Review: LegCoat, LegWrap, Memory Wallet & Battery Pouch

One of the first photo accessories I ever bought, was a set of LegCoat covers for my Gitzo tripod. Each cover consists of two parts - a soft closed cell foam padding that wraps around each leg and sticks to the leg with the help of a strip of double-sided adhesive tape. The second part is a piece of stretchy neoprene that wraps around the padding and it closes with a strip of velcro. It's easy to put it on and it will last a really long time. Most people think that the main reason for using these covers is to protect the tripod. While it does indeed do a very good job at that (I always travel with a semi hard duffel bag that I check in at the airport, and my tripod is the only photo gear that goes inside that bag), it wasn't why I bought them in the first place.

LegCoat covers on a Gitzo tripod

When shooting in the field with my 200-400 or my 600 on a tripod, I often like to carry the whole setup over my shoulder - the camera with the lens attached is on the tripod and the tripod legs are resting on my shoulder. You can read a lot of horror stories on the internet about this being dangerous because your camera and lens may fall off, but if you use a good ballhead and a good tripod and you're not slamming it against a tree or a rock, it's actually very low risk. However, I quickly realized that it's not very comfortable to walk around with the weight of a pro sized DSLR and a 600mm on your shoulder, primarily because the tripod legs are relatively thin and quite hard. The LegCoat covers increase the surface area greatly, so the weight is distributed more evenly and the soft padding makes it feel so much better on your shoulders. 

Another advantage of the LegCoat covers you will appreciate when you're shooting in cold weather. Your tripod, just like most of the rest of your camera gear, will get very cold very quickly. When carrying your tripod in the cold, your fingers (without a doubt the most vulnerable body part of any photographer shooting in cold conditions) will be freezing in no time. The neoprene covers don't get that cold and your fingers will love you for it.

I've been an enthusiastic user of the LegCoat covers for many years, but I do also have a few minor issues with them. The padding is quite thick, which is what makes it so nice when carrying over your shoulder. But it also makes the tripod a fair bit bulkier in your check in bag. A pro sized carbon fiber Gitzo is not exactly small, so it eats away a lot of valuable space. Another issue is that when I'm shooting with my tripod in the lowest position - all three legs spread out - part of the tripod is basically resting on the thick padding, which means that there is always a little bit of potential movement. And my last critique is that the velcro part of the LegCoat does tend to creep up or down over time, depending on how you hold the legs when you're carrying your tripod.

The new LegWrap covers, neoprene and velcro

The LegCoat covers are made by LensCoat, and they recently introduced an alternative tripod leg cover, the LegWrap. The LegWrap is a one piece solution. The inside of each wrap is made of some non slip material that keeps the cover in place without the need for adhesive tape - nice, and even easier and faster to put on as the LegCoat covers. The other advantage is that they are less bulky, while still offering good protection and comfort for over the shoulder carrying. I got mine a few weeks ago and I'm very pleased with them. My tripod now takes up less space in my bag, the wraps don't seem to slide at all, and my setup is more stable in the lowest position. And when I'm photographing while standing in the water, I can simply take them off to prevent them from getting soaking wet. Highly recommended.

Putting the LegWrap covers on your tripod takes just a few seconds

LensCoat also recently introduced the Memory Wallet to help you protect and organize your memory cards. My Nikon D4, D3s and D800 use three different cards: CF cards, SD cards and XQD cards. The Memory Wallets come in various sizes for all types of cards, and I got myself the CF10 which holds up to 10 Compact Flash / XQD cards, and 10 SD cards. They're made of the same lightweight waterproof material as their famous RainCoat camera covers, and it uses a super quiet elastic enclosure - no velcro or zippers. You basically roll the entire wallet open or close, and the cards are all in clear pockets for easy identification. Nice features are the business card slot on the outside (in case you lose the whole thing) and the lanyard with clip to attach the wallet to your bag (to prevent you from losing it).

