Digital photography offers many benefits over the old days of film, but one area where the new technology falls short is the constant need for power. Manual film cameras like the classic Nikon FM and FE2 could be used with no battery at all, but today’s hi-tech devices are just fancy paperweights without a battery. I’m often asked how I manage this challenge when traveling in the wilderness and the answer is the sun!
In addition to bringing a good supply of fully charged lithium-ion batteries (which perform remarkably well in the cold) I have a solar panel made by Brunton that rolls up into a small tube and cranks out a powerful 14 watts. That’s enough juice to power a laptop or sat phone and will even charge batteries on overcast days. So with an unlimited source of power and several large capacity memory cards the sky really is the limit when shooting in the backcountry.
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