Trevin Chow

I’ve traveled quite a bit the last few years and a whack of that travel has been for work which has forced me on trips where I’m going to several countries each for few days at a time.  Traveling on such tight schedules, you find yourself paying attention to overall weight of your bags. Nothing sucks more than haulin’ ass through the airport with overweight luggage.

Here are my top 5 things I never travel without that has helped me cut the overall clutter in my bags, while making my travel far easier:

Apple Airport Express

Everyone knows about this handy little device for the home, but few people remember to bring it with them when they travel.

First, when you’re traveling in hotels only hard-wired internet connections, you can use the Airport Express to bridge the ethernet to wifi. Presto! you’re no longer chained to that insanely small desk and can sit on your bed with your laptop.

Second, the USB port on it can be used to charge every single one of my devices that uses a USB cable to charge. This includes my iPhone 3GS, Samsung NV24HD camera and even my X-Mini II speaker.  This allows me to leave most, if not all, extraneous power plugs at home and only lug along my Airport and necessary cables.

X-Mini II Capsule Speaker

I heard about this amazing little device originally from a co-worker who was rigging up this crazy portable A/V system with his Zune and a mini projector.  At that time, he only had the original version which was much smaller.

At first glance, this thing looks like a flimsy POS, but when you hear the sound it outputs, you’ll be amazed.  It’s come in extremely handy when I’ve wanted to watch movies in my hotel room on my laptop (my Thinkpad T60’s speakers absolutely suck), or even just listen to music off my iPhone.  You truly have to listen to this in person to believe it – the sound is amazing for it’s size.

You have 2 options for connecting it – either through the 3.5mm cable protrudes from the bottom (and neatly tucks away when not being used) or through the cable that connects via mini-USB. That USB cable splits into a standard USB plug to connect a USB power source for recharging it’s batteries, and also another 3.5mm jack. So if you’re using it with your laptop, you can charge it and connect it to your headphone jack very easily.  As I mentioned earlier, it can also be charged through the Airport Express’ USB connection.

Belkin Mini Surge Protector with dual USB Charger

I recently added this to my arsenal as I found that too often I either (a) needed more than 1 USB device charged at once, and (b) simply needed more power plugs. The Belkin Mini Surge Protector totally fits the bill and has a permanent place in my laptop bag (which is also my airplane carry-on).

It can also easily be used when you travel internationally by letting you get 3 outlets but only using a single travel plug adapter.

ATP Multislot Promax USB2.0 UDMA Card Reader (AF-CRMBK-MV1)

Since I never travel without my laptop, I never had to worry about running out of space on my CF or SD cards.  Since my laptop also has Lightroom installed on it, I can offload pictures every so often and even triage them to discard the obvious duds, and even start tagging and organizing them. When I get back home, I export the catalog from my laptop and import to my main PC. For longer trips, this strategy has saved me so much time in finishing my photos off.

At times where I’ve had lots of spare CF/SD cards, I still offload my photos for safekeeping so there is a duplicate copy.

Other 4 other more minor things I usually always bring:

• Spare iPhone USB Cable (because nothing sucks more than to lose or break your only one)
• 3 Prong to 2 prong adapter
• Retractable ethernet cable
• 3.5mm stereo splitter cable

Several people the last few months have approached me for photography related advice, whether it be what camera to buy, how to take better shots and even how to begin shooting with their first digital SLR.

Most recently, Mike and his wife got a new Canon Rebel XTi and wanted some basic camera operation and composition “lessons”. I spent a little over an hour with them and hopefully it was as fun for them as it was for me.

I wouldn’t consider myself an expert photographer (far from it) but I have learned quite a few things in the past few years I’ve been shooting, especially in the last 12 months since getting more hardcore about this stuff.

Here are 5 tips that I would have found useful for someone to tell me right out of the gates:

1. Don’t sweat over the Nikon vs. Canon decision. If you don’t have to worry about compatibility with existing lenses you might have (many people have lenses sitting around from old film cameras), then just buy based on comfort in your hand and your price range. Everyone’s got an opinion on what’s better, but fact is, the differences will be barely noticeable to you when you are starting out as a beginner. Note: I use a Canon 30D.
2. Don’t buy the most expensive gear to start out with. Start with a entry level SLR like the Canon Rebel XTi, or even snag an older Canon Rebel XT for quite a few bucks cheaper. For lenses, stick to the lens that came with your camera and after a few months of shooting, re-evaluate your lens needs. Look at the types of shots you have been shooting to gauge the type of lens you’ll need. I initially started off with a Canon Rebel XT with teh 18-55 Kit lens and realized that I really wanted to shoot on the longer telephoto end. I ended up picking up a 28-135 lens used off Craig’s list which is the only lens I took with me traveling 5 weeks through Europe. If you look at my portfolio you’ll see that some of those shots I took with that lens are better than some of the shots I’ve taken recently with lenses that are 5 times more expensive (ahem, Canon 70-200 2.8 IS).
3. Shoot, shoot, shoot. It’s digital so you can go crazy with the number of shots you can take without suffering the monetary costs of photo finishing. You’re only going to learn by shooting a lot of pictures, so if you don’t have the stomach for that already, you might want to take up a new hobby like knitting
4. Experiment with your settings. I’d recommend shooting in “automatic” mode first, then looking at the EXIF data to see what settings were used. I’d then move onto shooting in Aperture Priority mode so you are only dealing with one variable to adjust. For completeness, then work in Shutter Priority. This is the easiest way to learn the relationship between aperture, shutterspeed, focal length and ISO.
5. Keep your camera with you. You never know when a good shot will come up. Some of my best shots have come from my point-and-shoot camera since I had it on-hand to capture the moment at just the right time.