We hope you like this simple slideshow which we think really illustrates what an amazing world we live in. Julie and Adam
Binocular servicing and repairs
I have owned a wonderful pair of Zeiss 10x40 binoculars which have served me well for about 25 years. They are just about the only piece of kit which I have managed to hang onto for such a long time. I have to confess that I have treated them pretty badly. Bumped, soaked, rained on and given a fair amount of sea spray over the years. 
Not surprising that half way through the Antarctica expedition they packed up and refused to focus. Rather then spend £1,000 replacing them, I was determined to have them repaired. I found a recommendation for "Optrep optical repairs" on a Pigeon fanciers forum! A quick phone call confirmed they would repair the binoculars and I sent them off on Monday. By Friday (!!!) they were back with a bill for £125 for servicing, mechanisms decoroded, guide rods unbuckled, threads reground, cleaned, relubricated, adjusted, reset, collimated (I had to look that up in the dictionary) and tested. The guy at Optrep told me that they quality of the Zeiss is such that they should outlive me!
I am really pleased and delighted with the service.
Adam
Focus on Imaging - 22 February 2009
Just back from attending the Focus on Imaging show at the NEC centre in Birmingham. Caught up with one of our friends who lives close by the night before, nice dinner and talking about travel. Crashed at his pad.
The event is actually very good and despite the credit crunch, was very well attended. For us the main point of going is simply to look for ideas that inspire us. Highlights from today:
1. In advance of our Bonobo exhibition to the Congo in August, buying a ring flash adaptor for portraits. We know the Bonobos have seen flash before and so this will enable us to take even better shots.
2. Many, many, many stands offering to produce photographic books, photos on metal, on canvas and on acrylic blocks. We are looking at putting some of our best shots on some of these and once we get back from India will try some out. For us the stand that stood out was Mario Acerboni which had some stunning designs for photobooks.
3. A really funky new form of on-line slide production by animoto. In the next few weeks we will put one of the shows up on the blog and let you know what we think, although having just tried to sign up (yes it looked that good) the site does not seem to be working.
4. An expensive insurance quote for our equipment. Hmmm.
Anyway, great show and good to see Canon out in force (a much better stand than the Nikon one ... in our opinion).
Julie and Adam
Mumbai - 3 February 2009
At very short notice, we had the opportunity to spend a few days in Mumbai as a warm up for our Safari to the Tiger reserves later in March of this year. Adam had been down in Hyderabad since the start of the year and we thought this was a good opportunity to explore Mumbai as a prelude to one of our photographic city-break tours. Mumbai is a wonderful city which has as many contrasts, colours, foods and vibrance as any you could name. As you would expect, it has its beggars:
What impressed us most was the Dhobi Ghat or Washers' Area, the City's largest laundry. This is where almost all of the clothes in Mumbai get washed, ironed and repaired. It is a photographers' dream with colour, movement and children who get to wash themselves at the laundry! The workers here are very proud of their profession and while the rewards appear low to us (2 rupees to iron a shirt) it is a proper job for all of them. We always like to see people who are very good at what they do and give 100%.
The clothes are washed in a concrete cubicle. This is a small area where a man (and it seems to be a man's job) spends his time washing (read beating) the clothes against a patthar or concrete block. It is very hard work and the guys become very fit!
There are many fantastic people around, most of whom seemed very happy to have their portraits taken.
And the children are so beautiful. Seeing these children playing delightfully as their parents washed their hair in the open-air laundry lifted any thoughts of our financial depression. While we spent over an hour there, we could easily have spent a day. Next time ....
All these photographs were taken with a Canon G10. This is an excellent "compact" camera with has the advantage of taking RAW images. Really excellent. The only disadvantage is that it cannot burst, ie take a sequence of shots. So for both of us used to rattling off 5+ images at a time to get the 'perfect' portrait, this takes one shot at a time. Julie's 5D SLR battery had died so we were stuck with the G10.
Food ... simply amazing. We would recommend Trishna for fish, Kebab and Curries for Northern Indian food, Konkan Cafe for a lunch on Banana leaves and Leopold Cafe for breakfast. Not the cheapest meals Mumbai has to offer, but exceptionally good value by London standards and no Mumbai Belly!
Thank you Mumbai!
Julie and Adam
Xmas and New Year: The Falklands, South Georgia and Antarctica
Happy New Year!! Credit crunch aside, we wish everyone a happy and safe 2009 filled with great experiences and photo opportunities.
Our Christmas/New Year expedition to the Falklands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula was terrific. The highlights were very rough seas - what an adventure, great traveling companions and numerous safe landings with terrific wildlife and scenery of course. 
This expedition is about bytes and bytes of photographs: at times you are spoiled for choice and simply don't know where to look. Our first landing at West Point Island on the Falklands gave us an outstanding viewing of Black Browed Albatross with their very young chicks and in some cases eggs in the nests. What great birds, we typically see them at sea and this sighting on land was very, very special. 
