[pct-l] digital cameras on the PCT 2004

[david_tibor at yahoo.com (David Tibor)]

Hi all,

I'm planning on hiking the CA portion of the PCT in
2004.  And I plan to take along my Canon S40 digital
camera to capture the amazing scenery, comedy,
tragedy, spills, thrills, and whatever else.  There
has been a lot of discussion about digital photography
on here, so I thought I'd throw my 2 cents into the
mix.

I recently did a 10 thru-hike of the Tahoe Rim Trail,
and brought my camera, three memory cards (one 512 Mb,
two 128 Mb), an extra battery, and the small battery
charger unit.  I took pictures at 1600 x 1200 pixels,
with no compression.  I took 600 or so pictures, and
used up the 512 card and some of a 128.  With the LCD
turned off, the batteries lasted 5-6 days. (The LCD is
on during "panorama" modes and self-timing mode. As
you all know, shooting with the LCD on burns batteries
out fast.  I was able to recharge batteries a couple
times during the trip (in Tahoe City over breakfast
and in Kingsbury over a market trip), so I really only
needed to bring one.

My thoughts about this on the PCT in 2004:

1. I'm a bit apprehensive to mail full CF cards via
the US Mail, in case one gets lost.  That would suck. 
My plan is to have 3 or more 512 Mb cards (they aren't
too expensive any more), and just fill them up and
carry them.  And hopefully once every few weeks, I'll
be able to offload them at a friends along the trail
or a Kinkos or something, onto a couple copies of CDs
which could be mailed separately.  Sounds like
overkill, but I can just imagine my feeling if my pics
from the High Sierra got lost in the mail.  Yikes. 
Someday there will be more dedicated CD burners along
the trail, eh?

2. I'll carry the battery charger along with me rather
than in a bounce box (it's pretty darn light) so I can
recharge at any opportunity.  I know this isn't a very
ultralight approach, but the pictures will be hugely
important to me, and dead batteries = no pictures.

3. I'll make sure to carry the camera in a padded
case. I even thought about using a OR 0.5L padded
water bottle jacket, though it's a bit big.  It would
be nicely protected and insulated, and I'd probably
just throw it in my sleeping bag at night (with the
batteries and extra CF cards in it) to keep it from
getting too cold.  I once got a corrupted CF card
after a sub-zero cold night in Death Valley - I had to
do some work to get the pictures restored (see below).
 Not sure how susceptible the cards and camera are to
sub-zero temps, but I'd just err on the side of
keeping them in the bag in the cold.

NOTE: If you ever get a "Card Error" or something
similar on your digital camera, don't think that the
pictures are necessarily gone.  I thought I lost three
days of pictures from winter in Death Valley after one
of these errors made a card fail, but after some
research on the internet, I was able to restore almost
all of them.  The camera wouldn't show me the pics,
and the computer couldn't download them via the USB
cable. The approach to retrive them was: get a USB
card reader (mine is made by Dazzle) and plug it in,
and put the card into it, which allows your computer
to mount the card like it was a hard drive.  Then I
simply used Norton Disk Doctor and followed the
default prompts to restore the pics.  It's just like a
bad disk - the data aren't necessarily gone, but the
File Allocation Table (FAT) that tells the computer
where things are on the disk is messed up.  Once it is
straightened out, the computer can find the files
again (hopefully).  Worked for me!

Anyway, I'd love to hear other folks thoughts on how
to handle digital photography on the PCT 2004 trail.

Best,

Dave

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