Would you bring a DSLR or Point and Shoot to travel to Europe?

[rickytanek]

When I booked a Europe trip (Italy, Switzerland, France) last year with my wife, I went out and deliberately bought a D90 (my first DSLR) for the trip because I did not want to miss the opportunity of taking good pictures. So I carried the D90 with Kit lens (18-105) while my wife carried a PnS. I did not carry any tripod because traveling with a tour group means you dont have much time to setup and compose.

Was glad that I brought the D90 along as Europe really a lot of nice photo opportunities.

 

[Junye]

What Ortega said is excellent.


Points to note.
1. Know to set your setting QUICK before every photo taking opportunity. (women have no patience to wait)
2. Before shooting the excellent scenery, first take pics of your wife.
3. Before shooting the excellent scenery, first take pics of yourself and wife together.
4. Shoot your scenery.

Just imagine when you have to bring a kid along next time.
my next trip i will have to carry my equipments, the baby bag and kid. workout!

bring both, just make sure you take lots of photos of your wife as well
a small tripod or table pod for some together shots

 

[pegasus21]

You can have the craziest and most expensive set up in the whole world but if you don't know how to utilise your equipment, you won't be able to get good pictures. Likewise having a good composition helps.

So don't be too bothered by the equipment... just go with something light and with reasonable image quality. Preferably m43 if you have one and generally 1 normal range zoom and maybe 1 prime if you can afford the space/weight. The prime should be geared for low light. A compact isn't a really bad idea for general shots just that it won't do well in low lights but at least you'll enjoy your holiday more with less weight and concern about theft.

 

[glenyang]

HI all,

Need an advice on bring photography equipments on the vacation trip.

Would you bring a camera body (like D700 + 24 - 70mm plus some lens + a tripod) or just a point and shoot?

I am concern with the weight that I need to carry around.

Traveling with Wife about 1 month.

Can i have inputs from the clubsnappers out here?

Regards,
Michael

For me, I'd just bring my old c-lux1 pns. Nothing fantastic compared to newer toys but good enough for my albums.

Some pics from it:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oinkoinkglen/5433380161/
http://gallery.clubsnap.com/showphoto.php/photo/173689/ppuser/132506/sl/g

Low light capability:
http://gallery.clubsnap.com/showphoto.php/photo/173681/ppuser/132506/sl/g

 

[zaren]

i generally like to travel light, so will probably just be bringing my LX5 to travel to europe.

 

[Will03]

I have always brought my DSLR, except when I travel up north which I don't see why I would want to bring a heavy load with no opp to shoot (or I don't see any)... Having said that, I had traveled with the D70, it's kit lens 18-70mm, 50mm & tokina 12-24mm.

What made me change my "travel kit" was when I was in spain, where I ruled the day which I had not got a longer lens. So, the kit lens was changed to 18-200mm and have been traveling with these lens.

Yes, some would say the quality of the images from this lens is not good, but for the convenience and the photos I got, I would say it's a good traveling lens.

For next trip a new lens to be added for the trip to get the extra reach that I would need. Let's see how the travel will be.

Oh, I do bring along a P&S, for videos before I got the D7k recently... But I will still travel with one especially it's easier to leave it to a stranger to use to take me photo than to hand my DSLR to them. Sometimes kiasee can be a good thing

spain .. hm... haha

 

[Will03]

if you think that weight is an issue when you travel.. then you already answered your own question..

then my question to you is.. is your DSLR only to be used in Singapore ?

alot of people tend to ask this question about weight..
1 camera+ 2 lenses.. is it really that heavy ?

on average, for most of my trips, I bring 4 cameras, and probably about 5 to 8 lenses..

 

[electron]

Points to note.
1. Know to set your setting QUICK before every photo taking opportunity. (women have no patience to wait)
2. Before shooting the excellent scenery, first take pics of your wife.
3. Before shooting the excellent scenery, first take pics of yourself and wife together.
4. Shoot your scenery.

:bsmilie: Omg i think our wives are related! :bsmilie:

 

[reisuka]

if you think that weight is an issue when you travel.. then you already answered your own question..

then my question to you is.. is your DSLR only to be used in Singapore ?

alot of people tend to ask this question about weight..
1 camera+ 2 lenses.. is it really that heavy ?

on average, for most of my trips, I bring 4 cameras, and probably about 5 to 8 lenses..

