Dear Santa, Here are my top 5.

I thought about calling this post my Black Friday Lust List. Ok, I admit it – neither title is great.  Anyway…Here is my holiday wish list. Some photographic and some travel related. Not in any particular order but here goes:

Tissot T-Touch II – This is one of those watches that should never be called a watch. You know what I mean, it is like when folks say I take “snaps”. I take photographs, make images, but snaps? Just like this, this watch is a timepiece, or a multi-functional chronometer. In all seriousness, this is an amazing watch and it is no stretch to say that this could be a real asset to a photographer like me. The T-Touch series of watches has everything a professional travel photographer would want in a timepiece. It boasts duel time zones, an altimeter, a thermometer, a barometer, a compass, an alarm and a stopwatch.  The altimeter is to give you your height at the Mt. Everest Base Camp, the compass is to help you determine where the sunrise and sunsets are for great light, the thermometer and barometer are to aid in weather forecasting in remote of locations. The alarm is to get you up so you don’t miss your flight to Ladakh at 6am. It was like they made these watches just for us. Then, right when you thought it could not get any more boy toy-ish, you activate each one of these functions by touching the sapphire crystal on the face of the watch. The hands come to life and swing to the mode or as in the compass mode, turn into the compass dial. This watch is listed as a mid-range watch. I find it most places retailing between $600 to $700 depending on the model of T-Touch.

Phottix’s wireless TTL Trigger – This one is 100% photography related and sweet. Shooting with off camera TTL flash has been made incredibly easy. Goodbye to manual mode or proprietary flash-based triggering  and hello to reliable wireless radio-based TTL triggering. What can the Phottix TTL Trigger do?

* Wireless 2.4GHz. TTL and Manual Flash Triggering
* High speed sync – shutter speeds up to 1/8000 sec.
* Second curtain sync functions
* Remote power control in A:B, A:B C ratio modes with +/- EV …adjustments
* Remote power control of groups in TTL mode with +/- EV …adjustments (3 stops in 1/3 stops)
* Remote manual mode flash power control
* Remote flash head zoom adjustments – auto or manual
* On-camera AF Assist Light

This product has yet to be release. So no price as of yet. Keep watching Phottix’s blog for news of its coming release.

Panama Hat – You don’t have to have be around me long before you come to know I love hats. I recently bought a beautiful Akubra Stylemaster Fedora. I love it, but it is way too hot,  in most of the places I live, to wear a fur felt hat like that. Enter the Panama. Legend has it that President Teddy Roosevelt wore this hat at the inauguration of the Panama Canal and the name stuck. But the funny thing about Panamas is that they are not even from Panama, they are from Ecuador. There are two basic types; the Montecristi, the more costly and finer woven hat and the Cuenca. Both named for the Ecuadorian city the are woven in. These hats make a hot day enjoyable. They are light weight and very breathable (the makers of these hats  knew what breathable was long before Goretex!)To top it off -sometimes they are packable. You roll it up and stick it in your bag. Their price on a Panama hat can run from $35 for a hand made Cuenca to well over $1,000 for a Montecristi Superfino.

Think Tank Photo Retrospective 30 – Pinestone – In a word-classic. This camera bag is a throwback to the classic photojournalist bags of the past. Here is what Think Tank says about the Retrospection. “Created for the professional photographer that wants to blend in with the crowd and remain inconspicuous in any situation.  Our product designers have blended the look and feel of  ‘old-school’ camera bags and infused it with ‘new-school’ features and technology for the digital imaging age. ” That pretty much says it all. I saw David duChemin’s black Retrospection on the last Lumen Dei we led and I fell in love with it. It is the best of function and class. Another home run  hit by my friends at Think Tank Photo.

iPad – Not a unique gift idea, but one I hope to see in my carry-on next year. No need to go into any details. Everyone knows what these are. On the last Lumen Dei, I think I was the odd man out, seemed like everyone had one of these. As far as workshops go, it sure made passing around photos in the field easy peasy lemon squeezy! So, I figure I will wait for the next generation to be released and grab it at that time.