The Quiet Picture

Only three months ago I wrote about my new wideangle lens, Tokina 16-28mm. I was mighty impressed with it, but what I really didn’t see coming is that I would find out that it’s not wide enough. Yes sure enough, it’s 26-45mm on a crop sensor, but you have to consider that my previous “wide angle” was the 24-105mm zoom (38mm at widest on crop sensor). So going from 38mm to 26mm, I was sure it would be enough for me. But it wasn’t. So I did something I’ve never done before, which is by a second lens within three months so I’m now a proud owner of a Tokina AT-X 11-16mm f2.8 Pro DX and today was my first day out with it.

First impressions: It’s much smaller and lighter than the Tokina 16-28mm (of course). The build quality is just as solid as the bigger zoom, the zoom ring is a little bit stiff but it’s not a problem, and anyway it’s better like that than the Canon 24-105 which sometimes suffers from zoom creep when the lens is pointed down. And it takes on filters without any vignetting; I haven’t tried any stacking yet but as long as a polariser works, it’s all good.

Second impressions (after reviewing the pictures): It’s sharp. Even wide open. Corner sharpness is better than with the 16-28mm lens (I haven’t done any scientific testing yet, but I was impressed with what I saw).

So now I have a problem. I had almost decided that my next camera will be full frame (Canon 5D MkIII, whenever it is released), but after just one day with this new lens, I start hesitating. The small size and filter thread… it could just tip the scales towards another crop sensor (follow-up to Canon 7D, whenever it’s released). So I would say that it’s a tie at the moment and Canon will have to make the next 5D something very special to make me favour FF. Or make a total mess of the next 7D, that would also force me to reconsider my options. But all of that is still a long way ahead, until then I will happily shoot with my trusty old 40D and the trusty new Tokina 11-16mm f2.8. Honestly, if you’re looking for a serious wideangle for a crop sensor camera, then you can’t get better value for money than this!

* * *

I did two small hikes today, first one to Hägenlammsmyran which I visited the other summer to look for wolf lichen. I found the lichen and I found a fascinating bog, I mean just look at the satellite picture (shamelessly stolen from Google Maps), all those ridges with water in between. It’s a real maze when you’re walking around, you always have to look ahead for which ridge leads to the next one, and when it leads to muddy water. Except now of course almost everything was frozen and I was able to take some shortcuts, but like I’ve said before, walking on ice makes me very nervous so I preferred to keep on the moss. The water wasn’t all frozen anyway, it was still open in the places where it was flowing from one terrace to another so you had to keep an eye out where you put your foot. But on a windy day like this, that ice worked just fine because it doesn’t ripple!

My second hike was to Svartån, but I have a few HDR’s still to process so I will put that in another post.

Or, Tokina AF 16-28mm f2.8 AT-X Pro SD FX as it’s officially called (I’ll just call it “Tokina” in the rest of the post, I’m sure you understand why…). This is the new lens in my bag, when I finally gave in and got the wideangle I had been long wanting and long dreading!

Used on my 40D, the lens becomes 26-45mm. Not an extreme wide angle at all, but certainly wider than my 24-105mm zoom that has been my widest lens for years. The Sigma 15mm fisheye is obviously just a little bit wider, but with it being a fisheye it has very limited usability and I’ve only really used it in the winter for night photography. And this is the reason why I wanted to have a lens with a wide aperture, I mean in normal landscape photography the wide aperture means nothing, but in the winter I would sorely be missing the extra stop of light, considering that in order to shoot stars without trailing them I’m reduced to a shutter speed of 15 sec and I sure don’t want to crank up the ISO to compensate. I also wanted to have a lens that works with full frame cameras, so I only had two lenses to choose from and the Tokina was cheaper than the Canon 16-35mm f2.8L.

