Johan W. Elzenga schreef:
For Africa, the 1.3 crop is an advantage if you ask me.

Indeed, the 1.3x factor performs practically as a built in 1.4x
converter without the loss of light. So in practice my 500/4 performs as
a 600/4 without the extra size and weight.

I've considered
a 1D MKII as my second camera (I obviously cannot afford to take only
one camera if I'm on an assignment). The only problem would be that the
8 Mpixel is so much less than the 16.7 Mpixel of the 1Ds MKII, that this
would become a pretty expensive backup camera, which I would not use
much as long as I have the choice between the two.

Well, that would depend on the type of shooting. If you are shooting
animals and specially birds for books or magazines, the 1.3x factor is
an added bonus and mostly 8Mp will be enough.

OTOH, if I buy a
second 1Ds MKII I will really use both (with different lenses) as I used
to do when I still shot on film.

Having two 1Ds2 bodies would be great, though they are rather expensive.
For the difference in price you could also get something like a very
nice 300/2.8L IS.

Guess I'm waiting for Canon to bring
out the 1D MKIII with 14 Mpixels and 8 fps... ;-)

That would be nice. There are some romours about the upcoming PMA...

Personally I am also thinking about a second hand 1Ds (first version)
for fullframe. There are quite a few on the market, even hardly used
ones for reasonable prices. But I would rather stay with the mkII extras
(CF and SD cards, video out, big lcd screen etc) and have just one RAW
format (CR2).

Downloading a full 1 GB card takes about 3 to 4 minutes, so even after a
very successful shoot it takes less than 20 minutes to get everything in
the computer. It takes less than 10 minutes to backup all those files
over a FireWire conncetion to an external hard drive, so the total time
is about half an hour maximum. That means I can use my laptop without
recharging for at least 4 days. I've never been in a situation where I
couldn't recharge in 4 days.

So you only load the images to your computer and back them up. You dont
do a first scan through all the images to sort out which to keep and
which to throw away? That would mean about an extra hour or so per day.

However, I do not take any risks. I have a 12 Volt to 220 Volt (130
Watt) converter, that plugs into the car cigaret lighter, so I can also
charge laptops and cameras from the car battery if I need to.

I have never used such a converter. Do they work properly? Do you have
to keep the engine of the car running to prevent sucking the car battery
empty? By the way, the 4x4's I have used always had a second car battery
installed.

This
summer I will probably do an assigment in Zambia, where I may spend
quite some time in several bush camps. I'll certainly need the converter
in that case!

Where are you going?

Need an assistant? :-)

Regards,
Hans

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Hans Martens

Wildlife & Nature Photography
http://www.wildpicture.com
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