Nepal essentials

India essentials

Digital camera trekking discussion

Thinking about buying or upgrading for your trek or expedition? Do!

Also carefully consider how the camera will be used afterwards...

Intro

It is essential to understand digital photography is a medium. Although many people think you are duplicating what you see in real life; you are not. Our eyes can see more colours, handle far greater variations of light and many other subtleties far better than film or digital; nothing is perfect, luckily nothing is the same a real life. Consider photography a (usually lightly) stylized interpretation of what we see, water colours are another interpretation...

People often compare 35mm film and digital; 35mm slide film is sometimes considered the standard to judge against, with a latitude of 5 stops or so; now the latest cameras shooting RAW are better than this, but you have to know what you are doing. Comparing print film with jpegs, for prints, film still comes out on top just, but in terms of convenience if you have your own computer?

Reviews

Getting serious about comparing cameras? Go to dpreview.com, by far the most comprehensive and unbiased site. If you are overwhelmed just take a look at their conclusion at the end of a review and read carefully.

Camera types

Essentially there are three types of cameras:

SLR's (ie interchangeable lenses, often also called dSLR's), these do everything and are wonderful to use, are the most versatile but chunky and heavy to carry. Really think carefully about whether you want to take something this big trekking; the results are fantastic though. You must plan your carrying system carefully. The greatest advantages of SLR's is the optical viewfinder, and the ability to change lenses.

Semi-compacts - smaller do-almost-everything cameras, and these are what most people trek with. The advantage of these is some have good zooms, say 35-140mm (35mm equivalent) or more. The superzooms are now in the range of 38-420mm! The size of these cameras is still an issue, few fit into a pocket without being noticeable, but in a trekking situation with a nice case that attaches to the hip belt area of your pack, they are convenient. Canon is a great choice, certain Sony, Panasonic Lumix and Olympus's are also good. None use optical viewfinders, they are all LCD-based, most having an LCD viewfinder and also an LCD screen. These LCD-based methods are less easy to use for composition. Image stabilization is essential.

Super-compacts, the size of a packet of cigarettes, fit in a pocket almost unnoticeably. They are also good for trekking, although less zoom and so slightly less versatile than the above styles. Canon, Nikon and Panasonic Lumix are the best brands but do read reviews carefully and consider what sort of shooter you are, your end result use. A small case can go on your pack shoulder strap area even. A few of the Canons have an optical viewfinder AND an LCD screen, the rest of them just use a large LCD screen.

Brands

Arguably Canon are the leaders in every category and you can't go wrong with them. Nikon are chasing hard and it is worth reading reviews carefully, comparing with the Canon equivalent. Sony, Panasonic Lumix and Olympus compete well in several niches, at least in features. Sony tends to make warm, over-sharpened pictures that print well directly without any extra image processing, but are more difficult to work with for tweaking in Photoshop etc.

For SLR's the lenses are perhaps the most important factor - choose your lens or lenses first, and that might even decide the manufacturer for you.

Kathmandu is a good place to buy the more expensive cameras from Canon and Nikon, the price is similar to what you can find in the USA. The very latest cameras sometimes arrive quickly, sometimes it takes a couple of months before they are available. The full range of Nikon and Canon SLR lenses is available, including the top of the line ones.

In India and Pakistan there isn't the time or a convenient place to buy; bring everything from home.

Megapixels

Quality is partly how many megapixels the camera is, but also image processing plays a big part, and Canon and Nikon are the leaders here. The last factor is the chip, the CCD, and some chips are simply better than others, giving sharper, more pleasing result. Canon's CMOS chips are superior.

To be future-proof 5 megapixels is as small as you should go, around 7-8 megapixels is ideal, and can be printed to A4 size, no problem, if the lens is good. They also look great on today's computer screens. The new higher end compacts have many more megapixels (12+!), but the trade off is noisy, bad low light performance.

From 2002-2005 the majority of the shots on this website were taken with 5 megapixel cameras. Now we use 8+ megapixel cameras and the 'CS2' version of PhotoShop-ImageReady does a better job of image processing too. Our more recent pictures, ie from 2005 onwards do look slightly better. [The exception is the header shots which have been over-compressed for faster loading rather than detail.] From mid-2006 Jamie is using a Canon 5D with several very good lenses.

Batteries

A good battery used carefully will last around a week, sometimes longer if you are frugal, but all of our treks are longer than that. On our expeditions and some treks we have solar power, 230v and all plug types, and so you can recharge. On other treks the best way is simply to buy some extra batteries. Original batteries are expensive but on eBay no-brand batteries are less than $10 each, and 2 to 3 extra will cover you for a trek - no guarantees though. This is a better solution than looking at solar panels etc. In general original batteries significantly out-perform copy batteries in colder weather.

