Vacation Travel Camera

PDH7981

I just got back from a cruise where I took my Nikon D700 and 24-70mm f/2.8 lens... along with my 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6. These two lenses worked out great but it was a challenge lugging around this gear. I really want to scale down on my next personal vacation. Carry as little camera gear as possible...BUT... maintain the ability to use flash, shoot in RAW and have great image quality.

So, if you wanted to go fairly light-weight but maintain all the features of a DSLR, where should I be looking?

David

jcgoodson

I had the same concern a year ago. I took my family to Disney World and didn't want to lug around the DSLR plus lenses. I picked up the Canon Powershot S100 and was very happy (I think the S110 and S120 have since superseded the S100). Here's the pros and cons of the S100 as I see them.

Pros: Affordable. Fits in your pocket. Manual control via dials (i.e., don't have to go through menus). Image stabilization. f/2.0 at the lens' wide end. Decent high ISO performance (I regularly shoot at ISO 3200 and use Lightroom to reduce noise). Internal ND filter. Electronic shutter, which makes the flash sync speed really high -- I've optically triggered multiple off-camera flashes at 1/1000th of a second, no hss.

Cons: No hot shoe. The pop-up flash can optically trigger off-camera flashes, but the pop-up flash is limited to only three power levels -- works fine if you choose the lower power setting and aperture/ISO that prevents the pop-up flash from registering. Difficult to take photos in quick succession. Limited optical zoom.

If I had the money, I'd seriously consider a mirrorless camera. Maybe the Fuji Neil has reviewed on the Tangents blog. It's small and delivers high image quality. Good luck! And let us know what you decide on.

Cheers,

Justin

Neil vN

best point-and-shoot I've encountered was the Sony RX-100 .... but I gave it to my wife, and my Fuji X100s is now my walk-about and travel camera.

If I had to have something more flexible, I'd go with the Fuji XT-1 which I have a review copy of now. It's very impressive for the image quality.

sasko1

Last year I tried something different. Instead of D700 and 24-70 i borrowed Fuji x-pro1 and 18-55 and 14mm lenses. Equivavelnt to my 24-70. And it worked out great. Small bag with everything inside was very light to carry and I actually made more photos than usually since the weight did not bother me.
Now, when X-T1 is out,which is even smaller, I'd reccomend that.
Yes, you have to accept some compromises, like short battery times and EVF, but besides that, camera is great. Try borrowing one and go on a hike, just to see, how different you can feel with so light equipment.

I'll sure change my system in a future, to go to small cameras, but since I have professional work, Nikon will stay in my bags.

PDH7981

Thanks for all the feedback guys! I have a bit of research to do now that I have all of this great input.