Most vacation photos stink. That’s the hard truth. But you don’t have to be “Scary Boring Vacation Photo Taker.” You just need to learn a few tricks to make your own luck. Some could be posts on their own, but here’s a quick overview.
1. Know How to Pick a Camera
A cell phone camera or even a compact will not get you a great photo, no matter how many megapixels it has. Megapixels are a salesperson’s best friend, not a buyer’s. See, the size of the image sensor is the real issue. Compact cameras have postage-stamp size sensors. Superzooms are a bit bigger, and SLR cameras are even bigger. Give me a 5-MP digital SLR over a 10-MP compact any day. The bigger sensor will capture more color and detail.
2. Crank the Quality
When you’re on a big trip, resist the temptation to take small photos. Some people try to cram as many onto their memory card as possible. Big mistake! You can easily buy more cards – but if you take a photo of beautiful scenery on a low image setting, game over. You can’t do anything to re-capture the lost detail. If you’re camera shoots in RAW format, go for it! Otherwise, just choose your biggest JPEG setting.
3. Befriend the ISO Setting
The ISO setting tells the camera how much available light there is. Many cameras range from ISO 64 (for super-sunny conditions) to 1600 and beyond (nighttime, caves, indoors, etc.). Use ISO carefully - high setting increase grainess (or “noise”). ISO 200 and [...]
SLR
Stop Taking Boring Travel Photos – Yes, You!
Cameras: Just as important as a plane ticket
The best souvenir you can bring home is a great photo. And New Zealand looks like it will give me a lot of incredible photos. There’s just one little problem – my poor old Fuji S5200 superzoom has been through a lot of hard knocks, from deserts to temperatures well below freezing. It’s showing its age a bit, with some shots starting to lose sharpness, and a power button that often gets sticky and balks at firing the camera up. It seems that over the last year, the Fuji has gotten particularly bad at high ISO settings.
The Fuji could probably survive New Zealand, but I don’t want to fly 15 hours and have it die. Or worse yet, just take mediocre shots of stellar scenery. So it’s time for a new one … and I decided long ago that I was ready for a digital SLR. The first one I considered was the Olympus E420, the smallest SLR in all the land (and the one that uses the same xD cards as my Fuji). My co-worker, Alex Scott (who is a most-excellent graphic designer and artist), steered me toward Pentax, which is making some impressive stuff. I gave Canon and Nikon their due, but I just wasn’t impressed with the plastic-like, somewhat flimsy feel of their entry and intermediate-level cameras. Sony wasn’t a consideration since I just don’t like their controls and layouts. I thought about Fuji, but they just didn’t have what I wanted in my price range. Believe it [...]
