Tips and tricks
Paint your memory cards…
One little tip to help with speedy changing of your camera memory cards is to put a little dab of white enamel paint on the top of the card edge so you can see at a glance how to insert the card. Nothing worse than fumbling to replace a full card and trying to insert it upside down!
I use the Humbrol paint you can buy in the small pots from toy shops to paint Airfix type models.
Also make sure you label your memory cards with your postcode and house number and mobile number, hopefully if you loose one it will be returned. You can buy label makers very cheaply. Whilst you are at it why not label all your bits of kit too, you never know it might be found by an honest person!
Always have a second line of defence…
Sometimes it just pays to think, what would happen if…..
We can’t control everything that happens to us, a slip, a trip and that expensive piece of equipment hits the ground with that sickening sound. That’s when the second line of defence is your insurance maybe!
I was carrying a very heavy and expensive telephoto lens a few years ago on a boat trip out to the Farne Islands in Northumberland to photograph Puffins amongst other birds that you can see in the gallery section of the site. I carried the lens supporting the weight on a shoulder strap whilst I was walking on the rough ground above the cliffs. At some point the connection on the shoulder strap where it connects to the camera broke…. ordinarily I would have noticed this by the weight on my shoulder going about a second before I heard the camera and lens hitting the floor or worse falling down a cliff!
But on this occasion it didn’t – because I’d previously added a little wire loop between my camera strap and the camera bracket, at the cost of a few pence from Amazon. I happened to glance down and saw what had happened and realised someone was looking after me that day! The image opposite shows the broken connector and the cheap wire loop that saved the day. Instead of feeling dreadful I probably felt quite smug that day!
