Adventure photography is one of my hobbies as a photographer. Taking photo on rainforest and mountain ranges, Adventure photography as far as I know is very abusive and dangerous to your cameras.
Here are some issues and tips you need to know and be aware to minimize damages to your cameras during adventure photography
Sweat – from your head to your arm and trickling into your hand and surely find its way into your camera. Be sure to bring some gloves, this will prevent sweat from running straight to your camera. This will help you protect your hand and fingers from sharp edges.
Tripod – Bring the lightest tripod. Many a times when we didn’t bring ours with us, the moonlit landscape made us scrambling, looking for rocks, boulders, tree stumps and trees to place our long exposures.
Lens and a walkabout lens – Bring two good lenses and one “trek lens” 17-85mm (or wide with fixed aperture like F/2 and a 70-200mm with a fixed aperture (F/4). Forest is frightening nightfall place and you need that fast lens F/2. Trek lens is the lens that you walk with along the trail and your zoom lens that go from 18 to 250 or 28 to 300.
Camera Battery – last 1 day in the forest during your adventure photography. If it’s your first experience on adventure photography you would be shooting anything you haven’t seen before. If your SLR can take AA, bring more. Testing your SLR energy consumption rate is important.
Cold Drains Batteries – If one you are shooting along the mountainous region, expect that your battery deplete its charge 50% in 3 or 4 hours doing nothing. Make shure to keep your battery from cold.
Memory Card at least 4GB – You be shooting and taking pictures something like 4GB – 6GB a day as well bring portable storage device. Separate your blank memory card and its container on your pocket and filled memory card on your bag. Your camera’s LCD says you have 15 shots remaining, obviously replace the card.
Shoot Raw – Shoot raw instead of TIFF or DNG, CRW for Canon cameras, NEF for Nikon cameras and PEF for Pentax camera. Some definitions are lost during the conversion on any other format. RAW saves everything that it saw. RAW is probably the most dominant format for post-processing. It allows you to manage more over the images.
Vest and Cargo Pants – For outdoor photographers. Your vest is great to keep things like your blank memory cards, filters and spares. I recommend the vest with the waterproof pockets and with ventilated mesh. It keeps the camera and bag straps from slipping off your shoulder.
Swiss Knife – Get the one with the longest blade. A 4 inch sharp blade can shave off a young coconut faster than a machete. Make sure you have one on you at all.
Lighter dark at night – As for the lighter, you can use that to start a camp-fire or cook something when you are lost or stranded in the woods/forest during adventure photography.
Compass/Map/GPS – study the forest you are trekking. Remember the landmarks on the terrain in relation to the compass heading. For the GPS, get the type that can read signals indoors. Most hand-held GPS are useless inside the forest and you need to find an open window.
Tent – You need a waterproof and wind resistant tent. Two Man tent is enough to keep you and your things.
Backpack – put everything very important first you need into this bag, 50 litres will do. You could get a bigger backpack like the 70 litres but the bigger the backpack, you probably end up with a broken back or a slipped disc.
Adventure Photography teaches you to be good and condemnatory of your own works in just about all other photography such as potrait, street, architectural, landscape, macro, action/sport etc… you have to work with what is available.
Beside your camera equipments, the most essential factor is your health and fitness. By being physically fit and healthy, you will enjoy your adventure photography that goes with it.