Category Archives: Bhutan Travel Blog

The blog has been looking a bit light on pictures recently. Meanwhile I’m beavering away trying to finish tidying up the Bhutan pics before I’m off to Burma in February. This morning I discovered a series of four similar close-ups on supporting "gargoyles" (I suspect that’s not quite the right term in the Bhutanese context, but close enough) which I never originally envisaged as a multi-shot combination, but which I think actually work quite well as a "quadtych" (which is exactly the right term, apparently).

This really shouldn’t difficult. The image above is from the entrance to the Rinpung Dzong, in Paro. It’s a series of pictures of Buddhist deities which have been painted on bits of cloth, glued to the wall, and joined at the seams. Yes, it’s a stitched panorama. So why was it so difficult to make a photographic stitched panorama of it?

I set the camera to appropriate manual settings (to make sure that exposure was constant), faced each panel in turn, and when no-one was in shot took a picture. I then developed the JPEGs with exactly the same settings in Capture One. There was good overlap between the images, and as by definition it’s a series of images with a visible seam it ought to be straightforward to stitch images back together.

There seem to be two main challenges. Firstly as far as I can see all automatic stitching software assumes that the camera is roughly static, whereas I was shooting in a long thin tunnel, and moved the camera to face each subject. This is a well-established shooting technique, but seems to have minimal software support. Second, despite the manual exposure the resultant images vary significantly in brightness, and it looks like the camera was doing some measure of adjustment for the tricky lighting.

In the end I "went manual", importing the pictures as four layers in PhotoShop Elements, hand tweaking their position and geometry using free transforms, and then using the technique of painting the layer masks to choose exactly which elements of each image are visible in the final shot. The result isn’t perfect, but probably "good enough". In the meantime I’ve bitten the bullet and invested in some new stitching software which is supposed to cater for "moving camera" combinations, and we’ll see if it can make a better attempt.

Bhutan isn’t especially demanding on equipment. If your style of photography is similar to mine you will need a wide range of focal lengths, from ultra-wide (for when there’s limited space in front of a large building) to long telephoto (for inspecting details of the landscape). Outside light is usually very powerful, but inside you will rapidly need some combination of high ISO, fast lenses and a tripod. If anything the greatest challenge is the relatively harsh, direct lighting during the day (when the temples and Dzongs are open), and you will need to watch for flare and the effects of polarisation.

Dust can be a bit of a challenge, especially on or near the roads. It does tend to get everywhere, even inside filter pouches for example, but a filter will protect your lens, and other kit will just need a careful dust down. My excellent Hoya high-transmission 58mm polarising filter picked up a small scratch, but that’s a small price for providing both its optical services and protecting the lenses.

Shot Counts

The scores are in, and the shot counts are as follows:

• Panasonic GX8: Almost exactly 3,000 shots. Quite a lot of those are for "multi shot" images, including 3D for the first time this year
• Panasonic GX7: About 100 shots, plus video of "culture night"
• Sony RX100 mk IV: About 364 stills, plus quite a few short video clips

Overall the totals are very similar to Morocco, albeit with a different camera mix. It looks like I’ll have about the normal 50% discard count, and end up with around 100-200 images which I want to show people, which is fine.

Panasonic Cameras

The Panasonic cameras have worked well. The GX8 is fast and produces great image quality. Its viewfinder is large and bright (although I have to acknowledge that the Fuji XT1 is even nicer), but does seem to be more sensitive to white balance changes than previous models. This means that you may see a bit of a red or brown cast on the live image in some cases, which doesn’t affect the captured image but can be slightly off-putting. It wouldn’t surprise me if this attracts a firmware change at some point.

Handling of the GX8 is good, but the viewfinder and controls are just different enough from the GX7 that you can’t just leave a different lens on the older body and switch quickly back and forth between them.

Even though it packs a much bigger battery than the GX7 battery life is still only moderate. I never used more than 3 per day, but that could have increased if we had done significant action shooting, so my purchase of a total of 4 was probably justified.

Bags

The National Geographic Africa Medium Backpack is an excellent device for carrying equipment between locations. It meets the most miserly airline carry-on restrictions, but easily swallowed my 15“ laptop, tablet, 4 Panasonic bodies, 8 lenses including the 100-300mm, a small flash and various odds and ends.

Unfortunately it’s pretty bloody useless as a working bag on location. The only way to extract kit is to take it off completely and lay it flat on the ground, getting it and then you filthy, and the whole process is very fiddly. Luckily I had allowed for this and fitted one of my Lowepro Nova shoulder bags (the 180 AW) into my hold luggage. This has room for the main body and lenses, the infrared GF3 and bits & pieces with room over for a small water bottle.

Sony RX100 Mk IV

First impressions of the Sony RX100 mark IV are excellent. It is fast, with almost DSLR-like autofocus, and the image quality is superb – more or less a match for my Panasonic cameras at moderate ISOs. My camera has had a "baptism of fire" being used mainly to try and get grab shots from a moving bus, so maybe not exactly a fair test, but has delivered decent results albeit with some misses. Although the EVF is small, and does seem to need quite regular re-adjustment against my glasses, it is clear and perfectly usable in a way which wasn’t true of the Panasonic GM5 I tried.

The handling is a bit fiddly, but I wouldn’t subscribe to some of the complaints I have read in internet interviews. However it is far to easy to accidentally change shooting mode, and the other problem I have had is accidentally pressing the power button instead of the shutter, and switching the camera off at just the wrong moment. If you have the camera at arms length in a tricky shooting position, the feel of the two controls is just not different enough.

Battery life is limited, although no worse than other cameras with a similar sized battery (like the Canon S120). Sony’s insistence on in-camera charging is annoying, and I’ve now purchased a third party charger and spare batteries from Germany.

