Cameras and Photography

When a real camera still earns its weight, and the habits that matter more than gear.

Updated

This is the category the phone changed most completely, so the honest starting point is that most travellers no longer need anything here.

The phone is the camera for most trips

Computational processing handles the cases that used to need a big sensor: low light, wide dynamic range, and the panorama nobody would have set up a tripod for. Modern phones are also rated IP67 or IP68, which covers rain and a dropped-in-a-puddle moment.

When a real camera still wins

If none of those apply, the weight is better spent elsewhere.

Bags: do not buy one that looks like a camera bag

A padded insert in an ordinary daypack protects the same gear and does not advertise it. Camera-branded bags are read correctly by exactly the people you would rather not be read by. Whatever you use, access speed matters most: a bag you have to take off and open means missed pictures.

Two things that kill cameras, neither of which is impact

The habits that improve travel photographs more than any purchase

Be out at the edges of the day. Get closer and include a person. Shoot fewer and look longer. Back up the same day, to two places, one of them not in your bag. A stolen camera is a purchase; stolen photographs are the trip.

And put it down for some of it. Nobody regrets the pictures they did not take of a place they actually watched.

Kept current

The reviews (67)

Written at the time, about gear that in most cases is no longer made. Useful for what the writer noticed, not as a shopping list.