Author Archives: Stoffs

Bigma (Sigma 50 – 500mm)

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I like to think that the reason I was able to get this lens is because I’ve got the gift of the gab and can sell ice to a Bedouin (or something like that), but ultimately it was my constant nagging that finally drove Jules to allow me to buy the lens and before she could change her mind eBay had another happy customer. First impressions were that it was bloody heavy, and in the constant penis-measuring contest that is photography, I thought I had won.

It takes some getting used to, and the minute you start moving towards 500mm you need all the help you can get to keep it stable – hand-held isn’t really an option. It also needs a lot of light, and I often find myself setting the ISO to 400 to take a photo that isn’t blurry without being too dark. Fortunately my mom was kind enough to make me a beanbag for it and this has made a huge difference.

It’s by no means anywhere near as sharp as the white jobs that Canon make, but then no amount of nagging would allow me to even look at one lest I get tempted.

Heading back to SA for a friend’s wedding in March I had the opportunity to try it out in the Pilanesburg. That’s when you realise that you can’t always win the contest – some are showers and some are growers and nobody can compete with an 800mm prime lens – bastard!

Here are a few pics taken with it

2012

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Apologies to our millions of readers if you’ve been holding your breath waiting for some more news about our trip. Unfortunately there isn’t any at the moment. We still spend a lot of time researching stuff online and the planning continues in earnest. If you’re interested in this type of thing you might want to visit http://www.africa-overland.net – a great site with links to other overland sites.

Brain Fart #2

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The first time we (Chris) left the lights on was when we went to get groceries from Tesco. No problem.

The second time we went on a 4 hour walk through Welsh countryside. Fortunately we managed to find somebody with jump leads. I imagine a callout to the middle of nowhere on a bank holiday weekend could be expensive.

Lessons learned include possibly having a checklist like pilots and surgeons to prevent this sort of thing from happening in future.

Included would be things like keys, lights, going through the checklist.

Brain Fart #1

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Having owned our car for less than a month, I thought it would be fun to reverse straight into another car in our parking lot. A tiny spec of paint came off our bumper, but the other car was not so lucky.

After putting several notes on the car we eventually spoke to the owner, who said he would give me a call once he had gone to the panel beaters. Turns out it will be about £250 to get fixed. “No problem, send me the receipt and I’ll pop the money into your account”. Several months on and the car still hasn’t been repaired and he hasn’t called us. Odd.

The Beast

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The BeastIs it possible to be in love with a tangible object? We say yes.

Initially we were hoping to get the old Land Cruiser 80 series, but they’re like hens’ teeth and the affordable ones tend to have spent their lives scrumming against the likes of Os du Randt and suffer from arthritis in their knees.

In the end we went for a gas guzzling 3 litre Land Cruiser Prado Turbo Diesel 1997 model.  We were quite fortunate to find a car that had only done about 100,000 km (roughly 60,000 miles) for it’s age and the price we paid – in the world of Land Cruisers that’s basically just after they’ve lost their milk teeth (i.e. Pulled them out with a pair of pliers and not bothered to put them under their pillow for the tooth fairy – they’re that hardcore).

She’s an import, which means you won’t know how to fold back the rear seats unless you can understand Japanese, but the nice thing about it is that the speedo is in kilometres for when we’re back in SA.

We’ve been on a few camping trips to the New Forest and Wales and after the initial stress of getting used to driving down skinny British country lanes with a car this size I don’t know if I could ever go back to driving a smaller car.

Some of the features include permanent 4-wheel-drive, sun roof, dvd player / radio, blue-tooth hands-free and extra power sockets in the front to charge cell phones and keep the gps running.

My only gripe is that she is very thirsty. Current estimates are around 8-9km per litre, but I’ll investigate ways to improve this without having to pop an egg under the accelerator pedal.

In the new year we’ll start kitting her out with all the cool bits – beetle crushing tyres, hard-core shocks and snorkel etc.

Cameras – all the gear, no idea

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Neither of us has a very good track record when it comes to cameras.  We originally bought a cheap Polaroid digital for when we went to Egypt to do our diving course. I dropped this in Dahab and something bad happened causing the camera to become too hot to hold. Fortunately we managed to save the memory card and all our photo’s of the pyramids.

I then saved up and got a Canon EOS 350d. This was superb until my folks visited us in London and my mom thought it would be a good idea to leave the camera on a train at Waterloo and age 20 years in the process. Fortunately somebody handed the camera in at the station and we got it back. Disaster averted until a couple of weeks later when I decided to climb onto a rubbish bin to get the perfect shot in Devon only to wipe out and turn my lens into an artist’s impression. Several weeks and a new lens later our flat in London was burgled and ownership of the SLR and Jules’ point and click was transferred to somebody else. This was where we learned the difference between the British and South African police. Somebody arrived the next day to take fingerprints and we received a call offering us counselling to help us get over the “trauma of our loss”. We’re still waiting for the SAP to come to take fingerprints from when my family was burgled in South Africa when I was 12.

The camera saga wasn’t over because a couple of weeks ago Jules went to a concert in Hyde Park and decided to get skwank and leave her camera there.

So as of today our camera gear is:
Canon 450d
Canon 18 – 55mm efs lens
Canon 90 – 300mm ef zoom lens (cheap lens but absolutely pathetic)
Canon 50mm prime lens
Canon 430 EX ii speedlite
Velbron tripod
Homemade wire remote (not worth making your own because you can get a wireless remote for the same price off Amazon)
Canon IXUS 117 HS
Gorillapod

Apart from hoping to fluke a cheap 5D on ebay, my lens wishlist would bankrupt most countries.

My birthday is coming up and I would be happy with any of the following (I’m not fussed if it’s a combined birthday/Christmas present if anybody is feeling generous)

  • Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
  • Sigma 50 – 500mm (Bigma)
  • Sigma 150 – 500mm

Thanks to a groupon deal we’re doing a photography course next weekend, so hopefully when the time comes to capture a pride of lions playing tiddlywinks with a leopard in the Masai Mara we’ll be prepared and deliver award-winning pics.

GPS

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After hours on Google we’ve decided to go for the Garmin 60 csx. Thanks to ebay we managed to win (you don’t buy stuff on ebay) a second-hand one for a reasonable price.

One of the nice things about the Garmin is that we can set it up to constantly save our coordinates which we’ll then be able to upload to Google Earth. We’ll also be able to sync these coordinates with our photos.

Other useful features include a compass and altimeter, and the ability to plan routes on Google Earth beforehand and upload them to the gps. The Garmin is also waterproof and quite rugged so should be able to survive me not being able to hold something for longer than about 5 minutes without dropping it.

 

We will be using maps from Tracks for Africa.

A comprehensive review of the Garmin 60 csx can be found here.