A couple of Maps

Just some maps to show where I'm going:

This one shows the relative distances compare to NZ and the south pole. Just as a comparison, when I went to Darwin a couple of weeks ago, it was 5300km direct from Wellington. I'm not sure if that means that Darwin's far or Antarctica's close!

So, Scott Base is situated on Ross Island, in the Ross Dependancy. Ross Island is where  most of the early explorers to the region (the British ones at least) set up their bases. The Ross Ice Shelf (or the Barrier as it was once known) is about the size of France, and abuts the southeast side of Ross Island. 

I've annotated some of the key places that we'll be going to...

Camera Gear

Just thought I'd put a post about the camera gear I'm taking to the ice:

Digital SLR Body: Canon 450D / XSi - 12.2MP.
Lens (Wide): Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS.
Lens (Telephoto): Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS.
Filters: Circular Polarising x1, Lens Protect x2.
Cable release for 450D.
Digital Point & Shoot: Olympus Mju Mini - 4MP.
Tripod: Velbon Ultra LUX i M (and second plate).
Camera Memory (SDHC Class 6): 2 x 8GB cards, 1 x 1GB card.
Camera Memory (xD): 1 x 256MB card.
Batteries: 2 for each camera.

Digital Video Camera: Sony Handycam HC42
Heaps of tapes for video camera.

External Hard Drive: Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB
(running PortableApps with GIMP for image manipulation)

Shooting in RAW + JPEG, so that I can post-process the files once i
get back to NZ, but still edit the jpegs in all image processing
software if need be while i'm on the ice.
The RAW+JPEG combination means that each photo is 20MB, so an 8GB card
can take about 400 photos..

T Minus Two Weeks!

Team,

Well, in (fingers crossed) exactly two weeks, I should be on a plane, winging my way to the frozen continent.. Our programme's been moved back a day, so now we're scheduled to go down on November 5, and come back December 10. This, of course, is subject to change depending on
the weather.

So yeah, I'm busy rushing round picking up all the things I think I need to take. My photo kit is pretty much complete now that I bought an external HDD, and an awesome new tripod.. I'll do another post later about the camera gear i'm taking if anyones interested..

It's all getting very close. Its crazy how when you finally get to go to a place that you've been obsessed with for such a large part of your life, you can't really believe its happening.

Anyway, I'll try and do a couple more posts over the next two weeks around my prep and gear etc..

If you're looking for other reading, I recommend the Antarctic Conservation Blog. They're the peeps that do the conservation of the historic huts etc:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/earth/antarctica/blog/

Also, check out the webcam from Scott Base, its updated every 5 minutes or so: http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/education/2568 (I've attached an image from the webcam to this post to test the image posting on the blog)

And there's a page on the current weather down there here:
http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/weather/SBweather/sbweather.html