Woah, 4 cameras? Do they accompany you everytime you leave the hotel?

Not Europe, but in HK I carried a D90 on a strap and had either the 35 or 85 prime in a ThinkTank lens changer - wore my shirt tucked out over the belt so it was pretty discreet, just a small pouch at the small of my back which could be easily rotated forward when changing lenses.

Fast and light! Important when travelling with people who generally dont grant you more than a few seconds to take a shot. Best part is, I brought my sling bag etc but ended up using it only to/fro the airport. :sweat:

 

[Will03]

Woah, 4 cameras? Do they accompany you everytime you leave the hotel?

Not Europe, but in HK I carried a D90 on a strap and had either the 35 or 85 prime in a ThinkTank lens changer - wore my shirt tucked out over the belt so it was pretty discreet, just a small pouch at the small of my back which could be easily rotated forward when changing lenses.

Fast and light! Important when travelling with people who generally dont grant you more than a few seconds to take a shot. Best part is, I brought my sling bag etc but ended up using it only to/fro the airport. :sweat:

yup ..most of the time they accompany me everytime i leave the hotel

 

[Alpc]

spain .. hm... haha

Yes, Spain...

on average, for most of my trips, I bring 4 cameras, and probably about 5 to 8 lenses..

4 cams? Is that work trips or the family trips? Don't recall seeing that many cams but I believe u brought a fair bit of lenses... Don't believe all can fit into that backpack!!!!

 

[af2373]

bring the dslr, sure no regrets. if you can grab hold of those zoom lenses (18-105mm or 18-135mm), it shld be more than sufficient. tripod, optional cos it's added weight.

i took the following lenses with me when i went bangkok a couple of months ago, 18-55, 50-200, 50mm 1.4, 50mm 1.7 manual & a tripod. end up i was more preoccupied with changing lenses rather than enjoying the trip. lesson learnt, variety makes the mind fickle. :embrass:

 

[Odyssey-Boy]

I will keep mine simple, heading to Los Angelos end of this year, will be bringing a FF, 35mm prime and 135mm prime plus a tripod, more than enough for me.

 

[alantkh]

I would really ditch the tripod.

After a few trips with the tripod, I found that the inconvenience of setting up the tripod really limits its uses.

In the my last trip to japan I never missed the tripod.

My gear is just D700 14-24 and 70-200mm. NX10 + 30mm .

Thinking of ditching the NX10 + 30mm although it is so light. As I realised most of my keepers are using the D700.

My recent travel pics
Jan 2011 Japan
http://www.clubsnap.com/forums/showthread.php?t=845881

August 2010 NZ
http://www.clubsnap.com/forums/showthread.php?t=754986

 

[Will03]

Yes, Spain...



4 cams? Is that work trips or the family trips? Don't recall seeing that many cams but I believe u brought a fair bit of lenses... Don't believe all can fit into that backpack!!!!

in fact for work trips i dun bring so many.. its only for personal trips that I bring more stuffs.. hmm. think the spain trip was a smaller bag.. cant remember.. that was so many years ago already..

 

[verselines]

I had this dilemma too a couple of months back - DSLR or micro 4/3 camera for my exchange program in Europe for 6 months. In the end I left my D90 at home in favour of a panasonic gf1.

Now I've been in Europe for 2 months plus, my experience with the micro 4/3 camera versus dslr has been really mixed.

On one hand I love the compact-ness of the m4/3 set up. I can bring my camera with me literally everywhere I go, even to school and to shopping trips at the supermarket since it fits nicely into one of the outer compartments of my backpack. If I brought a DSLR I probably wouldn't be able to lug it around everywhere. I've got shots that I would never have bothered shooting/had the chance to shoot with a clunky DSLR.

Yet I miss the 'snappy' feel of my D90, there is less shutter lag and long exposures process faster on the D90 than the GF1. The biggest blow has to be high ISO performance. With the D90 ISO1600 can still be useable, but anything above ISO400 on the GF1 is really, really noisy.

So to me it really depends on the type of photography you do. If like me, you are less concerned with the 'technical' side of photography, m4/3 might be a good compromise between DSLR and pns.