Clearly I have been severely neglecting this website. The “Asides” note below is the sole reason beside my lack of traveling due to surgery repairing a knee injury (torn ACL, torn meniscus, fractured patella). In my downtime I have been formulating the next big thing that I have been none too subtly hinting at on [...]

Continue reading " Back in the Pack "

Well, it looks like the wait is over. We have gone from the prototyped retro-istic Eastern European rock star, with lush color and loads of metal, to this lowly ‘plastique’ abomination that looks like an early Sony CyberShot. I pray to the gods of megapixels that Olympus make the E-P1 in black to hide its shame…

Continue reading " The Pocket Leica has Arrived… or has it? "

With a special nod to the floundering economy, I’m going to present a sub-$10 Packworthy tool. It was seen in an earlier article about another Packworthy item: Eneloop batteries. There isn’t much to say about it, but for under $10, you shouldn’t expect that level of intricacy.

Continue reading " Another Case of Packworthiness "

I am back at my desk… so here is the update.

Upon my return from Costa Rica last week, I discovered that my web hosting service was under a DDOS attack, so all web services like email and this site’s management were affected by the situation. All the more reason for me to extend my vacation mindset – I’m still on ‘Tico time.’

I really shouldn’t neglect my site. After all, the discipline to post regularly is a key factor in what makes a website successful. SEO and Google-payola help, but if you don’t post, you lose your audience, so it doesn’t matter how many people click-through.

So I will make the first step and outline the first project of this site and first piece that inherently exemplifies the core purpose of this site. I will be intimately dissecting the single carry-on backpack I carried with me through Costa Rica with a full complement of backcountry camping gear, and a digital SLR with three lenses – one of them being a 300mm f2.8. I am tentatively calling it a lesson in “Pack-natomy.” Be forewarned, this will be far too complex and thorough an article, but it should give a well-illustrated starting point for conceiving your own long-term “one-bagger.”

Continue reading " Back from the Dead… and on a Mission "

Folks, I´m headed out of town for a couple of weeks for a much needed holiday.

I have packed with me many of the tools and gimmicks that should make it possible for me to live out of a carry-on bag for two weeks.

Continue reading " Fight or Flight (site update) "

I have juggled several SLR camera systems over the past 25 years -chronologically: Minolta, Pentax, Canon, Nikon, back to Canon and now Fujifilm. I have never had any substantial regrets after jumping from one religion to the next – with one exception. There is one very simple and inexpensive device that I have a great affinity for; one that is inexplicably only available for one brand and type of camera. There are second-rate and incompetent copies out there, but yet another design flaw seems to prevent the most of the photographic world from using one. More after the jump…

Continue reading " A Very Packworthy Episode of… "

I figure I should live up to the words of my manifesto and introduction and share a truly Packworthy item. Eventually, I’ll develop a scale or find some nifty Wordpress plug-in that will facilitate rating them. In the meantime, I’ll say that the item in question ranks way up there on the chart and I have been using them on a regular basis for two years where they have held up admirably. Full details after the jump.

Continue reading " First Official Packcamera Packworthy Product "

Announced today is the Epson R-D1x; the third incarnation of a camera only slightly upgraded from the original digital rangefinder released in 2004. Built by Cosina, the company behind the Voigtlander rangefinders, this latest revision has to be a bit of an embarrassment for Epson.

Continue reading " Has Epson Perfected Time Travel? "