia to attend the Tomatina in Bunyol and thus begin...the Hannibillica.
