Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
― The Innocents Abroad
Just in case your momma didn’t already tell you, whenever you travel anywhere be sure to bring comfortable (and appropriate) shoes, a hat, and depending on the climate, sunscreen. Also important is comfortable underwear.Here’s a few photographic tips:
tip #1: Never buy a new camera the day before setting out on a vacation to photograph the wilds of Alaska…
tip #2: …That’s because using your equipment has to be instinctive so when an photo op presents itself you may only have a few seconds to get a shot.
How I Made this shot: When I saw a guy riding a scooter coming toward me on Old San Juan’s cobblestone streets, I turned and clicked off three frames and this one was the best. There’s no time to think about what menu to use or how do I turn on continuous AF or what exposure mode am I in? The Scouts have it right, when it to comes to travel photograph you gotta “be prepared.” The camera used was an Olympus E3 DSLR, part of the Four-Thirds system—not Micro Four-thirds—and a Zuiko 12-60mm f/2.8-4 lens at 12mm. Exposure was 1/640 sec at f/4 amd ISO 200 with an exposure compensation of one and one-third stops.
tip #3: Just as important as knowing your equipment inside and out is what other stuff you need to bring along to make sure the images from the trip are as vivid as your memories. That’s why another good tip is to pack lots of memory cards. You may not be able to find an SD card or even a Wal-Mart in the mountains of Bhutan or may be surprised that the prices for memory cards in Tokyo’s Akihabara are a lot higher than your local Best Buy.
Capacity matters too. While there seems to be an ever-confusing array of memory cards for digital cameras, what size memory cards should you use?The conventional wisdom I hear espoused is that you’re better off having more, smaller capacity cards than fewer larger ones. That concept is based on the assumption that you’ll loose fewer images if you have a memory card failure. Don’t laugh, it’s happened to me.
But I have a different theory: I think you should use fewer bigger cards. You won’t have as many to keep track of (or lose) or have to waste/spend time changing memory cards.
Either way, memory cards don’t take up a lot of space; just make sure you have enough of’em. To protect the cards I use a Pelican 0915 Memory Card Case. It costs 20 bucks, is bulletproof and holds 12 SD, six miniSD, and six microSD Cards. And if you take my advice and use larger capacity cards, you won’t run out of image storage space on your next trip.
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