If I had had the budget for the Canon, it would’ve been a better option in that it is smaller and lighter than the Tokina and it also accepts filters (82mm, which would’ve been an additional investment). Because those are really my main complaints; no filter thread and the Tokina is heavy, I mean how can a wideangle lens be bigger and heavier than a 24-105mm zoom…? But it can, so I hope that the bulk gives me something nice in return. Nice being, low CA and distortion and overall sharpness. Having taken my first pictures, I can say that the CA is indeed well under control, in fact it has less CA than the Canon 24-105mm! Distortion is negligible, I could barely detect any distortion at all when I lined up the lens with walls. I even tried with the analog camera so I could see the full view but still no distortion worth mentioning, so if there is any it’s a moot point with nature photography.

Which leaves me sharpness. The centre sharpness is excellent, I won’t take any test pictures and compare the lens side by side with my Canon zoom because I’m perfectly happy looking at the pictures I took today. Corner sharpness however can be debated, but then again, it can be debated with the Canon zoom as well. But a mental note to myself, I have to try the lens full open. I was shooting at f8 today which is normally the sweet spot of any lens, so it will be interesting to see what happens at f2.8. Tomorrow morning should be sunny, so I’ll have another chance.

But as I said, today was the first day out with the lens. The weather was a bit iffy, but there was a window in the morning without too much rain so I drove to Svartåmyren after breakfast. I wanted wide open spaces to try out the wideangle, I didn’t really know what I would do with it in the forest so a big mire sounded like a good idea. I decided that I wouldn’t zoom in at all so I kept the lens at 16mm, this is a new thing for me. My photography is normally based on getting closer to things! But zooming in and never using a real wideangle means that my landscape photos become somewhat static and clinical. Composition is by the book but when nothing happens in the images, what’s does it leave me? It leaves me struggling with landscapes because I’m never as happy with them as I am with my macros. They say that equipment doesn’t make you a better photographer, but I think sometimes it helps… I hope I can improve my landscapes now. In theory I know how to use a wideangle lens, so now I have to learn to see the world in wide angles as well. I’m quite excited about this actually!

Regular reader(s) know that I have an ongoing quest to find a camera backpack that really works for me. I’ve tried with normal backpacks and customised them for carrying gear, and I’ve tried with several dedicated camera packs. My most recent camera pack is the Lowepro Flipside 400 AW which I’ve had for two years, which is actually a relatively long time for me to use the same pack… which I guess means that it has been serving me well. There is however one major failing with the Flipside and it’s the space reserved for non-photography items such as lunch and extra clothing. The front compartment that should hold all that extra stuff is flat and I can only put a small thermos it in. Despite this shortcoming it’s a good pack and there are many things to like about it as well.

Over time though the small nags start to build up, and I came to the point where the lack of extra space made me go on the lookout for a new solution. There are more and more camera packs on the market and it’s especially delightful to see that many manufacturers create packs for the outdoors person in mind, for example F-Stop and Clik Elite. Unfortunately neither of these companies have any representation in Sweden, but Dakine also make camera backpacks which are based on the same principle, i.e. a padded camera protection unit inside the backpack. But even then I hesitated, as much as I read about the pack I still wasn’t convinced that it fulfills my requirements.

So I started looking for normal daypacks instead. The skiing backpacks in particular are interesting, because all those strap systems give you plenty of options to attach a tripod. However, most of the hiking/skiing etc backpacks share a common problem – they are top-loaders. It just doesn’t work with camera gear plus clothing plus food, because then you would have to pack the camera at the bottom and the rest on top and how much fun will it be to take out your camera then?

The requirements I have for a photo hiking backpack:

• room for camera equipment (normally one body plus one or two lenses plus accessories)
• relatively easy access to the camera (“relatively”, because something has to be compromised)
• room for extra clothing
• room for food (with a way of packing the food and thermos that there is no risk of squashing the sandwich and no risk of any liquids leaking onto the camera gear)
• good tripod carry system
• comfortable on the back, without feeling lopsided when the tripod is mounted on the side of the pack
• not too big so there isn’t too much empty space even when going on a lighter hike
• front or back access (absolutely not top-loader)

I have a small camera bag which swallows the 40D with a lens attached, so after reading about these adventure backpacks with their separate padded units, I decided to use the small bag as the camera unit, and if I need any additional lenses, I can use my neoprene wraps to protect them.