The perfect way to organize, carry and protect your memory cards

Another nice accessory is the LensCoat BatteryPouch. It's a really simple little pouch to store your camera batteries or 4 AA batteries. Each set has two compact pouches that snap together to hold up to 8 AA batteries for easy storage and retrieval in your camera bag. The hook and loop closure keeps the batteries secure. I do a lot of night photography and always need plenty of batteries for my headlight, flashlights and timer, and these pouches are really useful. The pouches are made of the same lightweight waterproof material as the Memory Wallet and RainCoat. I currently use two sets - one for AA and AAA batteries, and one for two camera batteries. Full batteries I store with their heads up, the empty ones go upside down.

LensCoat currently has a special Father's Day Offer: free shipping (worldwide) on orders $99 or more. A good deal if you ask me.

The BatteryPouch fits AA and AAA batteries

Outdoor Photographer Blog

Outdoor Photographer now features a blog post that I wrote on night photography in Arches National Park, Utah, USA.

Of all the National Parks that I have ever visited in the US, Arches National Park is without a doubt the most iconic. Many 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 the creative process of coming up with new possibilities to photograph iconic subjects.

Double Arch is one of them. One of the reasons it has been photographed so much is probably because it’s so close to the car park, but also because it’s a stunning piece of architecture by mother nature. 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. However, if you don’t try to fit the whole scene into the frame, new possibilities arise.

Portal To The Stars - Double Arch, Arches National Park, USA

I decided to move into the scene and resist the temptation of showing everything. Instead of moving as far back as possible to see the entire structure, I tried to find an interesting foreground and move in with my 14-24mm wide angle lens. The opening inside the smallest arch was my main point of interest, so I opted for a vertical composition with some room at the bottom for the rocks in the foreground and quite a bit of space at the top to show the height of this place. Another good reason to go for a vertical was that the vast majority of images taken of this arch are all horizontals.

My second decision was to photograph the arch at night and to bring out the details and colors by using a flashlight. The light painting would give me a lot of creative control over the look and feel of the image, so that was an important part of the shot. 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 – the position of the Milky Way in the night sky changes constantly and I wanted it to be in a diagonal direction.

I knew that this was going to be an exposure blend; one for the sky and one for the rocks. In order to get a many stars as possible, you need at least an ISO of 1600, but more often around 3200 or even 6400. Your shutter speed can not be longer than approximately 30 seconds, otherwise the stars will start to streak. For the rocks exposure I could shoot at a fairly low ISO to prevent noise, with a considerably longer shutter speed. And I needed some extra time to light paint such an enormous subject.

For the light painting I used my trusty assistant, my wife Daniella. She was positioned outside of the frame to the left, armed with a Surefire Invictus flashlight and colored gels. I first decided on the color temperature of the light, and then we started experimenting with the light painting. Light painting is all about seeing the unseen, so you have to previsualize everything. After a few test shots, I decided to focus most of the light on the foreground and the main arch so that those areas will grab your attention first. However, the inside of the main arch didn’t catch enough light at the angle that I preferred for the whole scene, so I decided to shoot a second exposure just for the main arch with the light positioned directly below it. I would then later merge these two exposures.

Meanwhile I constantly checked the night sky for the position of the Milky Way, and when it looked good, I shot my third exposure for just the sky, without any light painting. The three exposures were later merged in Photoshop. – Marsel van Oosten

Equipment and settings: Nikon D3, AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G lens – Rock exposure: 1 minute @ f/5.6 and ISO 800; Sky exposure: 25 seconds @ f/5.6 and ISO 3200

National Geographic Blogger

National Geographic (Dutch edition) has asked me to write blogs on photography and my travels for their website. The first one was posted today.

Snowmobile

An important quality of a wildlife photographer is the ability to predict animal behavior. That means that you should not only look at your subject, but that you have to observe and analyze. If you don't do that, then every time you will be surprised by the actions of the animal and you will be too late to make a good photograph.

Young Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata), also known as snow monkeys, cling the first four weeks after birth onto the belly of their mother, and after that period they crawl on her back to move over larger distances. This period lasts about a year. In order to capture this behavior you must primarily watch the mother, especially her interaction with other macaques in the troop. Macaques have a complex social structure and hierarchy, and virtually all movements of an individual macaque are the direct result of those of more senior or dominant counterparts. This hierarchy is often maintained by force, which is why mothers with children like to keep a little aloof from the rest of the gang. If there is a disturbance elsewhere or a more senior macaque is approaching, it is often a reason for the mother to go somewhere else with her child on her back.

