Getting a good picture on a vacation is important to nearly everyone who bothers to take a camera along. It’s especially important for people taking wildlife or scenic trips and who take “good” cameras to record their adventure. Unfortunately most people have more camera than camera knowledge, and they end up getting less than they hoped for and deserved.
The right camera, and the right lens because the two go together, is a matter of your subject. There are four things that are usually the subject of traveler photos—people (especially family members or fellow travelers), scenery, “action” shots of events, and wildlife. Each of them has an “ideal” camera.
One general truth about cameras, something that cuts across subjects, is the whole megapixel thing. Unless you plan on printing poster-sized images you don’t need more than 10 megapixels, and I’ve printed some darn good 20x24s from 10 megapixel images. The point is that more isn’t always better.
More important than megapixels is how you store the photos. Cameras today offer two primary choices—which they’ll usually call “Jpeg” and “Raw”. Jpeg images use a form of digital compression to let you store more on a memory card. Raw images store what the camera shot—all the detail. But Raw images need to be run through photo software to be sent via email or posted online—most such uses require Jpeg. So most of my readers are going to shoot Jpeg. If you’re not one of them, skip the next paragraph or so!
If you shoot Jpeg images, the most critical thing is to pick the Jpeg options that give you the largest pictures, the smallest number of pictures per card! Memory cards are cheap these days, and if you select Jpeg compression that stores a couple thousand images on an 8G card, you’ll lose most of your image quality. Everything will look soft or out-of-focus, particularly prints. If you can’t glean how to pick the biggest image sizes for Jpeg, ask your camera store or a friend who knows how to set the camera up. There are too many variables to explain here.
Another general point here is the whole zoom thing. You see cameras with “8:1” zoom, or “25:1” zoom, and digital zoom versus optical zoom. What’s best?
Any zoom means the lens can move between a wider-angle to a more telephoto setting. The ratio of widest-angle to most telephoto is the “x:y” zoom range. That doesn’t say much. Most times you’ll also have a range of focal length, in millimeters, like “10-100” (which happens to be a 10:1 zoom ratio). That doesn’t say much either. Cameras vary in their design, and so a 40mm lens, for example, isn’t going to give the same result on them all.
If you want to judge lenses, you have to get everything on a common statistical footing. Almost any camera or lens will tell you somewhere in the spec what the “35mm equivalent” is. That’s the number you need to think about, and in the sections below I’ll use this convention. For your reference for now, a “50mm” lens on a 35mm camera is considered a “normal” lens. Something less than 50mm is “wide-angle” and more is “telephoto.” Got it?
OK, now we’ve covered basic camera stuff, so let’s move on to the camera-by-subject discussion.
If you want to take people pictures, you’ll typically want a camera that first and foremost is handy. While some people (like me) routinely carry about ten pounds of gear everywhere, most will leave heavy cameras with long lenses behind when they are being social, and of course social activity is where you’re likely to find people. Start with a camera that’s small enough that you’re willing to carry it.
People pictures are often taken indoors, which means that you will either have to shoot with flash or have a camera/lens that can handle low light. Flash pictures look like everyone got caught in a prison break; you lose the ambience of the scene. I like natural lighting best, so it’s best to look for a camera that advertises that it works in low light levels. If you can’t find (or trust) that kind of statement, look for what’s called “ISO” range. The higher the final number in the range, the better the camera works in low light. ISO 800 is decent, ISO 1600 is better…you get the picture. Generally your shots will start to look a bit grainy at higher ISOs but that’s better than red-eye.
If you’ve got ISO covered, move to your lens. Indoors, unless you’re in a mansion, you’re likely to be close to your subject. That means wide-angle. In fact, you’d need the wide-angle end of your zoom range to be about 25mm (in those 35mm-equivalent terms I mentioned earlier) to cover most indoor shooting needs. For outside pictures of people at distances better than in-your-face, it’s nice to have at least 150mm (equivalent) on the telephoto side.
