A small castle in the Bretagne region of France
“I am leaving for a Estonia tomorrow and I need a camera that will allow me to shoot some sights—I am looking to spend about $300.00 and I want to make some great photos on this trip.” This is actually a paraphrase more than a direct quote, but you would be surprised at the number of times I have heard it with varying destinations inserted.
I worked for a camera store—many, many, years ago. Customers would come into the store moments before leaving for a trip to somewhere wonderful, fist filled with cash, and want a camera that will help them save some trip memories. I would offer to be their personal documentary photographer, but of course THEY wanted to know some basics about cameras for the travel rather than try to stow me away—the nerve.
Whenever possible, buy a camera well before your trip. Even with 24 years photography experience, I have lost several great shots on vacation due to bizarre, unexpected, and easily resolvable technical difficulties experienced with an unfamiliar camera. I generally recommend owning and using a camera for several months before taking it on a trip—even longer if you are using an SLR (Single Lens Reflex.)
Learning a new camera’s functions at a critical photo-making time can be particularly frustrating. You have invested a lot of money in airline tickets and hotels, why ruin your memories of the Eiffel Tower by fiddling with your camera when it unexpectedly refuses to make an image, fire a flash, or any of the many other bizarre things that can go wrong. Sometimes just the placement of the buttons and knobs on a new camera can be the problem. Landing in a new country or destination will provide you with several more pressing challenges with which to contend.
If for some reason you are going to buy a camera last minute, then at the very least spend several dedicated hours, days, or weeks shooting test images around your home town—take photos of buildings, people, and sights to prepare for your camera’s debut in your vacation destination. This can help you deal with the camera quirks that are generally not advertised by the camera companies.
Both digital and film cameras can have bizarre power and lighting situations arise when on location. A little experimentation will help one know: How long will a battery last per charge, how many shots can I take, does the flash eat up the battery super fast, how many shots do I really get on a memory card, and will the camera accidentally turn on if I put it in my pocket the wrong way. All of these are valid concerns and can make or break a day or more of touristy vacation fun.
Important Accessories
Buy a second rechargeable battery and several mid-sized memory cards to go with your camera—it will be expensive but well worth the extra $100-150.00. Vacations are notorious for making one forget to charge one’s camera battery or download memory cards each night. Back-up batteries and extra cards provide the insurance of having at least one extra day of photographing between lapses in memory. Plus, if you have several moderate sized memory cards instead of one large one, you are better protected against a data failure or card loss. I generally prefer the SanDisk products.
Memory Card Availability
Before buying a camera, take into consideration the ability to get a memory card for it on the road. If you are traveling in large cities, then this won’t usually be a problem, but if you are traveling elsewhere, then obscure memory cards may be hard to find. There are two common types of memory cards that have become industry standards: SD (or HDSD) and Compact Flash (CF.) Compact flash cards are generally used in higher end digital SLR cameras. SD/HDSD are used in virtually every other type of compact camera, but not all. There are a few brands that use a brand-specific type of memory card—avoid these. You might be surprised that you need more image memory on the road than you had originally budgeted. I found this out on a trip to Chicago. I was shooting for the day and ran out of memory mid afternoon. I looked around my location, found a nearby drugstore, bought some more memory and continued shooting without much interruption to my trip. If I needed a bizarre memory card type, I would have been out of luck—the drug store only carried SD cards.
Backing-up Images on Your Trip
Use some means of backing up your images. One idea is to have doubles of each image printed at a local photo store each night and send the second set of prints home via the post semi-regularly. Another option is to use a new memory card each day (or two) and back it up to a personal assistant or other backup device. Keep the cards in a safe location and don’t erase the cards. The best and most reliable option is to make two backups that you keep with you on the trip, and have an additional backup that you make to a secure online website each night. This may seem like overkill, and it may be, but it depends on how important the images of your trip are to you.
I generally keep my memory cards and one backup with me. Once the cards are used up, I either buy more, do some impromptu on the road editing on the cards (after backup to a hard drive and online) or handle the cards like they are gold. One backup is great, two including online backups are better.
Postcards in Lieu of Photography
If you are a world-renowned, bad photographer—compositionally challenged, don’t understand lighting, or just don’t wish to carry a camera with you, then postcards are a great way to acquire a nice photographic record of a location. While it may not be particularly personal to your experience, it can provide you with professional images from a vacation haven, and it gives you a bit of space on the back to write a few notes and recollections for your memoirs. You can add a few snaps of you and your friends to fill in the personalization gaps. This solution is also a great fill-in on day three of your vacation when you forget to charge your camera batteries and download your images.
