Equipment I used in Antarctica
It seems useful to describe the equipment that I took with me and used in Antarctica in order to gather the information used in this presentation. You may be tempted to believe that I used lots of high-tech equipment, and spent lots of my time working on the recording aspects. That's not true at all. Just about everything that I took and did was the same stuff that everyone else was taking and doing. The only exception to this was my PowerBook. (And I noted at least one other person with a laptop here as well.)
Cameras
I took two cameras with me. These included a Canon MegaZoom 105, a simple 35-105mm camera with mostly automatic features (I just need to turn the flash on or off and zoom appropriately), and a Minolta Freedom Vista wide-angle camera, loaned to me by Professor David Hessler of SILS.
The film I've used has been Kodak Gold 100 and 400 speed, Kodak GoldPlus 100 speed, and Kodak Ektar 25 and 100 speed.
Audio
My audio recordings have been made with a very simple palm-sized Olympus Pearlcorder S922 microcassette recorder. It hasn't been picking up the animal sounds that well, so maybe a better microphone would have been useful, but it's fine for lectures and tour guide commentary. It has, of course, worked very well for my own dictation during the tours and landings, and it's much more convenient than writing in a notebook.
Journal
The one non-standard information recording technique I've used on this trip has been my note taking, which I've done on my Powerbook 140, an Apple laptop-class Macintosh. I've been using TeachText to enter the journal entries directly into the computer. Since I find typing much easier than handwriting, this has been very useful.
Rather than typing the journal entries as plain text, I've been entering them as HTML right from the start. This has been very easy, and I don't feel that it's limited my writing at all.
Each morning I start with the previous day's HTML file, remove all of the previous day's text, and then start entering the new text each morning. In parallel with that, I've been keeping the journal "table of contents" page up to date as I go along. I've found it useful to see that table of contents as I go, since it gives me a quick way to remember the order of events that have occured. With so much happening recently, things might otherwise start to blend together into a huge mishmash of landings and animal sightings and mountainscapes.
Binoculars
I've also brought a pair of very small binoculars with me, which can't be used to record anything but are very useful in helping me to see things that are far away more clearly. I am extremely glad that I bought these the day before I left! My only regret is that I'm unable to record the clear, beautiful images that I can see through them. A lot of what is most spectacular here is only visible through the binoculars, since we're limited to the ship most of the time. This is certainly true for the many whales we've seen, and also for most of the seals. Of course, we haven't had any trouble seeing the penguins...
What I didn't take
One item that many people on board have brought, which I didn't, is a video camera. There are a large number of people here with camcorders, recording video instead of still pictures. The advantages to this are that it adds some idea of how the scenery changes (waves, the movement of the ship, the movement of animals, etc.), and also that it adds audio. Most of these people use the audio to state where we are and what we're looking at. I cringe every time I hear this, though, since half of the time they've gotten it wrong or mispronounce the names. In any case, it always sounds awkward. I'm just as happy that I'm limiting myself to stills and separate audio, although I admit that a camcorder might capture more of the feeling of the place. I'm hoping that my text, spare though it is, will preserve some of that.
Portability
The nice feature about having very little equipment is that it's all very easily carried. The two cameras fit into one pocket of my parka, and the audio recorder and my binoculars fit into the other. When there's a lot to see and when we're on shore or on the ship, the Canon camera and binoculars go around my neck on straps.
At other times, the equipment all fits easily into the inner zipped pouch of my High Sierra expandable canvas briefcase, which has also proven invaluable on this trip. It's a great carryon bag for the air flights, and also carries easily around the ship, in our room, and, if necessary, on the landing trips. I used it on all of the bus tours.
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