Another thing to look for in people pictures is a camera with face recognition. Cameras have to automatically focus and set exposure, and those with face recognition will look for human faces and select them as references.
So if you want people shots, something compact with a 25-150 zoom lens (or as we’ll see something that includes that range), face recognition, good low-light performance and at least 10 megapixels will work.
Let’s move on now to our action shots category. This is perhaps the most complicated category because it exposes you to the widest range of conditions—and issues. What I call an “action shot” involves one or both of two things. First, the subject is moving quickly relative to your position, so you have to kind of sweep along to keep up. Second, the opportunity for the photo comes along suddenly without warning, and if you miss it, the shot is lost forever.
A lot of people who work hard to take decent pictures on vacations will say that the action shot is the justification for what is today called the “superzoom”, which is a lens that has a very large zoom range—10:1 or even 15:1. For digital cameras with interchangeable lenses, these lenses are described as “18-200mm” up to “18-300mm”, and reviews often call them “walk-around lenses”. That zoom range would on a full-frame DSLR take you from wide angle to a moderately long telephoto, and on one of the crop- or APS-frame DSLRs (most of Canon or Nikon’s consumer models) from about 30mm to 450mm in 35mm terms. It’s a nice range.
There are prices to pay for this kind of flexibility, though. One is dollar cost, obviously. You can pay a thousand dollars for a superzoom, though there are good ones available for three or four hundred bucks. Many casual camera users won’t pay that much for their whole camera/lens combination, and if you don’t want to go the interchangeable lens route and spend money, you can get point-and-shoot models with similar range.
The problem with these cost-sensitive approaches is that the quality of the images is likely to suffer. So, if you go this route, you should look for some specific features.
First, make sure the camera can shoot in raw format. Raw storage of images captures everything the camera is capable of, and even if you don’t intend to use Raw, a camera that supports it is likely to pay a bit more attention to image quality because the image format can provide it.
Second, look for a large CCD or sensor. Somewhere buried in the specifications will be the dimensions of the sensor used. Generally, physically bigger sensors will provide cleaner images. They also tend to make the camera bit bigger, so there’s a trade-off. If you want to dig further into the image-quality-sensor-size combination, look for reviews of the camera that test it at high ISO settings. Good performance there means a good sensor.
Third, look for built-in image stabilization and support for shutter-speed-priority shooting. If you have a superzoom lens and use it at extreme telephoto you will be very susceptible to camera shake. Try hand-holding a 30x spotting scope and you’ll see what that means! Image stabilization on point-and-shoot cameras is a bit of a crap shoot but you may be able to find a review that tests it. In any event, being able to specify your shutter speed and have the camera set the aperture and ISO (“auto-ISO”) will help keep your long shots steady.
Everyone doesn’t like superzooms, largely because they compromise image quality to a degree. However, you can take decent vacation pictures with nothing but a superzoom, and you can take good or even great ones with a superzoom and one more camera/lens for wildlife (see below). For those who don’t want a superzoom, the benchmark strategy for walk-around or action shooting is going to be a zoom lens in the 70-200 or 80-400mm range. A high-quality lens of this type is going to set you back between $1,200 and $2,600, but it will give you the best possible performance. The problem is that when you get such a lens for a wildlife adventure like Africa, you’re probably committing yourself to three cameras—one for wide-angle (less than 70-80mm), your mid-range zoom, and a super-telephoto for long shots and birds.
That brings us to scenery. People stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon or in front of the Matterhorn and ooooh and ahhhhh over the view. It’s natural to want to take a picture to share it, and you’re almost certainly going to want to give it a try. The problem is that it probably won’t work, and the “why” of that is important in deciding what you want to do with scenery.
Stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and the view extends 180 degrees, literally to everything you can see. Get a print of that at an 8×10 size (most think this a “large” print) and it will probably cover about 10 degrees of view at a normal distance. How grand would that canyon be if you could spread your thumb and index fingers and appear to hold the whole thing between them? The point is that a photograph can never capture the experience, particularly with large scenes. The best you can do is to suggest it.
What that means is that while wide-angle, even extreme wide-angle lenses are the theoretical answer to scenery shots, the fact is that you may want to think about taking the pictures with a people-lens or a walk-around, because the best approach may not be to zoom out to wider angle, but to zoom in. A single peak or canyon can convey the scene, and capturing it alone makes it bigger in the eye of the beholder. A sunset telephoto shot with the sun going behind a single tree may be more attractive than a sunset shot at extreme wide angle where the sun is the size of a pea.
So here’s my recommendation. Consider scenery to be a mission of your people or action-shot camera setup. Focus on finding a piece of the grand scene that suggests the grand whole, and work on conveying that piece in your picture. Don’t buy specialized wide-angle (“fish-eye”) lenses unless you’re a pro.
That leaves us with only one issue—wildlife. The problem wildlife photography poses is that the wildlife doesn’t pose. You can’t be sure where one of the critters will pop up, or when. That means that wildlife photography is a mixture of my action-shot category and some special accommodation for the most common wildlife photographic experience—the so-called “dot-bear”.
If wildlife is really wild, it’s probably going to be far off more often than close by. If it’s small, like birds, it’s going to be small even if it’s close. If you’ve seen wildlife shots you’ve loved, there’s a darn good chance they were taken with a very long telephoto lens. Think 400mm is long, or 500mm? You’re just getting started. Table stakes for bird shooting and for some kinds of big-animal shots is probably 600mm. You’re getting serious at 800mm.
The challenge this kind of glass poses is that it’s “long” in more ways than magnification. Any lens with a focal length over 500mm in 35mm equivalent terms is probably too big to hold steadily. You’ll need a brace, the most flexible of which is the one-legged tripod or “monopod”. You’ll also need something that has very flexible and accurate auto-focus because those dot-critters are too small to cover much of the autofocus sensor area of the camera. You also want something that lets you turn off autofocus or override it if you can’t get a lock on something.
Most truly long telephoto lenses are what are called “primes” meaning they don’t zoom. The problem with primes is that they are completely inflexible, which means that unless you’re going to shoot only birds that never get close, or mountain goats up on the high cliffs, you’ll need another camera to deal with other subjects. There are no truly long-zoom lenses available at a price a real person could afford.
Here, though, let me look ahead to my own kit and offer the solution I found. The effective focal length of a given lens is determined by the size of its image sensor. If the sensor is smaller than a 35mm film frame, the camera will appear to magnify more than the same lens would on a 35mm (or full-frame digital) camera. This sensor-size magnification thing is usually called the “digital multiplier”. Full-frame digital cameras (the pro Canon and Nikon models) will have a multiplier of 1.0 because they are full-frame. The so-called “APS” frame cameras have a multiplier of 1.4 to 1.6 (1.5 is the average). An 80-400mm lens on an APS-frame camera is equivalent to a 120-600mm lens.
Where this multiplier thing can really help is with the so-called “mirrorless” DSLRs. These are hybrid cameras, designed to offer the flexibility of interchangeable lenses that a DSLR has but with a smaller size. Nikon’s mirrorless is the Nikon 1, which is just a bit bigger than a point-and-shoot in the body size, and which takes an adapter (the FT-1) that will let you mount a standard Nikon lens. The Nikon 1 has a small sensor so its digital multiplier is a whopping 2.7. Put that same 80-400 on it and you end up with a 216-1080mm! This can offer the best long-shot wildlife option the average person could afford. However, the only way this works is if the company who provides your lenses makes a mirrorless that will accept them with an adapter. It works, in Nikon’s case, with Nikon lenses but not so well with third-party Nikon-compatible brands.