Now it was just a matter of finding a backpack that would fulfill all my requirements while being the right size to store the small camera bag. When I came across the Bergans Birkebeiner, I saw the potential – it is the right size, it is has a “hatch” at the bottom, it has a front pocket big enough to store my filters, and a roomy top pocket for accessories. If I store the small camera bag upside-down, I can use the hatch to access the camera gear while the bottom of the small bag acts as a divider for the sack so I can put the clothes and food on top. I didn’t have the small bag with me but a quick measurement told me that it fits. Then I tested the tripod attachment and it felt good, even if I don’t dare to use the mesh pockets because I don’t think they can hold the weight. To be honest, I don’t know how much the side compression straps can carry either, but they should be stronger than the mesh anyway.

When I got home, I moved everything from the Flipside to the new backpack. There are two problems that I can see at the moment:
1) Accessories. I used a small bag for the spare battery and memory card and lens cleaner etc but it still feels a little bit unorganised. The Flipside may have flat pockets, but it has many of them and they are just big enough to separate all those small things from each other. So I have to think about it and see if could find something a bit more structured, but if the backpack otherwise works then those accessories are a marginal problem.
2) Camera hatch at the bottom in front. This means that I have to be careful where I set down the pack (luckily I’ve never had the habit of setting down gear in pools of water) and it also means that the pack will do a lot of time lying down on its back. This will be an issue in the winter and the risk of getting snow into the pack is also bigger like this. But if it becomes a problem, then I will just use the Flipside instead. I got this new backpack primarely for summer anyway, for those long hikes in the mountains!

That was all the theory. Now I need to go hiking!

A couple of years ago I wrote a lot about skiing, or rather, the problems I had with it. Those pesky ski boots just kept chafing and gave me blisters for every trip I made and I finally decided that I had had enough of the pain and gave up. But the thing is that I really like skiing, so I spent last winter trying to figure out how to eliminate the blister aspect so I could just concentrate on enjoying the experience. I set out to get rid of the ski boots and finally found a binding which allows me to use my hiking boots instead. The binding is called Epok from Tegsnäs and it’s really made for wooden forest skis (those that are broad, long and heavy) but it can also be mounted on the kind of hybrid skis that I have. It’s not pretty, but if I can ski without pain then I really don’t care!

Since it’s a bit tricky to remove the old bindings and mount the new, I had it done in a sports store in Ljusdal. When I brought home the skis, I was wondering if it would’ve been better to do it myself anyway, because I saw that the bindings were not completely aligned with the skis. When I tested them, it was a bit awkward to make the skis point straight and I also discovered that the balance wasn’t very good. Firstly because this binding has a higher profile than the old one so it felt somewhat unsteady, and secondly, the ski was a bit top heavy. Normally when you lift your foot, the ski is lifted parallel to the ground. With this new binding, when I lifted my foot the ski lifted from the back while the tip was still on the ground.

So needless to say that I had some big doubts about this gear before I set out today. And I was equally surprised when it turned out that my fears didn’t materialise! No sideways balance problems at all (read: no more than I had with the old bindings!) and I didn’t even notice the wonky alignment. As for the tip of the skis, it was a minor inconvenience at worst when I was going across a marsh and the skis got tangled in the grass.

I should also mention that technique-wise, these bindings behave differently than my old bindings. The range of movement is a little bit limited, meaning that there’s a little bit of a kick-back when you try to do these long strides but the binding stops the foot from lifting as much as you’d need. Maybe it’s just a matter of learning a new technique, but even that belongs to the minor category of inconvenience.

