A Manfrotto Suction Cup, plus a couple of other bits and pieces so enable a camera to be mounted on any smooth surface, such as a windscreen or on the body work of a car. I purchased it as I have a couple of jobs coming up that it will prove useful for. Will give a try out over the coming week or so in readiness.
A few days ago I ordered a bargain priced ThinkTank My 2nd Brain laptop bag for my 13″ Macbook, which is ideal for partnering with my ageing Airport Accelerator bag, £29 instead of the more usual price of £94. Well I enjoyed it so much I paid another visit to www.snapperstuff.com.
This time I came away with a laptop briefcase for my 13″ Macbook again for a bargain £40 instead of £125, these laptop bags are brilliantly designed & very well made, and even at full price are good value for money. They are specifically designed for Apple products, so fit perfectly, iPhones, iPads, Power Supplies etc. The Briefcase will be used as the work-a-day bag, with the vertical bag used with the back pack.
Just waiting for a bargain priced Airport Security 3 or Airport International to replace my old backpack.
I love a bargain, I wanted a digital watch for work, preferably something with a plastic case/strap etc as anything steel gets scratched to buggery, and I wanted something cheap & easy to read in low light. £30 and I have what must be the largest ever LCD watch. Waterproof to a far deeper depth than I will ever dive to and lighter than any watch that I have owned since the original Swatch.
I needed a new laptop bag, as the old Think Tank one was showing its age & didn’t really have enough storage space for everything I needed on the road, so a quick look at Snapperstuff, the UK importers website revealed the bargain of the month! A Think Tank My 2nd Brain 13 for only £29.00 plus P&P. instead of the usual £99.00.
Main advantage over the Artificial Intelligence case that I had previously is more padding & more storage space. I assume that the reason for the great price is that they are going to be replaced by something else in the near future. So grab one whilst the are available. Link Below.
https://www.snapperstuff.com/laptop-tablet-bags/my-2nd-brain-laptop-tablet-bags
Love this stuff, it is always worth having some knocking about. I managed to break the microphone mount for my in-car handsfree kit (an old Parrot 3100) and the only replacement was about £30, which for a tiny piece of plastic was ridiculous price, so a little packet of Sugru, moulded into the appropriate shape & stuck to the inside of the windscreen, now holds the microphone perfectly. Whilst it is not adjustable like the original it also will not break, randomly fall off or in any other way try to annoy me.
Took a little trip out with the laptop recently, it hasn’t been out a great deal since the pandemic f**ked up pretty much everything, so it wasn’t a great surprise that the battery has died, it gets to about 40% and then the machine shuts down, it only does it when I is under load, ie editing images, if you just leave it playing videos or browsing the web it will run to about 20%, so time for a new battery.
I had a look around and found a couple of guides for replacing batteries on 2017 touch-bar MacBooks & instantly decided that I would pay for someone else to do the job. SO £180 later, a brand new battery and a bit of a clean inside as well, and everything is good.
Need to charge the laptop on the road so I have purchased an in-car USB-C adaptor. It only provide 30w, so it will not power the laptop & charge at the same time (at least I don’t think it will) but it should be able to charge the laptop when not in use. I will give it a try out tomorrow as a test run & see how it goes, because the other option is a Mains Inverter, which is considerably bulkier & also requires the laptop power adaptor as well.
I also have the in-car charger lead for the Canon battery charger, but annoyingly Canon don’t support it on the later 1Dx mk2 & mk3 chargers, so I will have to use some older 1Dx batteries. I really wish that Canon would remember that a lot of users need to work off-grid from time to time.
The ramblings of a press photographer 