You’ve worked hard all year and now it’s time to take a vacation and recover. This is a time that many people look forward to and prepare for most of the year. It’s a lot of work to prepare properly, plane tickets, hotel accommodations, car rentals, clothes to pack, pets to care for, making sure other family members and friends can reach you in an emergency, etc. But one item that is sometimes left for last is photography equipment to record your vacation. Do you want to take with you a lot of equipment, still cameras and lenses, accessories, in addition to the video camera to record all the action on your trip?
When going on vacation, most people take a digital still camera or video camera. Some will take both and go to great lengths to deal with the hassle of switching cameras. Some scenes are better suited to being shot with a video camera, obviously like things that are moving, like a parade or at the races, while others are better suited to a still camera, like landscapes and cityscapes.
You have to think a little differently to take advantage of the features of each camera system. Video experts and filmmakers alike will tell you that the best way to create an interesting video is to shoot a series of short clips, not one long, boring video. The video should be interesting, and we humans get bored very quickly, so keep your videos short and to the point.
When you take photos with a digital still camera, you usually have a little time to make sure you have the composition and lighting you want to create a stunning photo. Digital still cameras also offer much higher resolution so you can make enlargements that you can hang on the wall for all to see. The digital DSLR is a very versatile system.
If you’re not fully aware of the benefits of a DSLR, let me give you a quick rundown. The first, and some believe the most important feature, is that you look through the viewfinder and see exactly what the camera sees. In other words, light from the subject enters the camera lens and this is the image you see. The instant you press the shutter button to take photos, the camera redirects light onto the digital sensor to take the photo. In normal daylight, this happens so quickly that it is hardly noticeable. In low light conditions, you will not be able to see through the camera until the exposure is complete. With the new generation of cameras, they employ a system called live view, where the image you are shooting is displayed on the rear LCD screen. So you can compose and view the image as you take the photo.
Now, in the old days, and I’m talking about a few months ago (things happen so fast in this digital age), you had to commit to taking a video or a still camera or both on your vacation. But today, you have a new option. Camera manufacturers now give us photographers the benefit of being able to take amazing still and video images all in one camera body. Now you can take high resolution still photos and HD quality video with sound on the newest range of DSLR cameras. This is exciting news as you now truly have the best of both worlds, an HD video camera and a high resolution digital still camera all in one unit.
The DSLR now offers the photographer the benefit of HD video for incredible quality videos, but also the advantage of using DSLR lenses to shoot those videos. All of those optional lenses will allow you to take some amazing videos, and by adding filters and other accessories, this opens up a whole new genre of available effects.
With the advent of GPS tagging of your images, you will always have the exact location and time each image was taken. This technology will tag every photo you take with GPS data so you always know exactly where you were when you took each photo. With some types of photography, like bird photography, where you may have taken a photo of a particular bird, you can always find your way back to where you took the photo by looking at the GPS data.
Copyright (c) 2008 Tom Jackson