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THE TREK CONTINUES
Day 5: Broke the 14,000 foot barrier and everything is working fine.
Day 6: Today was an acclimatization day, so we just day hiked to 16,700 feet and returned to just over 14,000 fee
t. All the photographs came out great. To capture the entire landscape, I took a series of vertical panoramic shots. First, I took the average meter reading and set the camera manually to it. Each shot I took overlapped 30 to 50%.
Day 7: Today was the second day I used the IDrive on battery power. Just trying to backup 8 additional pictures, the batteries went completely dead. This was very disappointing. Clearly even in the cold one should be able to backup more than the 100 photos I stored the day before. (Since the time I wrote this article, I bought an Archos PVR to store my photos. This worked exceptionally well on my first trip, but within a few months the internal batteries lost 70% of their life. So the quest for the perfect backup system continues.)
On the bright side, I had very good photo opportunities today. As we trekked through a valley, two yaks were fighting for dominance. Shortly after, we stopped for tea where crows, with the mountains painting the background, were hovering in the wind.
I had additional problems with dirt. At 16,000 feet and high winds, I could not get the lens, sensor and mirror all clean. To do an extensive cleaning, I had to wait till I got indoors.
Tech Tip #5:
Don't change your lenses aggressively. Now I carry two cameras, one with a wide angle lens and one with a zoom. This way I have less dirt related issues.
Day 8: We climbed to 18,500 feet today to see the best view of Everest. Climbing that high, my water bottles froze solid. However, with my camera tucked inside my jacket, I had no problems whatsoever. Unfortunately, one of my film carrying trekkers had problems with her camera as we approached our “summit.” Not listening to the tech tips, she didn’t carry her user manual, so she couldn’t determine the type of error occurring.
Day 9-12: Descending was relatively uneventful. Once we descended below 14,000 feet, I downloaded my pictures to the laptop and a recharged IDrive.