Because you know, when it comes down to it, the only thing that matters is if I can ski without chafing boots and pain. After a 5 km trip today, the only pain I have is in my arms which are not used to the activity! No chafing, not even a hint of any issues with my feet. But considering how many problems I’ve had before, I want to make a few more – and longer – trips before I’m ready to declare the Epok binding a success. But I have to say, I’m feeling very good about skiing right now!

We got some snow this week and the landscape looks just amazing. I can’t help it, I love snow! There’s not too much of the good thing yet so it’s still possible to walk around without problems, just ankle deep mostly. I made good use of it today, took the new road down to Öster-Hocklan and then past the shooting range to Loossjön and back home. It was an 11 km hike, I think I earned my slice of chocolate cake. What a perfect way to spend the day!

I had a new camera with me. I bought the Canon PowerShot S95 compact, which I hope will be everything that the PowerShot G10 wasn’t. The idea with the compact is that I can have it with me even when photography is not the main thing on the agenda. It’s true, sometimes I actually go for a walk just for the sake of the walk! Dragging around a heavy camera/lens combo and a tripod “just in case” is really not much fun. The S95 is small and light and so easily pocketable that I didn’t even notice I was carrying it. Doing a long walk like the one today is pure pleasure and it’s even better when I know that the image quality is so good that it holds up against the 40D, and I’m not kidding about that. It really is that good. I wouldn’t compare the IQ past ISO 200 of course but it’s not an issue because I would never go beyond ISO 200 with landscape pictures anyway and I doubt I will use the S95 for anything else than landscapes.

The problem I had with the G10 was that it was not small and light, I wouldn’t have stuffed it in the jacket pocket and that horrible 15 megapixels was a real turn-off (and Canon realised it, considering that they reduced it to 10 MP in the follow-up G11). So as soon as the novelty of having it had worn off, I was less and less interested in using it until it got to the point where I realised that I might as well sell it and wait for something better to come up. When I saw the specs for the PowerShot S95, I knew that this was the right compact for me. There is only one thing where the G10 beats the S95 and it’s the zoom range, the G10 went a little longer. So I know that there will be times when I wish I could zoom in a bit further when using the S95, but it’s still a minor problem when everything else about the camera is just so perfect for my needs! Granted, I’ve only used the S95 on a couple of occasions so far so it’s a bit risky to make any grand statements, but I honestly feel that this little camera is very capable and I will have many a good walk with it in the future!

Claes Grundsten is one of the best photographers in Sweden. He is a specialist in mountain photography and has authored or co-authored many books related to mountains and hiking. And since mountains are close to my heart also, Claes Grundsten is naturally one of my favourite Swedish photographers.

Having read many of his books and admired the imagery, I was excited to see that he has also published a book about flowers and mountains, “Blommor och berg”. It’s a coffee table book with nothing but pictures, no text at all apart from the intro. The idea of the book is to show the contrast in the mountains – small alpine flowers vs big mountains, colourful flowers vs black’n'white mountains. The book is divided in two, the first half is dedicated to the flowers and the second half contains the mountains.

You’d think that this book would be perfect for me, considering that I love mountains and flowers and alpine flowers above all. But it is true that you can’t judge the book by its cover – quite literally, in this case. Because it turned out that the cover picture was by far the best picture in the whole book.

It’s incredibly dangerous to say that “I can do better than that” because I’m just a rank amateur and Claes Grundsten is an established and respected professional. I’m used to thinking “I wish I could be as good” when I read his books. But page after page the feeling got stronger, these pictures were not holding up to the standard I expected and I couldn’t decide if it was because I was missing the point or if the pictures were quite simply not very good. By the time I had finished the flower section however, I was convinced that something was wrong.

