Camera gear

The one area in which I've actually given the trip some thought is the camera stuff I'll be taking. The last time I went I lugged my giant XL2 to shoot some bands. This time I'm leaving that behind and bringing the tiny Canon TX1. This camera can shoot in HD, holding roughly 13 minutes in 4GB. I've got two 8GB SDHC cards but even so, that's not particularly practical. The SD mode (640x480, 30fps) is more reasonable, about 35 minutes per 4GB. This is what I shoot most of my video with and is pretty decent outdoors or in well lit interiors (outdoors at night gives less useful results).

The one additional trick that I haven't tried before is bringing an external hard drive. I got this portable USB powered drive for Christmas, a 160GB WD Passport (cherry!). This thing is tiny, maybe 1cm thick, fitting easily inside an interior coat pocket. My plan for this trip is to dump the flash cards on here nightly.

The only regret I have about the camera logistics is that CNSMHB won't be back from Africa to let me have my (hopefully elephant poop free) travel battery charger & extra batteries. But given new DOT restrictions on spare lithium batteries that might be for the best.