The Nikon Emergency Room Again

I've never had any serious problems with my Nikon gear, but after the expensive repair on my 24-70, I had some other issues.

First, the sun shade of the 24-70. When I put the lens in my camera bag, no matter whether it's on the body or not, I put the sun shade on the lens in reverse. Which is actually the position that most people have their sun shade in when they're shooting, but that's a whole different matter. The thing is that in the reverse position it didn't lock any more. I'd still hear the click when I put it on, but it didn't actually lock and as a result it fell off constantly when I took it out of the bag or whenever I walked around with it with the sun shade in the reverse position. Nikon Service Center said they couldn't fix it. It was normal wear of the sun shade. I ended up buying a new one that locks a lot better, but still not as good as my other lenses.

The non-stick sun shade

Then the D800. Great camera, love it. Super sharp, giant files, awesome quality. If it works. A couple of times the D800 just froze. The green light on the back of the camera would go on and not go off anymore. Whenever that happened, none of the controls worked. At first I thought I just needed to wait for the gigantic files to be written to the card, but that wasn't it. For a while I thought it was the cold, but then again it wasn't really that cold - the coldest it got was maybe -10C. They don't know what it is, and they are keeping the camera to run some tests.

The little joystick that broke off

One of the first things I bought for the D800 is the MB-D12 battery grip. I don't like the small size of the D800 and I prefer all my bodies to feel more or less the same. And I like to use the vertical release button and the extra battery is nice as well. But pretty soon on our Antarctica trip I lost the little joystick on the MB-D12. Don't know what happened - whether it just fell off or got stuck behind a piece of my clothing or broke off in my camera bag. I never found the little joystick again. Problem was that there was now an opening in the grip that showed electronics. When you're on a trip that includes plenty of sea spray and snow, that's not what you want. I ended up using some Duct tape to close the opening. The missing part has been ordered.

The zoom lens that didn't want to zoom

And then there's the 70-200. Remember the zoom ring that got stuck on my 24-70? Same thing happened with my 70-200. Well, not exactly the same because it didn't get stuck at 50mm, that would be really strange, but it just got harder and harder to twist it. In cold weather it was the worst, and I even messed up the rubber ring that goes around it trying to zoom in or out. Needless to say that's another item I left at the emergency room.

That's it? No, if only. I had three bodies that I used extensively for over a month, and I wanted the sensors to be cleaned. I'm an NPS member, so they do it for free, and Dutch people like free things. They told me I could wait for the sensor cleaning so that I could take at least some gear back home. After about 15 minutes one of the surgeons came out to tell me that something had happened. Something bad. When cleaning the sensor of the D3s, they scratched the sensor. They had to order a new sensor...

Let's hope I've had my share of gear problems by now and that 2013 will be smooth and without repairs.

Ice Capades is Photo of the Month

Marsel's Iceland picture 'Ice Capades' is Image of the Month on Naturescapes.

Here's the background info that accompanies the shot:

'Early this year I was travelling in Iceland, scouting for locations for a new tour. I was prepared to see a lot of spectacular landscapes, people had even warned me that I would get hooked, but it still greatly exceeded my expectations. As a result I didn't cover a lot of distance each day - too much to see and photograph! And as a result of that, I stayed much longer than anticipated - which was not too bad by the way.

This was taken at sunrise. I had set my alarm clock very early to check out the weather, and it didn't look very promising - completely overcast. The weather in Iceland changes quickly though, so I decided to give it a try anyway. When I arrived at the beach the clouds already started to move away and the sky opened up a little. Enough for some light and color to come through. Moments like this can disappear quickly, so I had to move fast. I shot three exposures to capture all the brightness levels and later merged them in PS.'

From our new Iceland Winter Wilderness Tour

If you would like to join us on this year's Iceland Winter Wilderness tour, please check out our website for more information, images, a tour impression video clip and a detailed PDF. One of the tours is already sold out, but we have a few openings for the other one. If you're interested - don't wait too long!

