Lessons Learned On Major Shoot

1) remember to take the usb cord that connects my Epson 2000 to the laptop so I can burn DVD's - ended up with only a single copy of 1500 images - did get them home safely but hardly an ideal situation. A checklist is mandatory.

2) At the airport I thought I might have trouble with weight - my camera bag now weighs close to 30 lb. and the announced limit was 22 - fortunately they didn't think to weigh it but I might have to consolidate my lenses next trip (see prev. comments about not using the 300 much).

3) shipping my tripod I remove the centre column and pack both parts in my duffle bag (a lot handier than regular luggage) and pad the tripod with shoes and jackets.

4) Don't forget to put prominent numbers or letters on CF cards so you never have to wonder whether the one in your left hand is the one just out of the camera or the one that is ready to go in. I had two new ones purchased just before I went and didn't get round to labelling them.

5) Carry extra lens caps - I left one in my other jacket at one point - it was so easy to just reach in and grab an extra one.

6) Despite best intentions, occasionally lens caps fall off in the bag and without a uv filter you risk damaging your lens - I have finally broken down and invested in UV filters for my two expensive zooms.

7) I have the camera set up for sequential numbering of pictures since I bought the camera - but I have noticed that several times my Canon 1Ds2 forgets where it was and uses a completely erronious and previously used number for the picture - which means that when all the images were dumped into the same folder from this one trip, there were duplicates - I had to know this so I would not lose the non identical duplicates - which were from a different part of the shoot - have no idea how this came to be and not happy about it - just be aware that when copying the images to your hard drive, if it warns you about already being there - it may not be that you copied that folder already, it may in fact be two different images with the same sequence number.

8) One problem I haven't found a solution for other than being methodical and careful - when images are stored on the CF cards, the card holds a folder which holds a folder which holds the images - don't really see why this is necessary but is there some painless way to fetch the images without going through all those subfolders? I fear I will miss one folder in the process of transferring things over (I did and only noticed it by checking the continuity of sequence numbers on the images - there was a sudden jump and I found an entire folder of 100 images I'd missed. There has to be a better way - perhaps that is something that Lightroom or Aperture will address, or maybe I only have the problem because I'm too cheap to buy cataloguing software.

9) Zooms aren't just handy, they are essential if you want to avoid cropping.

10) having learned by hard experience, always zip up your backpack camera bag after changing lenses, that way when several minutes later and you quickly grab the backpack to move camera positions, you don't end up having the lenses roll out. It also keeps the interior of the bag cleaner, free from salt spray, etc.

11) the least speck of dust on my 17-40 front element shows up in the picture either as a spot or as flare (the joys of lots of depth of field and a wide view that is prone to flare) so every time you mount the lens, check for dust and clean as needed.

12) when cleaning, never ever use any kind of compressed gas - they all sometimes spray gunk on your lenses or even worse your sensors - for lenses use a brush and if need be lens cleaning tissue, for sensors, the spinning sensor brush.

13) Never assume the weather isn't right for pictures - it can change, either by location (cars can move faster than clouds sometimes) or simply over the time it takes you to drive or hike to the location. Remember that for every time you go out and just before the shot the weather goes wrong, there are other times it finally turns right. Seems like most cities claim they have the fastest changing weather. Sometimes it works FOR you.
14) the little things that slightly spoil an image and you think maybe it will be ok - trust me - it won't - anything that is slightly noticeable through the viewfinder is a gobsmacker in print - move on.

15) the harder I have to work to make a picture, the less likely the picture is worth taking. I don't want this to be an excuse for laziness, but looking back at 1500 pictures, the ones where I went wow, then spent 10 minutes to show it to best advantage, turned out a lot better than the ones where I worked really hard to put a bunch of elements in themselves less than exciting into a pattern which was somehow supposed to make up for the lack of wow-factor in the first place - it never does - makes me wonder why I keep trying. There's a reason you had to work so hard, you had so little to start with.