At Gold Harbour, South Georgia on Boxing Day we sat unharassed by the usual Fur Seals (one of our traveling companions has a great idea, sushi related, to put to the Japanese and Norwegian whalers which would deal with these sweet looking, prevalent menaces as a quid pro quo to leaving alone the reducing whale population - 'scientific research' aside of course). Anyway, the absence of Fur Seals meant we could plonk ourselves on the beach and without moving, have uninterrupted viewings of the belching, manky eyed but nevertheless intriguing Elephant Seals a few feet away, Penguins behind us or peering at us inches away, from the other side of the lens, watch the various Penguins coming up from the sea onto the beach in front of us and then sea birds running on water, coming ashore and then displaying remarkably their dominance over a carcass. We just didn't know where to look! The sun was shining, our tans were coming along nicely (we were warmer than we are currrrrrently back in London, (bbbrrr)) and the mountain - beach - small iceberg scenery was truly breathtaking. It is probably the most enjoyable photographic few hours we have ever experienced - that's a bold statement I know but we'll stand by it. 
Neko Harbour at the Antarctic Peninsula on January 1st was equally magical. There are 125 or so glaciers around the harbour so it's very, very scenic and you know you are in Antarctica and not merely at a stunning ski resort. Having recovered from the New Year's Eve festivities (an on-deck barbecue with Russian pop music that would trump a barbie on Bondi beach any day) we said Hello 2009 with some special times at Neko: Gentoo penguins with days old chicks, blue glacial backdrops and a magical iceberg filled harbour and avalanching mountain setting. The session was capped off brilliantly when right at the end of our zodiac cruise back to the ship, via various icebergs looking for a resident Penguin or Leopard Seal, we scored with a Gentoo readying itself to dive off the ice. Whoa!!! We had to be quick but the Canon 5D Mark IIs burst brilliantly and we managed to get a series of our Gentoo at very close range from sea level before our ever-obliging zodiac driver called time and we headed back to the ship for hot showers, lunch and the pulling of anchor. Ooh yeah, and this was only January 1st!
We are thrilled with the image quality of the two new 5D Mark II bodies - more on these to follow in a later Blog, but with one exception, (a programme dial which is too easily knocked), they get a big thumbs up from us.
So we are back in London and within two weeks we will have our trip report and 25 or so photos loaded onto this website. Let us know what you think. And for those of you interested in our next trip to Antarctica, we are working up our ideas for an even better 3rd trip, probably for Xmas 2010 so once again, please register your interest early as capacity on our favoured small ships is limited and six clients missed out on this year's trip....
Happy New Year and happy traveling.
ShutterspeedTravel
Canon "error 99" - 11 December 2008
On our recent trip to Botswana one of the Canon 1Ds Mark II started behaving oddly. When trying to take a sequence of shots the camera would freeze and up would come the message "error 99". This was rather tedious when shooting pictures of Lions cubs playing in front of us! At one stage we thought it may be the heat, but were not sure.
On our return to London we took the camera down to those nice people at Fixation. Back came the answer; shutter needs replacing. All shutters have a limit on how many shots you can take. In the case of these cameras it is 150,000 shots. We have had these cameras about 4 years and we now think that is how many shots we have taken. So earlier this week after being relieved of £600 for the two repairs, we have these bodies which should last another 4 years ... perhaps!
In the interests of ensuring our clients have the chance to try our the best equipment, we have managed to buy two Canon 5D Mark IIs. When Adam rang up Warehouse Express he was told they had backorders of 250 bodies and only 200 were being delivered before 31 December. Luckly one of our good contacts in Japan, Toshi, went out hunting and found two bodies and two spare batteries. These arrived two days ago, just in time to take to Antarctica! We will give a full report on our return. We are very excited thinking about taking videos of Penguins diving into the sea and so forth.
Julie and Adam
Botswana 2008
This year's Botswana's trip had a number of surprises. On arrival at Savuti we found the Savuti Channel flowing. This is a first for something like 24 years. Simply astonishing. So instead of seeing dusty elephants coming down to the small waterholes in droves, we found wading lions (and apparently swimming Cheetah), trying to get to their usual side of the Channel, and a variety of diverse wildlife not ordinarily seen at Savuti. And then at Duba, we had magnificent lightning storms, a lazy and uncoordinated Duba lion pride but lots of dusty elephants! All in all, the diversity of wildlife was outstanding - we have updated this site with our trip report and some of the hundreds of photographs taken.
We're now getting prepared for Antarctica - this will be our second expedition to South Georgia, the Falklands and the Antarctic Peninsula. We set off in two weeks and in the meantime we are hoping to get our hands on two of the new Canon 5D Mark 2. We have contacts scouring Japan for us, given the wait list everywhere else. So, it's a bit of a nail biter before we get away...
Very tragic news in Mumbai of course. Words fail during times like these.
Hoping you are all well and safe.
Julie and Adam