First Prize in NPN Awards

Just when we thought that 2012 has been such a successful year in terms of awards and recognition, the new year already starts with yet another award. :-) Marsel's photograph At The Gates has won First Prize in the Nature Photographers Network Awards. NPN is the internet's top-ranked nature photography site where nature photographers from around the world share their images. It's a real honour to have been chosen as a category winner amidst so many excellent photographers.

Double Arch, double exposure. Daniella did the posing and the light painting.

Here's the story that accompanied the shot when I first put it online:

'Of all the National Parks that I have ever visited in the US, Arches NP is without a doubt the most iconic one. Millions of photographs have been shot here, and to come up with something different is not easy. That does not mean one shouldn't try though, and I personally greatly enjoy thinking of new possibilities to photograph iconic subjects.

Double Arch is one of them. When you're standing below this imposing marvel of nature, it's hard to not be impressed by the size and the beauty of this amazing structure. From my research for my visit to Arches, I learned that 99.9% of all the images of this arch are more or less taken from the same viewpoint. I'm sure one of the reasons for this is that you need some distance to get the whole thing to fit inside your frame - standing inside the arch is not going to work. Unless of course you have a 14mm on a full frame camera. But even then it was tough to find a position where I could get all the openings and the lines at the right places - it only worked with a vertical composition. I was fine with that, because the vast majority of images taken of this arch are all horizontals.

I also decided to photograph the arch at night and to bring out the details and colors by using a flashlight. The advantage of doing this also meant that there would be stars, and stars are nice. I wanted to include part of the Milky Way, which meant that I had only a very short window of time to take the shot. These decisions were all very important in order to create something original, but the most important one for me was to include a human figure. It brings the shot to life and it acts as a vital scale element. The fact that most landscape photographers don't like humans in their pictures is always a nice bonus when you're trying to create something original.

This was shot three years ago as a double exposure - one for the sky with my lovely assistant, one for the light painting. We tried to shoot it again with our group on this year's Arches Under The Stars workshop, but the weather gods did not want to cooperate. They gave use snow the next day though, so that made up for that.'

Back from Patagonia

We're back home again. We had a good time in Patagonia, but we had clearly used all our luck for good weather in Antarctica. In Chili we got one decent day where we could actually see the mountains, and the same thing in Argentina. As a result I didn't take many shots with spectacular mountain backdrops, unfortunately. The scenery was stunning though and we really enjoyed driving and walking around. Our 16km hike in total darkness to get to the perfect location for sunrise on Mt. Fitzroy was a complete failure - low clouds and no mountain to be seen - but it was good fun and good exercise. We'll probably go back there next year and hope for better conditions.

Back from Antarctica

We're back in Ushuaia. Antarctica was awesome. The weather was extremely good - as a matter of fact a bit too good. Lots of sunshine and blue skies, not something I would pick for this place. But I guess it's better than being stuck on the ship because of storms. We got none of that. Temperatures were mild, not a lot of wind, and we didn't miss a single landing. We saw penguins, whales, penguins, leopard seals, penguins, dolphins, and lots of penguins. One of the highlights was cruising between giant icebergs in a small zodiac - can't wait to start processing the images. But I'll have to, because the next two weeks we will spend in Argentina and Chili.

View from the ship on yet another calm and sunny day.

Double Success In Travel Photographer Of The Year!

I just got an email from the Travel Photographer Of The Year Awards with some great news: I won two First Prizes in this year's competition!

In the landscape category (Wild Planet) I won First Prize for a series of four images from Namibia. All images were shot at night and feature quivertrees and stars, lots of stars.

This is what the judges said about the images:
'The sky is often overlooked when thinking about the wildness of this planet but what better example is there than the sky at night and the heavens filled with stars? Marsel's images were shot using small flashlights and natural starlight to illuminate quiver trees in the Namibian desert.'

One of the four winning shots from Namibia.