Of course I can’t show any of the pictures here for copyright reasons, but I can try to explain. Take the black vanilla orchid for example. It’s a tough subject actually, very difficult to compose when it’s really just a ball on a stick. His solution is to use a backlit flower (which is nice in itself) and blue sky in the background. Also nice. But then… he has included the whole stem which means that the flower itself is very small in the frame and there’s an awful lot of empty background which is made worse by the crop which leaves the flower almost touching the frame on top! The same crop/composition problem is evident in many other pictures, as well. Like the common valerian; not just for the crop, but the flower is positioned on the left side of the frame and it’s leaning out! That’s such a big no-no that I can’t even imagine why it was done like that.

Maybe the problem is the shape of the book, it’s almost square which is not suitable for vertical pictures at all. Instead of using 2:3 ratio, his solution has been to crop them to 4:5, a useless format for tall flowers.

And when there’s finally a picture where the crop/format is ok, then the flower isn’t in focus. I mean I love using shallow DOF but the key to make successful shallow DOF pictures is to put the sharpness in just the right part. In the purple saxifrage picture, it’s in all the wrong places and there’s absolutely nothing for the eye to rest on. Had I taken this picture, it would’ve been axed in the first review round in Lightroom.

These are such beginner’s mistakes that I’m in total disbelief.

And then I got to the black’n'white mountain section. Back in the days before colour film was invented, everybody shot black and white for every subject. There was no other option, so it was the standard. When the colour films were introduced and got better, colour photography became the standard and black and white nature photography got marginalised. But you can still find subjects in nature that actually look better in b’n'w than colour, for example if you have a lot of texture in the picture, so I’m not anti-b’n'w as such.

I know that this is a matter of taste, but I claim that not every photograph is suitable for a b’n'w conversion. A landscape picture that looks great in colour does not necessarily look great in black and white, I don’t care what it looked like in the old days when b’n'w was the norm. We’re talking about today, we’re talking about a book that is only a few years old, created in the era of digital photography, the era of digital colour photography. You just can’t take any odd landscape picture and convert it to black and white and publish it in a book under the premise of “contrast”. It doesn’t work, sorry but it really doesn’t.

I’m sorry for this trashing, but the disappointment was huge because my expectations were sky high, thanks to the previous work I’ve seen from Claes Grundsten. It only leaves me with a question, why Mr. Grundsten? Please tell me it was because of a cash flow problem, because anything else is either cheating or a serious error in judgement. If you intended “Blommor och berg” as an artistic statement, then it’s a gross misrepresentation of your skills. I still think you’re one of the best photographers in Sweden, because even the best photographers are allowed to make mistakes. However, the right place for those mistakes is the recycle bin, not a book!

* * *

But I must say that something good came out of it, too. The format of the book is simple so it’s easy to put together a book like this in any self-publishing software. All you need is the pictures, and when it come to flowers, I know I have those pictures. At first I had considered of buying this book (thankfully I didn’t but borrowed it from the library) because I wanted a coffee table book for the coffee table in my cabin (-to-be).  Now I realise that I can create the book myself. It won’t sell any copies because I don’t have a name, but I don’t want to spend the money on someone who’s abusing their’s!

We’ve had a little bit of new snow, but it’s not really the big transformation I’m waiting for so I’m feeling unusually uninspired and left the camera at home today. Except, I’m not really ever totally camera-less – I keep the mobile phone with me and it has a camera. It’s one of those semi-smart phones and the camera is just one of the things it doesn’t do very well. But as they say, your best camera is the one you have with you, so instead of walking away while trying to kick myself for missing an opportunity, I decided to make the most of what I got.

I won’t even go into a discussion of comparing a phone camera to an SLR. Can they be compared at all, anyway? Apples and oranges… anyway, with all the shortcomings in mind, I reckon the results aren’t always terribly bad. Not terribly good either, granted, but for those occasions when you’re not carrying and SLR with you, then the phone camera is indeed the best camera you have with you. One thing that surprised me though is how it seems like it does a good job with some pictures while other ones fail. For example, I think the sharpness in the “Glove” and “Loos” pictures is quite acceptable. I was sure that the “Arches” picture below would be sharp as well, and part of it is, but then part of it is somehow muddy. Not out of focus, just… not sharp. Kinda like part of the picture is compressed harder than the rest of it.

