Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 09:59 am, by: David Vaughan(Davidv)
Then I think what you are looking at will do a pretty good job and with 28-300mm is very flexible. Remember that you will need the tripod or to lean on something with the long lens unless you are taking very fast shots.
The one bit of kit there that I would actively oppose for most usage is the 4GB microdrive. Yes, hard disks are highly reliable but memory cards are even more so. A microdrive is going to hold every one of your shots on a trip so if it crashes you have only If you are downloading the shots to something else then you do not need that capacity anyway, plus it will soak more power from your camera (and make noise) compared with cards.
On a trip I am sufficiently paranoid that I use multiple memory cards of only 0.5GB each (two usually suffice) being unwilling to risk more than 100 shots onto a single item and backing it up anyway (an iPod does that nicely) when I take it out of the camera. That way I can store shots in two different places in case of loss or theft as well as having a backup against electronic failure.