OK, let’s get to my final topic, which is what I think is the right answer, including what I take on my own trips. I want to emphasize here that I’ve been traveling and taking pictures for a very long time and I’ve become accustom to carting a bunch of things around. I know this is a lot of gear, and it’s up to you if you want to bother. To make this specific I’m going to assume that the trip is to a destination like Africa that will give you all of the types of subjects I’ve covered.
The minimum kit to get shots you’ll be happy with is a walk-around superzoom and something with more reach to get bird pictures and those of more distant wildlife. It’s a combination of my action and wildlife subject recommendations.
The cheapest way to get to this, from a standing start, would be two Nikon 1s. One would have the 10-30mm lens and the other the new Nikon 1 70-300. Closely behind would be the same rig but with the 30-110 lens. The latter gives you better mid-range distance coverage at the expense of wide angle or people shots. The 70-300 on the Nikon 1 body would give you an equivalent of 810mm on the telephoto side, long enough to be respectable. If you want to try a single camera solution, you could test out the Nikon 1 with the 18-300mm Nikon superzoom, which gives you the same 810mm equivalent telephoto and roughly 50mm on the wide-angle side. I’ve not tested this combination with the Nikon 1 so be sure it works!
If you are a DSLR fan, meaning you don’t want to use Nikon 1s, the best single-camera strategy is probably a superzoom (18-200 to 18-300) on a camera with an APS frame. This is going to leave you with less than ideal telephoto reach, though. For that you’d need an 80- or 100-400, again on an APS-frame DSLR. You might consider a small mirrorless or good-quality point-and-shoot to get you the wide-angle-to-normal end of the range.
If you’re looking at two DSLRs you have better options. One is to stay with the 80/100-400 on an APS frame for the long telephoto and mid-range game, and move to a full frame with the 24-120mm lens, which covers the range pretty well except for the long telephoto. Another is to replace the x-400mm with a Sigma or Tamron 120/150-600mm, which gives you 900mm if you use an APS frame camera. Finally, you could use the Sigma 50-500mm. I don’t recommend that approach only because the big 500/600mm zooms are too large to shoot without a monopod, and that makes them questionable for your walk-around strategy.
My own solution (probably not to your surprise) is a bit more complicated—three cameras. My walkaround is a Nikon D750 (full frame) with the 80-400mm VR (not the new AF-S), a Nikon 1 with the Nikon 17-55 for people/scenery (on the Nikon 1 it’s equivalent to a 46-149), and a Nikon 1 with the new 80-400mm (equivalent to 216-1080mm) VR AF-S for wildlife/bird shots. My Nikon 1s are all the V1 models. I personally think that you need a viewfinder for photography, certainly for wildlife. The V2 model is 14 megapixels which would give you more resolution for cropping or printing large images, so that’s what I’d pick if I were starting over. The new V3 seems to have a hokey viewfinder attachment and doesn’t do as well with raw image processing.
Three cameras invites a lot of fumbles, so here’s the setup. While moving, the walkaround D750 is slung on a Black Rhino strap and fitting over my shoulder. You can’t suspend heavy lenses by camera straps or you distort the mount; use something that attaches to the lens tripod mount. The other two cameras are in Think Tank holsters on a belt. When I’m in a vehicle on a game drive, I put the Nikon 1 with the 80-400mm on a monopod shortened to rest on the seat, and sit the other two on the seat next to me. If I’m walking and expect to have to take a long telephoto shot, I’d extend the monopod to the ground and stick the other two in the holsters.
To further complicate things, I can switch between the Nikon 1 that’s mounted with the 17-55 and a D7000 for that same lens. The APS frame means this lens is a 26-83mm, better wide-angle if that’s what I need. I also have to point out that the DSLRs are a lot faster in focusing, and they are “always-on”. That’s why I think a DSLR is a better walkaround choice than the Nikon 1.
So there we have it. Sorry this is such an essay, but the topic is complicated!