Travelling with Camera Gear? (Canadian Version)

Are you a Canadian photographer who travels? Do you know what a Y38 is? You probably should.

Ok, I live in Canada so this information specific to Canadians; however, if you live in another country you may have similar regulations so you may want to check out your local requirements.

A Form Y38 ("Identification of Articles for Temporary Exportation") is a document issued by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). If you haven't heard of this before I'm not surprised. I had never heard of this form until few years ago after driving back across the border from a trip to the US.

I went down to St. Louis to see the Flashbus Tour featuring Joe McNally and David Hobby a few years ago. I live in Ontario fairly close to the Niagara Falls border and at times have traveled out of Buffalo due to cheaper flights. As usual, when I travel I take some of my camera gear, and have done so for close to 10 years with nary an issue. On this occasion it was a little different. When I returned to cross back into Canada I expected the usual questions, where have you been, how long have you been gone, what are you bringing back etc. I'm always honest with the CBSA agents because I have no reason not to be. So when I said that I was attending a photography seminar (the Flashbus Tour) I was questioned about my camera gear; essentially how do they know that I didn't just buy all this stuff in the US and was trying to sneak it back across the border without declaring it. The CBSA agent wanted me to prove that I purchased everything in Canada...easier said than done when all of the receipts were at home over an hour away at the time.

I showed the CBSA agent the gear I had with me, and after additional questioning she relented, but told me that I should have obtained a Form Y38 before I left Canada. Suffice it to say I was a very bad person for not knowing about a form that no one in the past had ever mentioned to me, but we all know ignorance is not defence. I guess she thought I was honest enough because her attitude changed slightly and she explained it to me in more detail.

After I got back I went searching for a little more information on how to do this, and found that it's a pretty simple process. Here's all you need to do:

1) Make a list and itemize all of your gear, I mean all of it, with make, model and most importantly serial number;
2) Take all of you gear, plus your full list to your nearest CBSA office (click here for a directory);
3) Explain to them that you travel frequently with your camera gear and understand that a Form Y38 can help when coming back into Canada.

In my case I went to the Hamilton International Airport as it was closest and not that busy. The agent there was extremely friendly. He took my list and checked out all of my gear, including verifying all of the serial numbers. He filled out the Form Y38 (it's actually a small green card), and attached it to my larger list, where he also noted the total number of items and that he had checked the serial numbers. He signed it, I signed it, and we were done; it took about 5 minutes.

The Y38 does not have an expiry date so it's good for as long as you have your gear. Even if you only travel with a few pieces, as long as they're on the list covered by the Y38 you're good. The only caveat is if you add more gear or change things out you will need to get a new one. I updated mine last year, which involved updating my list and heading back to the CBSA office to get the revised list signed off on a new Y38. However, this is probably the most important part...you need to remember to carry it with you when you travel.

So it may seem like a bit of an inconvenience to do this, but consider the alternative... getting into a dispute with a CBSA agent, getting frustrated about something you knew nothing about, getting pulled off to the side for further questioning, having to pay duty on your own gear, having to gather all of your receipts after the fact and head back to a CBSA office to prove your case. I know I may be exaggerating just a little, but how much easier would it be to drop a Y38 on them once they start to question you? You'll probably look like a pretty smart cookie, the CBSA will likely appreciate that you took the time to get informed and make their job a bit easier, too.

Happy travelling!

Cheers!

DC

Ghost Town - Nelson, Nevada (Part 2 - "The Shoot & The Gear")

Following up from my previous post "The Shot" (above). This time I'll walk through the "The Shoot and The Gear."

After we arrived and got checked in at Nelson this was the first spot I saw that I wanted to shoot. It might have been the big Coca~Cola sign that drew my attention, it may have also been the overall shape of the barn. As soon as I looked at it I saw a very simple composition.

I knew I wanted to put the peak of the roof in the upper left hand third, which meant positioning myself on the right. I started with my tripod in it's full height position, but after trying a few test shots I lowered it by about a third. This gave me a bit of an upward looking view, which put the peak of the roof where I wanted it in the frame.

It was just past 6:00 pm so the light was beginning to fade, so it was a great time of day to shoot. I knew even before coming to Nelson that I was going to be bracketing every shot and have a little HDR'fest. Even if I wasn't going to do any HDR, but just single exposures, I still would have bracketed multiple shots. I didn't know when I was going to be back so getting a range of exposures provides some latitude to play around with in post.

As you can see from the above image I shot a 7 bracket set (-3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3) and I've highlighted the exposure value for each image. You'll also notice that these are NEF's so I was shooting in RAW, which provides for maximum flexibility in post. Again, I didn't know when I'd be back so I wanted to give myself the best chance for the best outcome in post.

You can also see that the +2 and +3 images are really blown out, but look closely inside the open door of the barn. In the other exposures there is no detail to be found, but at the high end I was able to get some of that interior detail. Also, check out the sky in the -3 shot. This has a nice natural gradient as the light was fading. So basically I chose 7 shots because I thought that would give me enough range to grab all of the detail from the shadows and highlights.