I tried carrying my camera just in my trouser pocket, where it fits well. However it rapidly picked up a number of small scratches on the rear screen. Nothing fundamental, but a real annoyance on a brand new, expensive little camera. This seems to be a vulnerability of Sony cameras, with one of the other members of the group suffering a similar problem with his A7. I’m hoping that I can fit a screen protector to restore the original appearance, and am now carrying the camera in a small cloth pouch which came with a Metz flashgun.

Other Notes

One other annoyance is that I changed my phone earlier this year from a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 to a Note 3. The older Notes had very good GPS, getting accurate fixes quickly in most conditions. The Note 3 has a useless GPS, taking time to get a good fix even at the top of a mountain under cloudless skies! As a result my GPS track has a couple of annoying gaps in it, and I’ve had to do a lot of manual work and fix it, which has never been necessary on previous trips.

At the same time, my Note 10.1" tablet seems to have suddenly lost most of its battery capacity, and is only good for about 4-5 hours, not long enough for some of the flights on this trip. I am seriously thinking of a shift in loyalties.

Overall a few annoyances, but I managed to travel quite light, and unlike some trips there were no major problems. That’s a refreshing change.

Bhutan: What Worked and What Didn’t

Sorry it’s been quiet for a couple of weeks. Inevitably there’s catching up to do on the return from a trip, plus I’ve had a couple of practical challenges before I could start properly sorting out the photos from the trip. However things are working OK now.

As always at the end of these trips, I’ve prepared a couple of posts with general observations on the trip, in the hope that it may be of assistance to someone planning a similar visit. To keep things manageable, this post focuses on the trip as a whole, and the following post focuses on photography and equipment matters. There will be a final post reflecting on my observations of Bhutan, the country and people.

On a positive note, the people everywhere were friendly, welcoming and most were happy to pose for the camera, without expectation of more than a "thank you". In reality most away from direct tourist contact have limited English, although that will change, but they all understand basic pleasantries well enough.

Bhutan is not an expensive location once you’re there and the $250 per day has been paid to the tour operator. My additional costs (mainly tips, T-shirts and beer) probably came to not much more than £200. Western money goes a long way in a country with a 1p note! There are plenty of stalls and shops selling handicrafts, but they understand the value of a "no thank you", and there are no street hawkers or other more annoying channels. There’s no need to haggle, and transactions are very straightforward with no nasty catches, but you do need to be aware of prices which can vary substantially between locations (beer varying between about £1 and £3, for example).

Travel in Bhutan is slow. 20kph is a very good speed in a bus, 15kph is a more sensible basis for estimating. One suspects that the current over-ambitious programme of simultaneously trying to widen almost all the roads is doomed to failure, or at least to very late delivery, so things will probably get worse before they improve.

In hindsight, the trip to Bumthang cost us two long days of uncomfortable travel for not much benefit, and I think most participants on our trip will be advising Light and Land to omit if from future itineraries. If your itinerary includes statements like "a full day of travel", question whether that is the best use of time and endurance, or whether further exploration of the nearer areas will be of more benefit.

Be wary of overcrowding on the transport. The standard tour buses are not terribly comfortable, and have a lower real capacity in practice than you might expect. They have a typical nominal seating capacity of 16-17 plus the driver and guide, but 4 seats are over the wheel arches with zero legroom, the back seat bounces so much that it suits only the hardiest, and there’s zero internal baggage space (suitcases are typically transported between hotels in an independent vehicle). Assume a maximum of 12 usable seats for longer journeys, in addition to the driver and guide.

Food is essentially Indo-Chinese buffets, mainly vegetarian with some chicken, although in the east you might also get a pork or beef dish. (I wrote most of this post at Doha airport, and I have never seen so many people queueing for a hamburger, in a Muslim country!… :))

The primary calorie source is uniformly boiled rice, although there is usually a secondary form such as potatoes, pasta or bread. Those catering more directly for tourists try and keep the main dishes fairly bland, with the chilli and garlic in separate dishes, but you can be caught out. One of the nastiest surprises of the trip for me was something called "cauliflower cheese", but about the strength and flavour of industrial defoliant!

The information I received about the weather was, essentially, lies. We had wonderful weather, dipping to around freezing most nights but between high teens and high twenties once the sun came up every day. We felt a couple of drops of rain once, and the mornings in Punakha started with a bit of mist, but otherwise we had zero precipitation. I had to carry a long-sleeved top or jacket for religious observation at the temples and Dzongs, but otherwise I could have operated entirely in T-shirts on all but two days. The waterproof, weatherproof tops, trousers, gloves etc. were completely unused.

Were we unusually lucky? It’s difficult to say, as this was the first time in Bhutan for all westerners in our party. However the fact that every other rooftop is covered with drying chillies, and the winter firewood is stacked in the open suggests that the Bhutanese are not expecting storms either.

This was my second trip (and the first for seven years) with Phil Malpas and Clive Minnitt of Light and Land. They continue to be great tour leaders: sensitive to the needs of their clients, well organised, and great fun to be with. As usual Light and Land partnered with a local tour provider (essential in Bhutan). Etho Metho provided a very good, supportive and knowledgeable guide in Yeshi, and I continue to be amazed by the accuracy and endurance of Chorten’s driving. Overall, a highly effective team.

So as a trip it worked well. Next: technology!

You’d think that with tens of thousands of pounds worth of equipment, umpteen years of experience and an undying dedication to their art, 12 other photographers could take a nice picture of me. However, this was the handicraft of a passing Australian hiker who wasn’t even sure which button to press on my camera. Oh well…