Even with my long photographic history and training, I would often buy postcards when I wasn’t in a location long enough to make the carefully crafted image I envisioned. Unless one is on a paid assignment, waiting for the right time of year or right lighting conditions can really make a dent in your leisure travel itinerary.
Chances are, if you are not going to be in a place for a long period of time and don’t have a lot of photographic experience, you are not going to get as nice a photograph as the professionals who live in-situ year-round. They have the luxury to wait for the right lighting and weather conditions and the understanding to know when and how to photograph it for maximum effect.
The extra benefit is that one can support professional photographers who work very hard to create memorable images for the postcards. This is, however, a photography blog, so, enough said on that subject. Let’s move on to what features to look for in the purchase of a travel camera.
Camera Lens Recommendations for the Traveler with Few Photographic Skills
Most urban travelers want to make photographs of historic building interiors and exteriors, cityscapes, self and companion portraits and other points of historic interest while on their trips. Among these images will be the photographs of oneself in a place of interest. It is for these reasons that I recommend a camera with a 24mm or more commonly a 28mm lens (based on 35mm film format camera) or its digital equivalent. The 28mm lens is a comfortably-wide angle lens that will allow you to hand-hold the camera while pointing it in toward yourself and a companion without having to hand it to a stranger. Practice this technique a bit before you leave on your trip and you will quickly master it. It gives a very distinct style of imagery that can be very personal and make for a great tradition. It is however hard to get a lot of background detail in the shot with this technique. If your camera can provide fill flash, this would be one time to use it. Digital cameras now give one the luxury to gauge self-portrait successes on the LCD screen.
A 24mm or 28mm lens is versatile enough to accommodate photographs of building interiors and exteriors and most general needs of the vacation traveler. Many of the less expensive point and shoot cameras come with a built-in 35 or 38mm focal length (equivalent) lens which is considered slightly wide angle. This will often be too narrow for most urban travelers needs especially in areas with narrow streets as in many European countries. Focal lengths of 35mm are great for family photos, and incidentally, person-oriented street photography, but will probably be frustrating when vacationing.
A bit about lens focal lengths
The 50mm focal length based on the 35mm film format (or its digital equivalent) in photographic parlance is considered a “normal” focal length which provides about the equivalent proportions one’s eyes would see, but a much more cropped version of it. It will provide a similar perspective view to what your eye might see with blinders on at about 10-15 feet.
The human eye is an amazing bit of functional evolution in that they are super wide-angle stereo lenses that can quickly adapt to light changes, yet provide us with a normal, undistorted look to the world—no human designed camera lens has been able to duplicate its sophistication. To be fair, though, we have large, complex brains which aid our eyes in doing their feats of impressive image creation and interpretation. The language of photography and the camera is different from what one sees, which in part, is what makes it an interesting art form. The camera translates images from three dimensions to two with the unique glass and plastic lens limitations. One’s eyes interpret three dimensions in a manner concordant with our experience.
To further confuse things, people will talk about 35mm both as a focal length of a lens or as reference to the film used. To make things even more convoluted, digital point and shoot cameras lenses are often converted into 35mm film equivalencies since digital cameras often have focal lengths in the 4mm+ range. The pros are at fault for maintaining the 35mm film camera conversion standard, but it was needed and the long existing one designed around the tradition of film seemed appropriate. It is the only standard presently applied to digital cameras.
Wide Angle vs. Telephoto
Any lens focal length that is numerically smaller in value than the 50mm normal lens, i.e., 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 38mm is considered wide angle and provides broad coverage of a scene. A wide angle lens allows one to gather more information from a place on the film plane or digital sensor. Anything numerically higher than the 50mm normal lens (70mm, 105mm, 300mm, etc.) is considered telephoto and provides a magnified perspective relative to what one’s unaided eye sees. For tall buildings, sculptures and church spires, most people will be happy with a 24mm or 28mm lens. If you go much wider than this, you may find too much visual information crammed into your photograph, plus you will pay a lot more money for the privilege. Some architecture will require 12-15mm lenses, but unless you are an advanced amateur or a pro, save yourself the expense and weight and buy a postcard of the building. Wider than 28mm is the point at which lens distortion becomes more pronounced even on the most expensive camera lenses. Many point and shoot cameras for sale generally have a zoom range of about 24-70mm, 28-140mm or 35mm to 210mm. Some of the cameras have auxiliary lenses that can be purchased to go wider. The 28-140mm zoom range is wide enough for most travelers and telephoto enough for any more specific applications one might have. Most tourists will be satisfied with a camera that has a zoom range from 28-105mm.