There's so much really cool stuff to shoot there that I could have stayed a lot longer, but it was getting dark, and our stomachs told us it time to feed them! ;)

The Gear - I was shooting with a Nikon D810 fitted with a Nikon 16-35mm f4. Shot in aperture mode, 16mm @ f6.3. This was my first real outing with the D810 and I'm very happy with how it performs.

Stay tuned for Part 3 - "The Post", where I'll walk through how I mashed all 7 exposures together to create the final image.

Cheers!

DC

Adventures in Time Lapse

I've recently discovered time-lapse photography. I mean I've always known what time-lapse is, but never thought about it as a still photographer. I guess this is the problem. When you fail to expand your world by thinking that still pictures can only be still pictures, you miss the other possibilities. 

The process of stringing together a bunch still images is certainly not new, this is how all of my favourite childhood cartoons were made. But I never considered trying this with my DSLR until recently.

I came across Trey Ratcliff''s "30 Days and 30 Nights in Queenstown" movie, which is pretty cool. But then I saw brief background on the programs he used and realized that this was all shot with a still camera. You can't help but get inspired by by watching this.

I started doing some Googling and found lots of details on how to shoot time lapse. An important one was having and Interval Shooting mode on your camera. So I grabbed the manual for my D300s and sure enough it has this feature. Note: I never looked for this before because I didn't know to look for it! So I got excited and decided that I needed to try this out. Basically, the interval shooting mode will automatically shoot at a programmed interval for as long you tell it to, or until your memory card is full, or your battery runs out.

Here are a few of the basics that I found... you need to have:

• A camera with an interval shooting mode. If yours doesn't have this (not all do) you can pick and "Intervalometer" to hook up to you DSLR that will do it for you.
• A sturdy tripod
• A program that can export to video (I'm using Lightroom. If your a photographer and you don't have it already, you need to get it for everything that you do.)
•  And lastly time and patience

There's actually a little more to it, but you don't need anything more than this to give it a try, which is what I'm doing. Now I'm definitely not an expert on this, I just discovered it and wanted share my experience, hence the title "Adventures in Time-Lapse".

This is a really cool technique and I want to try creating something similar. Will my time-lapse look like Trey Ratcliff's above? Ummm, not likely... in fact I'm pretty confident the answer is definitely no. Will I make some mistakes? Definitely yes! Will I learn the right way and wrong way to do things? Probably, but don't underestimate my ability to do it wrong over and over... and over again.

Anyway, I shot my first few series of time-lapse trials recently and I'm currently in the process of some simple editing and compilation. I'll share those pieces in a later post as the adventures continue.

Cheers!

DC

ColorMunki To The Rescue!

First off, since I'm Canadian I have trouble spelling "colour" without the "u", but for the sake of getting the product name correct I'll go along with it...for now :)

As with many photographers I like to work as accurately as I can with my the colour of my images and that means having a properly calibrated display. I have been using a LaCie 321 display with the Blue Eye Pro calibration tool. Up until late last year I had no problems. Using an older Dell Win XP laptop things worked quite well.

What changed? Well, I moved over to a MacBook Pro. This is when I started to have some issues. The old laptop was connected with a DVI cable as that's what is native on the display; however, the Mac is now using the new Thunderbolt port. No problem, I just got the MiniDisplay Port to DVI adapter and the display works as it should, except for when it came time to calibrate. This is where the problems started.

As it was going through it's steps I kept getting an error at the monitor connection stage prior to measuring the colour patches. This was strange because the Test and Report feature was able to measure and report on the current settings without an issue. So it became troubleshooting time. Downloaded the updated software for the Mac OS, didn't work. Next I contacted LaCie and set up a service ticket and was pointed to a newer update as OS Lion was still new... it didn't work. It was interesting to note that this newer update was released about 6 months before Lion was launched... is it compatible with OS Lion? Who knows?

After a lot of back and forth with LaCie service I was told it was the Thunderbolt port that was not compatible with the DVI connection on the display as it could not translate the necessary information. Just for fun I tried calibrating the display on my laptop to see if that would work. Low and behold, I get the same error, which tells me that it's probably not the Thunderbolt connection issue as it was not in play. Anyway, the problem was never really resolved. I still think it's a software issue that was never made compatible for OS Lion. So basically it was either buy a new display or try a new calibration tool...both expensive options.

I decided that lesser of 2 evils was to try a new calibration tool first. If it didn't work then it would be time to get a new display, but I would still need a good calibration tool anyway.

Enter ColorMunki Photo... problem solved! It worked regardless of the Thunderbolt adapter connection issue.

I can't remember an easier piece of software, and hardware, to use. Set-up was dead simple and it walks you through all of the steps required to calibrate your display and create a printer profile. You have the option of letting the program set all of the settings for you, or you can take the more advanced route of configuring it to your own settings. A nice feature of the advanced route is that you can use the ambient  light sensor to take a luminance value of your work space and identify the appropriate luminance level for your display.

