Essential Equipment

Normally when you get your hands on a lovely new piece of DSLR equipment it's a good idea to treat it carefully, avoid scratches and knocks, and try not to drop the unit from a height of 1.5 metres onto a concrete footpath.

Graduated ND Filter sold for $10 and what a difference it makes. Never mind the ring adaptors or the rotating screw-on version, cheap is cheerful and adds one more creative tool for the kit without adding a lot of weight.

It often surprises my travellers to learn that I don't use Lightroom to process my RAW files. I don't use Aperture either. My choice might seem eclectic at first but my loyalty to Capture One has rewarded me many times over. Find out how.

Getting the right bag to cradle your kit is not easy. Comfort, space and security are hard to balance. For a decade I've travelled with one pack and one pack only. All that changed with the Flipside 300.

The hardest bit of kit to justify packing into the suitcase is a tripod. Once in a full-moon you'll want to have it handy, but for most of your travelling life they're just an extra bit of dead weight that you wish you'd left behind.

There are many options for storing digital photos on the road, but none are as practical or cost effective as a small laptop. They offer great value and excellent peace of mind.

In reality there's little technical advantage to one camera system over another in the world of Digital SLR manufacturers. But there are some technology considerations that are worth a closer look before you buy.

Blurb has been a wonderful development for me because now I can see more of my photographic expression converted to the printed media for which cameras were originally intended. The digital age has made photography more relevant and more accessible, but Blurb and other sites like it have returned digital photography to the essence of the art - sharing a printed image.

Which gloves are really really cool, but warm? In my travels across Arctic Norway, midnight shots in Lappland and cruising with penguins in the Antarctic Peninsula just one set of gloves has proved their worth.