This photo I made at the end of a long shoot on our White & Wild Japan tour. It was cold and I was ready to call it a day. And so were the macaques, because they slowly began retreating to the mountains. This mother with child decided to walk down again when a little higher up on the mountainside a few macaques started fighting. Looking at the tracks in the snow, I could predict where they would probably go and I was able to get into a good position. I used a flash for some extra light.

Nikon D4, AF-S 70-200/2.8 VR II, 1/320 @ f / 8, ISO 800, SB-910 flash

If you're interested in joining us on this trip to photograph snow monkeys, Japanese cranes, Steller's sea eagles and whooper swans, please check out our website for more information.

Our 2014 tour filled up really fast, so we set up a second one.

Hope to see you there!

Marsel

Last Minute Offer Tigers & Leopards 2013

Three of the four Tigers & Leopards tours are fully booked, but we still have two spaces on the trip from 27 July to 6 August.

We want to fill those last two seats, so we offer a last minute discount of 500 EURO if you make your reservation now!

If you're interested, and of course you are, then please check out the Tigers & Leopards tour page on our website, watch the tour impression video clip, or download the PDF.

This is a unique trip that will get you the best opportunities to photograph tigers and leopards in the world.

Hope to see you there!

Ice Capades in Synology Ad

My popular image Ice Capades, shot on our Winter Wilderness tour in Iceland, is now used by Synology in an ad to promote their NAS servers. I'm a big fan of my Synology DiskStation DS1812+, so I can honestly say that I'm behind this ad 100%.

If you're looking for a fast, reliable backup system, look no further.

A Hippo In The Museum

Nature's Best has announced the names of the photographers who will be displayed in the upcoming awards exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

My winning hippo shot from Zambia is one of only 40 images that will be on display.

The Awards exhibition will open to the public on June 7, 2013, and run through the beginning of 2014.

Invasion Of The Dunes, the painted version

A few months ago Spanish painter Juan Manel Vargas Vega asked my permission to paint my famous picture Invasion Of The Dunes. Ever since it was published in National Geographic it has become one of my most published, most sold, and most copied image. This is the final result. I'm sure it took Juan a lot more time to make this version than I needed for mine. Great job!

Miss Zambia

I've been on safaris in all African safari countries, and Zambia is easily one of my favorites. It's not as crowded as the Masai Mara, the Serengeti or Kruger, not as expensive as the Okavango, you can drive off road, you're not limited to opening or closing times of the parks, you can get out of your vehicle, and there's lots of water. During the hot dry season that's where all the animals will be so and that's where most of the activity will be.

Zambia is not your typical safari destination. It is not as open as the Masai Mara or the Serengeti for instance, where you can spot the animals from miles away - you have to work harder for your shots. To me, that's what makes it so much more fun and rewarding. Especially because the scenery in Zambia is so spectacular with giant winterthorn trees dwarfing even the elephants, and the famous Zambezi river with highest hippo density in the world. The Zambezi is an animal magnet in the dry season, and where all the animals go, that's where the predators are as well.

Leopards are my favorite big cats - they're just stunning. When we're in our bush camp in Zambia, I always plan a few leopard drives, where we specifically search for leopards. So far we have always been successful, just like last year. We left our camp very early in the morning to drive to this specific area where we had seen a leopard earlier in the hope to spot her again in good photography conditions. Well, we couldn't have been more lucky.

Miss Zambia, seducing us with her fiery eyes

There she was, Miss Zambia, the prettiest leopard in the country, walking along the tree line. She was very relaxed with our presence, walked towards a termite mount, climbed up and lay herself down in the most elegant of poses. I asked our guide to reposition our vehicle to get the beautiful side lighting, and after that it was just a matter of clicking away. Bad photographs were simply impossible. We train our leopards well! ;-)

When the sun got higher and the light harsher, she got up and walked away. Our cue to slowly drive back to camp and have breakfast.