Did I mention that it worked? Even with the same adapter through the Thunderbolt port? Needless to say I was pretty happy. Granted the ColorMunki Photo is not cheap, but it's still only a 1/3 the price of a decent display. So I was hedging my bets on this one and it turned out in my favour.

Now, this highlights an ever present issue of upgrading your gear whether it's a new computer or an OS update. I expected that I would need to update a lot of programs and drivers for some older gear when I moved to a Mac, and in some cases just bite the bullet and buy the latest (as in this case). You really need to do a lot of research when upgrading so that you know what will work, but especially what won't work.

So if you're in the market for a display calibration tool I would highly recommend the Color Munki. You can check them out here www.colormunki.com

Cheers!

DC

Waterfall Scouting

I haven't been out shooting for a little while so I decided to take a little bit of time yesterday to seek out one of the many waterfalls in my area. This one is just off the Bruce Trail, as pretty much all of the waterfalls are around here, on the Sleepy Hollow Side Trail... so I'm guessing that this is the Sleepy Hollow Falls.

Pretty simple setup using a Nikon D300s and 24-70mm f2.8. A tri pod is crucial as the shutter speeds are slower to get the silky look in the water. I used the Singh-Ray Vari ND filter as I needed the extra stops to get the slower shutter speeds. This filter gives me between 2 to 8 stops of neutral density, which allows a lot of control.

Landscape orientation:

I always like to do a portrait orientation for a different perspective. You never know which one you may like the best:

There's always the smaller run offs as you get further from the main falls. These are fun to shoot as there a usually many levels of drop off:

Enjoy!

DC

Think Tank Photo Airport International v2.0 Rolling Bag Review

Okay, so this week I thought I would take a different approach and throw out my first ever video review, and what better than to take a look at the awesome Think Tank Photo Airport International v2.0 rolling case. You also get a change to see what's in my bag.

Enjoy!

DC

Canadian Photographers Who Travel With Their Gear

If you're a Canadian photographer who travels with their gear, and you don't know what a Form Y38 is then keep reading... I'm going to hazard a guess that if your a professional photographer who travels then you may already be aware of this. (Note: I know that some readers of my blog are live in other countries so naturally this form and process will not be relavent to you. However, I would bet that your country has a similar process that would be worth investigating).

A Form Y38 "Identification of Articles for Temporary Exportation" is a document issued by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). If you haven't heard of this before I'm not surprised. I had never heard of this form until earlier this year after driving back across the border from a trip to the US.

I went down to St. Louis to see the Flashbus Tour featuring Joe McNally and David Hobby back in April. I live in Ontario fairly close to the Niagara Falls border and regularly fly out of Buffalo due to cheaper flights. As usual when I travel I take some of my camera gear, and have done so for over 6 years with nary an issue. On this occasion it was a little different. When I returned to cross back into Canada I expected the usual questions, where have you been, how long have you been gone, what are you bringing back etc. I'm always honest with the CBSA agents as that just makes sense. So when I said that I was attending a photography seminar (the Flashbus Tour) I was questioned about my camera gear; essentially how do they know that I didn't just buy all this stuff in US, and can I prove that I had it before I left?

I showed the CBSA agent the gear I had with me, and after additional questioning she relented, but told me that I should have had a Form Y38 filled out before I left Canada. Suffice it to say I was a very bad person for not knowing about a form that no one in the past had ever mentioned to me; but we all know ignorance is not defence. I guess she thought I was honest enough because her attitude changed slightly and she explained it to me in more detail.

After I got back I went searching for a little more information on how to do this. It's a pretty simple process. Here's all you need to do:

1) itemize all of your gear, I mean all of it, with make, model and most importantly serial number;
2) take all of you gear, plus your full list to your nearest CBSA office (click here for a directory);
3) explain to them that you travel frequently with your camera gear and understand that a Form Y38 can help when coming back into Canada.

In my case I went to the Hamilton International Airport as it was closest and not that busy. The agent there was extremely friendly. He took my list and did a spot check of my gear and serial numbers. He filled out the Form Y38 (it's a small green card) and attached it to my list, where he also noted the number of items and that he had checked the serial numbers. He signed it, I signed it, and we were done. It took about 5 minutes.

The Form Y38 does not have an expiry date so it's good for as long as you have your gear. Even if you only travel with a few pieces, as long as they're on the list covered by the Form you're still okay. The only caveat is if you add more gear or change things out you will need to get a new one. Oh, and you need to remember to carry it with you when you travel.

So it may seem like a bit of an inconvenience to do this, but consider the alternative... getting into a dispute with a CBSA agent, getting pulled off to the side for further questioning, having to pay duty on your own gear, having to gather all of your receipts after the fact and head back to a CBSA office anyway to prove your gear belongs to you. I know I may be exaggerating just a little, but how much easier would it be to drop a Form Y38 on them once they start to question you? You'll probably look like a pretty smart cookie.

Cheers!

DC