British Exploring – Training

A huge privilege to have been asked to join British Exploring; and I will be going out to the Arctic (Finnmark) with them as Photographer (or Media Leader) to record the expedition and instructing the Explorers to help them along the road to producing better images.  There are a number of build up weekends, and this weekend was held up in Aviemore to practice some of the technical things we will need to put into practice on the glacier when we get to the Oskfjordjokelen glacier.

Actually, I had thought we would be practicing knots in the snow this weekend – but as it happened we ventured up and up and had did some reasonably interesting things with ice-axes and crampons in some reasonably technical places.  Really great fun!

Although I took my Nikon D4, I was concerned we would be too busy training to use it to full potential, so I hung my Fuji X100 around my neck and threw caution to the wind with (a) the fixed 23mm lens and (b) the fact that I was without a waterproof case for the camera.

I did bury it in the snow a couple of times, but it didn’t seem to object too much.  You will see that I really tested the metering with some shots of half very bright snow, and half dramatic sky.  It coped brilliantly!

This leaves me with a slight dilemma.  What do I take for the prolonged period on the glacier?  Should I take lots of lenses and heavy old body, or do I just take the X100 and a plastic bag?  I do know that I will be taking flash for some off-camera work – but my Nikon Pocket Wizards triggers work with either the D4 or the Fujifilm system (a huge bonus!)

I am shooting in the snow in Verbier in ten days time – I will take both systems and see if that helps me make up my mind!