I was also surprised about white balance. It actually does a good job at auto WB! But it doesn’t help much when there’s so much noise. The noise is very obvious in the first picture – even if you can’t see the grain in this small version, you can see the colour distortions. Just like the sharpness in “Arches”, the colour noise varies in strength across the picture. Seems to be worse on the right side. In order to get over this handicap, I tried a black&white conversion. The “Loos” picture worked pretty well as colour, but the b&w treatment suits it better. “Arches” look awful with the colour noise, so the b&w conversion definitely rescued it. Except for the problem with the sharpness, obviously.

I’ve had the mobile phone for … two years now? And this is the first time I’ve seriously tried to take any pictures with it. With these results, I think I will stick to my SLR though (surprise!). I just have to get more disciplined about carrying it with me even when I’m not feeling inspired, because you never know what you find. For example those snow arches, I am kicking myself for a missed opportunity. The camera I had with me was not the best one…

This should come as a less of a shock after my G10 acquisition last year but I’m now a proud owner of a consumer grade superzoom lens, the Tamron 28-300mm f3.5-6.3 XR Di VC (I promise that’s the last time I type the full name of the lens). Now why would I want such a lens after using L grade Canon glass for so long? For many reasons, actually.

• I need another zoom lens because I’m tired of swapping the 24-105mm between the 40D and EOS 3.
• The “other zoom” should go long – 105mm is usually enough on my crop factor 40D, but I’ve found it short on many occasions on full frame.
• Image stabilisation – or Vibration Compensation as Tamron calls it – enables me to travel light (=no tripod). There’s a non-VC version of this lens and it’s much cheaper, but I figured I’ll be happier with VC.
• There aren’t that many superzooms that are suited for full frame. Canon has one in the L-series no less, but the price is in the luxury range as well. There are some 28-200mm zooms but the problem with all these superzooms is that they get soft towards the long end. I’d rather have a 28-300mm zoom that goes soft at 200mm than a 28-200mm zoom that goes soft at 150mm.
• This lens is better suited for macro work than the 24-105mm.
• The lens is small and light and is suitable for most photographic opportunities, thus ideal as a hiking companion.

So that’s the background for getting the lens. The downside is of course that a superzoom is a compromise at best, but I knew that already so my only expectation about the lens was that it would perform as I expected a consumer grade superzoom should perform. In other words, as long as my lens was not a bad copy, it would be fine for my purposes.

But I still hear you say, why would I want to have a soft superzoom with pedestrian autofocus, chromatic aberration and variable aperture (with a whopping 6.3 at the long end)? I mean, the pictures just won’t be any good, not when they’re held up against the Canon L glass or Sigma 150mm f2.8?

What if I told you that it doesn’t matter? Because it almost doesn’t, honestly. Of course I like to have sharp pictures. But I also like taking pictures. Just the whole process of it… the reason why I got the film camera earlier this year. It is the road that really matters. Image sharpness is not a critical issue for my purposes, I promise! So using a superzoom with the film camera will be just fine. And if needed, using a superzoom with the digital camera will be just fine as well.

With that in mind, I won’t bother to be testing this lens; lens charts and brick walls have never been part of my subject matter anyway. I just simply took the lens and photographed subjects that I normally photograph, and then checked that the results matched my expectations and they did. It’s not a bad copy, which is good. The G10 is softer for sure, so maybe it was a good thing that I had my eyes “conditioned” to see less than pin-sharp pictures and the Tamron sharpness, or softness, was acceptable. The only thing I haven’t been able to see is the corner sharpness, only the slides will show it later when I get them back, but I’m sure it won’t be worse than expected either.

So what else can I say about this lens, except that it is what it is and is actually rather good at that? It even exceeded my expectations in one aspect, chromatic aberration. The Canon 17-85mm lens I used to have had much more CA than this Tamron 28-300 superzoom, and the CA tools in Lightroom removed most of it so it’s not an issue at all.

