Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

I'm back - which category?
#1

Hello and Ni men hao everyone!

I am back from our three weeks trip to Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces, China.
We had a wonderful time, you can read all about it in my blog
I came back with about 12Gig of pictures, shot in RAW, which I think is reasonable for 3 weeks, but still too much to get through with editing in a week.
I will show pictures soon!

I went with my 350D and the 24-70L, by now I am used to the weight and in contrast to most people, who are taller than me and have bigger hands, I don't find it too uncomfortable to hold and carry.

There were however a couple of obstacles I encountered:

shooting raw only, I can fit around 100 pics per Gig, so the cards fill up swiftly.
I had completely underestimated the difficulty of getting a DVD burned in China, and had felt safe
enough with 6 GIG of cards and a pack of DVDs in the luggage.
at first it looked good as in one of the hostels we stayed at, when the cards were getting near full,
there was a sign offering DVD burning, but unfortunately their computer was broken.
It took over a week and I had to buy another 2 GIG card (very slow!!!), until we finally found a small copy
shop, where the shopkeeper agreed to burn a DVD. Most places can burn CDs, but not DVDs.
It was obviously the first time, the lady was burning a DVD. first she plugged my card reader into her
USB 1.1 and attempted to copy four GIG of data onto her harddrive to burn from there. It was after 8pm and I suggested she skip that step of some two hours... and burn from the card directly.
At this point she called her husband to come and help her, he started Nero and set the settings.
than their son, 13 or so years, took to fiddeling on the computer, tilting and skewing it, while the DVD was burning.
We sat at the shop until 10.30 that night. Once it was burnt, I checked that there was the right number of files and amount of data.
But I didn't have a way to check my raw files, to see that they weren't corrupted. wherever I mentioned RAW format, people shook their heads in ignorance, and of course noone would let me download a software onto their computer.
so when we finally had to format the 4 Gig card, I was terrified, and only really relaxed weeks later, back home, when I found all my pictures allright.

the second problem was actually a tiny accident, I didn't realize at the time. We were invited to join a chinese party in a village and everyone was happy enough for me to take pictures. When I got up one time to take a picture of the head of a pig that was being decorated to be sacrificed, the battery was suddenly empty.
I was surprised as I had just charged it, and angry because I had not had a chance to charge the spare one the night before, and I missed the rest of the ceremony we were watching. I even remembered someone here talking about "sudden battery death" (in a flash?) before.
Later, I opened the battery slot to see whether this was the original canon or a third brand battery. when I had closed it again, the cam worked fine, the battery was no where near empty. then I realised, that shortly before the attempted picture of the pig head, my camera bag, with cam inside, had dropped from a stool, some 30cm to the ground. the battery must have somehow been dislocated, or some electronic part got irritated by the impact, but later the camera fully "recovered" :-)


Now I am back at the University in Hefei. I spent the entire week since we got back taking care of computers,
the one supplied by the university on the one hand, which is the one I go online with, and which was down completely for weeks.
I don't know which one is worse, because on the other hand I have my laptop, which I use for my pictures, and when I was in Germany I bought a new 400G ext hard drive for it. of course it doesn't work..... but now I am in china. with my previous 250G pretty much full I am running out of space to even put the pictures from our trip!!!


Finally, I was thinking, once I have pictures to post, we don't have a Travel Category on ST. travel pics don't really tell a journalistic story, they don't always require critique, aren't snapshots but also not neccessarily a case for the showcase, they are just TRAVEL PICTRES! what do you think? where do zou put your travel pictures? should we have a separate category for them?


Sorry if I am boring with technicalities instead of just showing pics.... :-)

Uli
Reply
#2

wulinka Wrote:Hello and Ni men hao everyone!

I am back from our three weeks trip to Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces, China.
We had a wonderful time, you can read all about it in my blog
I came back with about 12Gig of pictures, shot in RAW, which I think is reasonable for 3 weeks, but still too much to get through with editing in a week.
I will show pictures soon!
It's great to have you back.

I read through some of your blog, which is really well written. I'm suffering culture shock just from reading about what you're doing.

wulinka Wrote:shooting raw only, I can fit around 100 pics per Gig, so the cards fill up swiftly. ... so when we finally had to format the 4 Gig card, I was terrified, and only really relaxed weeks later, back home, when I found all my pictures allright.
That's a relief. I had a similar experience to yours trying to burn DVDs while I was in California. I was staying in a house with four computers, two PCs and two Macs. First I tried the "iLamp" Mac, since it's what I'm more comfortable with, but it couldn't write to the only DVD media they had. Next I tried the PC desktop next to it, but Windows gave me a weird error that my father swore he'd never seen before. He said the same thing when his PC laptop had the same problem. Finally the fourth computer, an Apple laptop, burned two DVDs without any issues at all.

And I'm glad to hear that your camera's okay after its short fall.

wulinka Wrote:Finally, I was thinking, once I have pictures to post, we don't have a Travel Category on ST. travel pics don't really tell a journalistic story, they don't always require critique, aren't snapshots but also not neccessarily a case for the showcase, they are just TRAVEL PICTRES! what do you think? where do zou put your travel pictures? should we have a separate category for them?
It's starting to look that way. Maybe it would get Jules to finally post some from his trip.... Big Grin

I've been posting mine pretty much everywhere. If I had to pick only one forum, I'd say Photo Stories, but some of mine are only meant as snaps, some need critique, some are more technical, some are meant as series...

matthewpiers.com • @matthewpiers | robertsonphoto.blogspot.com | @thewsreviews • thewsreviews.com
Reply
#3

Wow, what a trip. The blog is awesome. I haven't read it all yet as it is quite extensive and must have taken an age to write.

Travel would be a good forum. Looking forward to the pictures.

Canon stuff.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread / Author Replies Views Last Post
Last Post by NT73
Oct 2, 2012, 05:19
Last Post by nia
Aug 30, 2011, 00:32

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)