The second First Prize is for our timelapse video 'Namibian Nights'. We started working on this timelapse project in 2011 and we put a lot of time and effort in to get the results we were after. This summer I selected and processed all the images for all the different scenes, and after that Daniella did all the editing. We are really happy with the results and we're even happier winning First Prize in this prestigious competition!

The winning images and videos from 2012 will be exhibited at the Royal Geographical Society in London next year. After that, the images will form part of a new TPOTY international touring exhibition.

We will put the video online as soon as we're back home.

Update 15/11: The winning 'Namibian Nights' timelapse video is now online. Check it out here.

Drake Passage

Ok, this is it. We're aboard the ship, heading towards Antarctica. The weather is calm, and so is the sea. That's nice, because the next two days we'll be crossing the infamous Drake Passage.

The Drake Passage. Boring when it's calm, scary when it's not.

The 800 kilometres (500 mi) wide passage between Cape Horn and Livingston Island is the shortest crossing from Antarctica to the rest of the world's land, and it's known as the roughest sea on the planet. We don't particularly like rough seas, so let's just hope we don't get into the same problems as the Antarctic vessel Clelia II had to deal with a few years ago:

Video courtesy of Pazzo Per Il Mare

If it stays as calm as it is today, then there won't be much to see other than a whole of water and sea birds. The lower deck at the back of the ship is actually quite nice to photograph the birds that are following the ship.

No, that's not me.

Buenos Aires

Instead of flying straight to Ushuaia, we decided to spend some time in Buenos Aires first - getting used to the (minor) time difference and do some sight seeing. And steak eating.

Today we visited a church and a cemetary in the city, both very photogenic. I didn't want to bring any serious cameras, so I used my iPhone for all photography. And some iPhone filters.

Antarctica, here we come!

We're off to Antarctica. Last year was fun, but this time Daniella will join me, so she can carry my gear. Just kidding, she's got loads of stuff herself - mostly video gear. We'll be starting from Ushuaia and sail straight down to the Antarctic peninsula for hopefully some great landings.

There will be little or no internet facilities, so if you send us an email it may take us a little longer than usual to respond.

Seminar Workflow in Belgium

Today we spent the whole day in Antwerp, Belgium, where I gave another Squiver seminar: Nature Photography - From the basic idea to the final print. A big thank you to all participants!

Presentation at VNFE

Yesterday I gave a presentation at VNFE, a well known nature photography camera club in The Netherlands. Lots of people showed up, and it was nice to finally meet some of the people behind the names that I knew only from photography fora and Facebook. Thank you all for showing up, it was fun!

AF-S 24-70/2.8 to the Emergency Room

Something weird happened to my 24-70. On the Wildlife Bootcamp in Spain last month I first noticed that the zoom ring was not moving as smoothly anymore. I thought it was probably the weather and didn't pay much attention to it. But every time I used the lens, it was getting more and more stiff.

Then suddenly one day there was a new symptom: the zoom ring got stuck somewhere around 50mm. I could still zoom out to 24, but when zooming in, the ring stopped at 50mm. As a result I didn't use it as much on this trip, but every time I did, the zoom ring got stuck at a different focal length. Yes, very weird. And when I say stuck, I mean really stuck as if something mechanical on the inside of the lens stopped it.

When I got back home, I brought it to Nikon Service Center for repairs. Today it was ready to be picked up again. Obviously, my first question was what was wrong with the lens and what caused it. Their answer: the lens had been dropped or something had hit the lens. Right. I knew that I hadn't dropped the lens, nor that anything had hit it. But they insisted that they could see damage that could only have been caused by some sort of heavy impact. I still don't believe this is what has caused the defect, but what do you do?

They replaced: Guide Roller T=4.99, Rubber Ring, 1st Lens Lead Ring, Lens Hood Fixed Ring Unit. Total costs: 335 Euros! That's roughly the price of a brand new Nikon D3100 body and an extra battery...

Update 28/12: On my trip to Antarctica I met a German photographer who had exactly the same problems with the same lens. He also said that he had not dropped or bumped his lens. What's going on?