In fact, I’m rather pleased with myself that I got this little superzoom lens. It will find a permanent home on the EOS 3 and maybe make occasional visits on the 40D, but regardless which camera it’s sitting on it will still be fun to play with!

After the trashing I gave to the Lowepro Flipside 300, you’d think I’d never touch a Flipside again. As it turns out, here I am with the 300′s new big brother, Flipside 400 AW (which was released after the Flipside series was introduced, so it wasn’t available the first time around).

The thing is that I’m just having trouble with finding a gear bag that is suitable for me. Every photographer on the move knows that the bag is an essential piece of the kit, so it’s important that you’re comfortable with it or you’ll risk wasting your energy in fighting with the bag instead of concentrating on taking pictures.

I seem to be going thru bags one a year, initially happy but gradually annoyed. After the FS 300 debacle I got myself a new day sack which feels incredibly good on my back, accommodates all the photo gear and has a great option for carrying the tripod. For a bag which is not intended to carry photo gear, that’s pretty good. But then those annoyances. There’s no space for  a water bottle or a thermos, unless I store it together with the camera. No, I don’t think so. Likewise, if I want to pack a lunch sandwich, it is guaranteed to get squashed. And then the gear compartment, although I cut away a strap and a mesh pocket, the camera often seems to get stuck on the way in or out of the bag, tempting me to rip it out with force which one day may have fatal consequences.

So, enter the Lowepro Flipside 400 AW. Having read the specs for just about every photo backpack on the market today, the only one that fit the bill was the Flipside. The closest alternative to it was the Lowepro Nature Trekker AW but it was too big and too heavy. Many other otherwise suitable backpacks dropped out of contention because they had the tripod holder at the bottom and I categorically refuse to carry the tripod at the bottom of a bag.

I had second thoughts, and third thoughts, but based on the experience of the 300 and reading the specs and what other people were saying about the 400, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. And to my delight, I more or less got what I expected. I wasn’t positively surprised (unless not being negatively surprised counts) but I wasn’t disappointed either. The bag is light and well padded and is moderately weather-proof even without the supplied raincover.

Compared to the 300, this is what the 400 fixes:

• Padded waist belt.
• Sternum strap is movable! (I didn’t notice at first that it can be moved, so I started to wonder if the Flipside 300 had a similar movable solution. Because I sure hated the position where it was.)
• No hard edges which would press against my back.
• Roomy enough to carry the gear I need, although once again I can’t figure out for the life of me how Lowepro can fit in all the gear they give in the description (but I was already prepared for this, so no surprises there)
• The side pocket is big enough for a water bottle.

And what doesn’t work quite as well as I’d like:

• Tripod holder. Fair enough, Lowepro specifies that it is suitable for a compact tripod or a monopod, and I thought that my small Gitzo is a compact tripod. It isn’t. This would be a serious deal-breaker, but then I found that I can use the side pocket as a tripod holder – put two tripod legs in the pocket and use a strap to tie the tripod to the bag’s carrying handle. The tripod sits steady like this, the only question is how long the pocket holds because it’s obviously not designed for this use. It seems pretty strong anyway.
• The rain cover is packed at the bottom of the bag, making it bulky and the bag won’t stand up on its own because of this. Not such a big deal though.
• The front compartment could open up a bit more. Now it’s tight spaces.
• Speaking of tight, many other pockets are on the small side. There are three tiny pockets on the main compartment lid intended for memory cards, but certainly not for a CF card in a holder. Maybe a CF without a holder, but I will not put an unprotected card in the bag.
• The main compartment is a little bit hard to get at because the shoulder straps tend to be in the way. Once you get the lid open, you need one hand to keep it open because the zippers don’t go far enough to allow the lid to “hinge” at the bottom. But I reckon Lowepro intended it this way – it reduces nasty accidents in case you forget to zip up the lid before picking up the bag! And now that I was out in snowfall, I found out that it also keeps the weather out of the bag. So it’s just a matter of learning to push the shoulder straps out of the way.
• Despite the generously padded waist belt and movable sternum strap, I still haven’t found a combination which would make the bag as comfortable on my back like my hiker’s backpack. It works fine for short trips, but on a longer hike, I’m worried that my shoulders will suffer. And if my shoulders start aching, then my head starts aching.

