Camera Rainwear

As I found out first-hand, the weather during New Zealand's summer is notoriously unpredictable. See for yourself:

This of course doesn't bode well for my habit of carrying around a somewhat non-cheap camera to capture memories of all that troublesome weather. Luckily for me, Jayita had done her homework and warned me of the possibility. So, the day before our flight, I hove off to Keeble & Shuchat --- the local camera experts in Palo Alto --- for some advice, and the brilliant man there introduced me to the Kata E-690:


Ok, I'll admit it isn't pretty, and even on a good day, looks like bondage-wear for the camera. But at around $40 it's been dashed worth it for all the shots I've been able to get without worrying about rainwater/seaspray/bird-droppings mucking up the works. It also means I'll be prepared for rain during the next California wildflower season. The only drawback is that you can't use the camera strap when it's in this, so that means you're holding on to the body of the camera the entire time. I counter this by holstering the entire contraption in my case (hanging at my hip) when I need a break.

Circular Polarizer

I was recently chatting with a friend about imminent ownership of more camera hardware, and the subject of a circular polarizer came up. During the recent trip to Kiwi-land, I've had the object firmly stuck onto the front of my Zuiko 14-45mm lens for most pictures, and I thought it instructive to demonstrate its effect, by means of a simple before/after commercial. Here's the shot without the filter (or rather with the polarizer rotated so that it's somewhat useless).



And here's the effect of taking the picture again (with the same aperture width, shutter speed and ISO sensitivity) but with the filter getting rid of extraneous reflections off the water surface.



The little beast isn't only useful when taking pictures around water. Leaves have a nasty habit of shining (especially after they've been cleaned by recent rain), and so do asphalt on roads and window panes. Filtering out some of that light will either prevent the picture from being overexposed in the areas of reflection, or excessively compensated for by dialing down the exposure time and leaving the rest of the picture dark (a nasty habit of point-and-shoot toys which try to be smart).

The only drawback is that you lose a couple of stops of light, but for most outdoor images where the sunlight is bright enough, it doesn't pose a problem at all.

New Zealand

So that was the best vacation yet. If you'd been paying attention to my bragging over the last 3 months, you'd know that the missus and I toodled off to New Zealand over the holidays. Some of the highlights:

Auckland city:

Sailing on Lake Taupo:

Kayaking/hiking in Abel Tasman National Park:

Spending the night on a boat in Fiordland:

Getting to see some rare critters first-hand:

I am of course leaving out large swaths of description of the what-happened-where nature; partially because I'm lazy, but more importantly because the dear lady has graciously cataloged the entire saga in her trademark detail. See more pictures here, and read about it all here.

I should also mention that the wife was responsible for all the planning, while I chipped in with all the driving. This worked nicely since if it had been the other way around, we would've done nothing more interesting than drive around very slowly for 3 whole weeks.