LITCHFIELD BEACH, South Carolina, 26 November 2010 — Especially because we usually work alone, backpack journalists have to pay attention to every detail. There’s nobody around to run through a checklist with us. So every time you pull the camera out of the bag, clean the lens. I know it sounds silly, but we get so wrapped up in the big stuff — tapes, time codes, composition, sound, focus, batteries, not to mention the story itself, that we forget the small stuff. We come back from a shoot with smears or particles on our images that we failed to notice on the lens out there in the field. So get a little brush to clean off the heavy debris on the lens, and some good lens tissue for the smears and tiny particles. And use them! (Photo by David Bathgate)