Despite these nags, I would still say that the Flipside 400 AW is the best camera backpack I’ve seen so far. There is room for improvement, but in the most important areas – carry capacity and carry comfort – it is quite acceptable. Certainly good enough for me to keep using this bag, time will tell if these small nags turn into major irritations though.

* * *

Based on my experience so far, it seems like my ultimate backpack still doesn’t exist. Tradional backpacks made for hiking have superior harness systems while not ideal for photo gear. And photo backpacks, while keeping the gear safe, are not comfortable on my back. I think the problem is that photo bag makers like Lowepro use the photography aspect as the starting point, so the ergonomics needed for hiking are sacrificed, even when they claim otherwise. If only Lowepro (or any photo bag maker) could get together with an outdoors gear manufacturer (e.g. Haglöfs)… The outdoors company could provide the frame of a hiking sack and Lowepro fix the gear storage. It would make an expensive pack, but at this point I’d be willing to pay!

I got my snowshoes back in 2003. Snowshoeing was a very marginalised sport in Sweden back then, and it was difficult to find any snowshoe information when I was trying to decide which kind of snowshoe to get and which size I needed. Since I had trouble finding that information, I wrote a page on my homepage describing the selection process I went through but I will now retire that page because the information is getting a bit dated, so here’s an updated and less technical version of the old page.

The snowshoes I ended up with were TSL 217 and I’m happy to say that I despite all the problems I had with the decision process, I made the right choice.

All snow is not created equal. When I did my research back then, one thing that no one ever seemed to mention about snowshoes is that they will not help you much with soft snow. When you’ve got 50 cm of powder, you’d need wings to float on top of it. But having said that, a passage which is impossible without snowshoes becomes merely difficult with them, so you just need to be realistic about their ability to carry you.

Snowshoes are also good on packed snow like snowmobile trails. Normally the trails will hold you even without skis or snowshoes, but the snow always glides a little bit under the foot and the worst part is that just when you think that the snow is hard enough to carry, it gives in and your foot sinks. Often it feels like you’re working twice as hard, going one step back for every two steps forward. This problem doesn’t exist with snowshoes, the hold is good and they even out all small gaps under the snow, allowing you to find a steady rhythm to your walk.

When you are buying your first snowshoes, it can be tricky to find out which way to go. It’s not just the size, but there are different shapes to choose from as well, and materials of course. And if you’re only ever planning to walk on packed trails, then you can get away with smaller snowshoes that allow a natural gait than those big things that would allow you to go off-trail. I chose my TSL 217′s based on the size/weight ratio (and weight means my weight, not the weight of the snowshoes), and partly also because I figured that a solid plastic shoe is less at risk to be broken than leather suspended on a frame. The 217′s help me maintain a natural gait and they are not overly heavy so the extra weight doesn’t tire you. I also like the option to raise the heel which helps a lot with steep uphills. No problems in the five years I’ve had them, although to be honest, I think they’re more like to break from old age than wear and tear. Maybe now that I’m thinking about giving up skiing, I can finally put the snowshoes to heavy use!

Snowshoeing is increasing in popularity in Sweden. Many ski resorts now have snowshoe rentals and even dedicated snowshoe trails, but it will never catch up with skiing, which is traditionally the most popular way of getting around on snow. But I do hope that snowshoeing is more than just the “in-thing” to do right now, because it’s a lot of fun and for someone like me with a serious ski boot disability, it’s the only way to access the beautiful winter scenery!