Travel Photography Tips

This post is written by Guest Contributor, Champ Ocampo. If you are also interested in writing a guest blog, please reach out using the form in the Contact page.

Traveling is almost everybody’s dream, whether out of country or simply just out of town.  Aside from passport and plane ticket, camera is one of the most important things to carry while traveling. It is SOP to have a camera to capture all the memorable moments at a certain place. Can you imagine traveling without a camera? How will you be able to brag to your buddies that you have already been here and there and everywhere without photos as a proof? So, camera is really as important as your passport and plane ticket. Some travelers only bring point and shoot cameras for light packing purposes. But some do bring DSLRs for quality photos. Obviously, you cannot pack light with DSLRs. Variety of lenses will add you 2 to 3 kilograms on your baggage. Imagine you have your normal lens, your ultra wide angle, your macro lens, your telephoto plus accessories in a bulky camera bag. I bet you prefer to hand carry your camera bag than check it in.

Here are some tips to travel light with your DSLR:

1. Bring only one DSLR body: If possible, try not to bring a padded strap (Black Rapid or Quick Strap Sling types).

2. Bring only one lens: A 17-50mm f/2.8 will do the job (18-55mm f/4.5-5.6 kit lens will also work). You can do both portrait and landscape with this amazing lenses.

3. Battery Charger: Do not forget to bring a universal adapter.

4. Shoulder type DSLR bag: Obviously, this type is smaller and much lighter than backpack types.

And here is the list of extra stuff you want to carry when traveling,

1. SD/CF Cards

2. Battery

3. ND Filters – Good for tropical countries to capture greener tree leaves and perfect blue skies. ND8 is highly recommended.

4. RF Remote Shutter Button – This will allow you to have a complete family picture. You do not have to shoot your wife and kids or your wife shooting you and your kids. Just mount it on a stable flat surface (we can always look for an alternative to a tripod) and keep shooting using the remote.

So we can now leave other camera stuffs home. We have to be very practical when it comes to select stuff when traveling in order to avoid excess baggage. After all, capturing priceless moments is the most important thing to remember.

How Often Should You Clean Your Lens Or Camera Sensor?

Cleaning your camera and the lens is a very important part to take care of your equipment and it helps to produce a good quality picture consistently. Even small fingerprint on the front glass of the lens can impact on the quality of the photos. How often should you clean your lens and the camera? It all depends on how often you shoot and where do you shoot. For example, if you shoot a lot in a beach area where sands and dusts are present, you may have to clean your lens for every next shot and your camera sensor more often than people who shoot inside the studio. It’s very strange to accept the fact that lots of photographers who own an expensive lenses and camera body never pay an attention on cleaning their tools which help them capturing stunning photographs. If we take good care of equipment, our equipment takes care of us. Personally, I clean up my equipment every time I come back from the shooting and before storing it to dry cabinet. It is also very common for photographers to use an UV filter in front of their lens so that the actual lens won’t get accidental scratch and they don’t have to clean their lens every time and just cleaning an UV filter will do the job.

Lens cleaning kit

You can use a microfiber towel to clean the lens body and the front glass which doesn’t leave a residue on the surface. Don’t try to clean your lens or camera sensor with a rough surface material like normal towel or napkin paper; you may permanently scratch the front glass of the lens if you use hard surface material. I don’t recommend cleaning your sensor unless it is covered with the dusts and you are experiencing a problem with the image quality. Cleaning image sensor by yourself without having proper knowledge may destroy your camera permanently. Some DSLRs (Nikon D90 for example) come with an option that will lock the camera mirror up and allows you to clean the sensor using a blower or other cleaning tool provided by the camera manufacturer or the other individual company who produces quality accessories for DSLR.

If you go to the SETUP MENU by using the MENU button on the back of your D90 or other model DSLR, you will see an option called “Lock mirror up for cleaning” which is specifically designed for the photographers to clean up the sensor if in case there is a dust. You can use this option to raise the mirror up and open the shutter so that you will have access to the sensor for cleaning with a blower, brush, or swab as shown in the picture above. You can find those lens cleaning kit online for $20 or less. Nikon D90 allows you to use this feature only when your camera has a fully charged battery or sufficient battery for the cleanup because you don’t want the camera power to fail while you are still cleaning your sensor.

Nikon 50mm f/1.4G AF-S Nikkor Lens

Nikon is a very well known brand in photo industry for it's high quality Digital SLR cameras to both amateur and professional photographers. Nikon is popular among many photographers not only because of it's well designed camera body but also wide variety of lenses it offers. Nikon is probably the best brand to use wide variety of the lenses for the older body as well as the newly designed body. They offer wide angle lens, telephoto lens, macro lens, prime lens and few other types to reach out the varieties of users all over the world. I will continue to write about their other types of lenses in the future but today lets talk about the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens. Among many other prime lenses Nikon offers, Nikon 50mm f/1.4G is one of the best prime lens and the favorite of many photographers. It is very well designed and built from the high quality materials. It got the metal lens mount and the high quality plastic to protect the internal lens glasses. It has a smooth rubber ring with a very nice grip for the manual focus.

It works perfectly on both FX format and DX format DSLR cameras. This lens has an Autofocus (AF-S) feature which works brilliantly on Nikon's entry level DSLRs like D40, D40x and D60 as well as high end professional camera like D3 or D3X. It is built with an Exclusive Nikon Silent Wave Motor (SWM) which enables fast, accurate, and quiet Autofocus. This prime lens is perfect for the low-light conditions because of it's wide open aperture. Nikon’s Super Integrated Coating (SIC) on the glass enhances the light transmission efficiency, offers superior color consistency and also reduces the flare. Nikon 50mm f/1.4G is the ideal lens for travel, event, environmental and general photography in a wide variety of conditions, with superb optical formula and an ultra-fast f/1.4 maximum aperture. It is an ideal portrait lens when used on a Nikon DX-format digital SLR, approximating the angle of view similar to that of a 75mm lens on a Nikon FX-format digital SLR. This lens can focus close up to 1.5 feet and can also be used to produce nice bokeh as well.

Despite of being very fast and high quality lens, it doesn't offer few common features that you might be looking for. If you are used to with the zoom lenses and composing the shots sitting in one position, this lens might disappoint you. Since, this lens doesn’t have a zoom feature, you might need to move front and back time to time to adjust the frame and compose your photograph. It's focal length is fixed and that's why it is called the prime lens as well. And also, this lens doesn't have an aperture ring (denoted by G letter) and will not work on manual focus camera where you need to set the aperture from the lens barrel. This lens doesn't have a Vibration Reduction (VR) feature which may be useful for taking handheld shots in a low light condition, specially, if the subject is moving or the photographer is not using a tripod. As of writing this blog, it was priced at $434.95 on amazon which could attract some of the buyers as well.

It may be an expensive piece of glass but when compared to the other wide-angle lenses or the zoom lenses, the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens might be the most affordable and yet more versatile lens. It's build quality and the small size also makes it an ideal lens for the travel.