As I write this, I’m finishing preparation and packing for a trip to the Peruvian Amazon. As I put together the last of my gear, I’ve been going over the equipment that I’m taking along to record my travels. Hear is some of the tech gear that will be exploring the Amazon River and Jungle with me.
Nikon D40 DSLR
My main camera. Coupled with a several great lenses, the D40 takes some excellent photos, and makes for a wonderful travel camera. There are a number of great choices when it comes to DSLR’s these days, but the thing I like best about the D40 is that it is smaller than any other camera in its class. It fits into a backpack much more easily than many other DSLR’s, which can be incredibly valuable when traveling light and extremely useful depending on where you’re going. I also love that the D40 uses SD cards to store photos. I’ll take two 2GB cards with me as well.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5K
My back-up camera. A small, wonderful little point-and-shoot, that is perfect to throw in your pocket for those times when you don’t want to take out the DSLR, or it’s buried in your backpack while you’re on the move and you don’t have time to dig it out. I love that the Lumix can take widescreen shots, and short videos, and its picture quality is excellent cmpared to other point-and-shoots in its price range. It uses SD cards as well, and I’ll keep it loaded with a 2GB card at all times.
Samsung SC-HMX20 Camcorder
A tiny, high-definition camcorder, roughly the size of a can of coke, this diminutive camera takes great video, and stores it on internal flash memory or, you guessed it, SD cards. (See a pattern forming here?) Becaue it uses flash memory, the camcorder is incredibly light and you don’t have to carry along bulkier video tapes, and since it’s not hard drive based, it won’t fail at higher altitudes, which can be a consideration depending on where you are traveling. I keep this one stocked with an 8GB card on top of the 8GB of interntal memory. Video takes a lot more space, but the 16GB combined is good for about 3 hours of HD video on the highest settings.
HP Mini 1000 Netbook
The newest addition to my arsenal. This 2.5 pound laptop is small but feature packed. It has a great keyboard as far as netbooks go, and its built in card reader will transfer files from those SD cards from all the cameras I mentioned above. I equipped my Mini, which runs Windows XP, with a Solid State Drive, which again functions better at altitude than a traditional HDD, but sacrifices storage capcity in the process. But I’ll use the netbook to backup photos and write daily journals while on my travels, and for that it makes a perfect travel companion. If I happent to also come across WiFi, which is becoming more common in all corners of the world, it’ll also serve as an e-mail and web surfing station as well.
A quick note on the SD cards that I use across these devices. I deliberately purchased all my cameras so that they would use the same cards. if one should fail, I can easily swap them out without worry. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened yet, but this makes for a good contingency plan if it does.
Armed with these great high tech gadgets, I hit the road, and hope to capture the best moments from this, or any other trip, and then share them with everyone upon my return. So far, it has worked wonderfully.