If you would like to join us on this spectacular trip and learn more about photography and composition, please check out our website for more information, dates and prices. There is currently a discount of 500 euro per person on the last two seats of the Zambia tour in September.

Interviewed by the Namibian Tourism Board

The Namibian Tourism Board has asked me to give their readers a personal account of what it is like there, and share some tips on photography in Namibia. You can read it here.

Back From Iceland

We're back from Iceland - it was awesome. We ran two tours in this amazing country, and they couldn't have been more different.

On the first tour we got everything from Iceland's famous weather menu: cloudy skies, rain, wind, lots of wind, ice, snow, wind chill factors of minus comfortable, blizzards and white-outs. And when I say blizzards and white-outs, I'm not exaggerating - we actually got stuck for two days at Jökulsárlón, the famous black beach with the stranded chunks of ice. Not a bad place at all to spend some extra time, but it really messed up our plans and as a result we didn't make it to the North. But at least we were lucky to still be able to drive to the beach for photography - the roads around Reykjavik for instance were all impassable.

Check out this short video of me walking on the beach of Jökulsárlón - this is not how you usually see it in the pictures:

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I don't usually walk this slow, but I tried to prevent my face from getting peeled off

The brutal conditions here were not all bad though. Sure, it was not as comfortable as we would have liked, but the scenery was stunning and completely different than usual. As a result, the images that we were able to shoot there were also quite different. Regarding photography I often say: bad weather is good weather, and that certainly was the case here.

On the second tour the weather was completely different - more sun, more snow and ice, more clear skies and much colder temperatures. The obvious benefit of clear skies is that you can actually see the aurora when it's happening. I had already seen many northern lights images shot in Iceland, and I noticed that the vast majority of them were taken at the same spots. So when the aurora predictions were good, I decided to take our group to a special location that would give us truly original northern lights images.

We left late in the evening in our super jeep to visit a remote crash site with an old plane. We brought some extra lights to light the plane from both the inside and the outside, and then we just waited for the magic to happen. And when it did, it was this perfect curved line that followed the contours of the plane. I love it when a plan comes together! :-)

The cold wind that night was brutal, but with a sight like this in front of you, you really don't mind. After a couple of hours we all returned to our guest house with a big smile on our face and with some of the most original aurora shots ever taken in Iceland.

Unusual conditions, unusual lighting and an unusual location make for unusual pictures

Clear nights means it gets colder, which means you can search for ice caves. When temperatures are above freezing, exploring an ice cave is not a good idea - unless you're into cryonics. We found several nice caves and to walk and crawl inside them is a truly magical experience. Glaciers are always moving, so it's important to be well prepared. We used an experienced local guide, helmets and ropes to guarantee our safety. And that was necessary, because in one of the caves we wanted to descend to a lower level that was only accessible with the use of ropes.

Daniella is standing somewhere halfway inside the cave. 
 I climbed down to get to the far end and take this shot.

After our glacier and ice cave adventure, we spent a few days among the ice chunks at Jökulsárlón and then got on our chartered plane to fly us north. As usual, there was a lot more snow there than in the south. So much actually, that the road to Dettifoss, one of the most impressive waterfalls in Iceland, was impassable. But we don't let nature tell us what to do, so meet the Squiver Monsterrari:

The Squiver Hummer-crusher. Be afraid, be very afraid.

With two of these mammoth-sized vehicles we drove all the way to Dettifoss, at times completely ignoring the road because it wasn't visible anyway. I still haven't processed any of the pictures we shot there, but believe me when I say it was spectacular. More later!

If you would like to join us on our next Squiver photo tour in March 2014, please check out the tour PDF and price on our website.

Interview In Photography Masterclass Magazine

Photography Masterclass Magazine is a magazine designed exclusively for the iPad Newsstand, and I am the Featured Photographer in their current issue.

We are happy to offer you a free 3 month subscription to this high quality magazine through this special Squiver link.

21 Landscapes That Will Blow Your Mind

Well, that's the title that The Weather Channel came up with for showcasing Marsel's work :-) There's also a short interview there: 21 Landscapes That Will Blow Your Mind