In Kathmandu most camera batteries are available, original and cheaper brands.

Memory cards

Professionals all shoot "RAW" format, which makes very big file sizes. If you are an SLR perfectionist shoot RAW but mostly it is more practical is to shoot JPEG's, even though it is a setting designed for screens and so printed pictures sometimes look 'flat' compared to RAW (or film).

Which setting? I strongly suggest shoot the highest resolution with the finest jpeg setting, regardless of camera. Yes, this makes big pictures but in the future when you have a wall-sized screen they will still look great. So you want several large memory cards, for an 8-10 megapixel camera you want perhaps 6-8 GB's worth of cards. There are two types, normal speed and 'Ultra II' or 'Extreme' faster cards, and if you have new camera they do work faster, making enough difference to justify the price difference.

Memory cards are cheapest in the USA, but are reasonably priced in Kathmandu, and easy to find.

If shooting lots and shoot RAW then consider a hard drive-based system; simply plug in the memory card and the pictures are downloaded...

Camera protection

You want your camera instantly handy while trekking - consider carefully what case will work. The whole range of Lowe Pro camera bags and cases are available in Thamel (close to the hotel) so it is a convenient place to buy. For SLRs I recommend a neoprene soft cover (Zing), and then you can keep the camera out most of the time using the shoulder strap for carrying.

2006: Jamie's brand new Canon 5D was buried for several days in this tent directly under the snow they are clearing, it survived - Jamie

Camera settings

There are endless settings you can adjust. Other than setting the image to jpeg, size and quality to maximum, be wary of changing anything else unless you have tested on a computer, and by printing. Experiment with snow and snow mountain shots, a third of a stop down (-0.3eV) is often better; don't go more than -1eV. If the flash seems too bright adjust a third of a stop down, also choose the appropriate flash setting.

Do shade the lens in strong sun. Using extra in-camera sharpening or vivid colours looks good in the viewfinder but often looks overdone once on a computer screen or when printed.

Shooting techniques

Providing you are covered for batteries shoot lots, try several different approaches to a scene and experiment, wide vs tightly cropped etc, you can always review and delete. Some people have a better eye than others and shoot only a few shots, keeping every one of them.

Panoramas, ie photos stitched together, often look stunning. In general for trekking conditions you are better shooting on normal settings rather than the special panorama setting, which fixes the exposure, but you should experiment.

In general don't use the digital zoom, results don't look good. Rather, crop the shot later.

On an SLR if you have a polarizer use it sparingly; DON'T leave it on the camera the whole time.

Software

Your camera will come with software good enough for basic use. For looking thru pictures and making quick adjustments Google's Picasa 2 is the best and also free (search Google for the download, note though it makes all jpeg files smaller). Serious users all have their favourite though. All the images on this site were processed in Adobe ImageReady, part of Photoshop. Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom looks like it will move to the top of the pack. Microsoft is chasing hard with a range of new products, including Microsoft Expression Media.

Arcsoft Panorama Maker 3.5 / 4 so far beats all other panorama or photo stitchers comprehensively.

For the best post-processing at a professional level investigate DxO. It's lens distortion correction and sharpening based on what the lens has been measured to lose gives fantastic and otherwise unduplicable results. The program itself (v5) is not pretty and horribly slow and buggy, v4.5 is faster but the interface even worse. Adobe Lightroom is excellent, and fast.

Color spaces

If and only if you have an SLR you may be faced with a choice between sRGB (sometimes just called RGB; good for Windows computer-based screens) and Adobe RGB, better for Macs and printing. The debate can look very complicated but just use Adobe RGB, the bigger color space, if you are thinking for the future. Use sRGB if you are going to post on the internet and only on Windows machines.

Most programs such as all Adobe products, most Microsoft Vista products and programs such as Canon's Zoombrowser can now manage the different color spaces without messing you around. The nightmares have gone.

Note that for RAW files the camera colour space is irrelevant. The RAW data is not changed according to that setting and in a good program such as Adobe Lightroom or using Adobe RAW converter you can change the colour space when you import the photos. For DXO you set the colour space when you output.

Sensor cleaning - dSLRs

If your camera doesn't have a built in dust cleaner then do look at dust-aid.com, an easily transportable system.

Sharing pictures

Normally at the end of a trek we burn everyone's photos onto a DVD; it is amazing the difference in shooting styles each person has.

What do we shoot with?

I (Jamie) has a Canon 5D (a full frame, 12.8 megapixel CMOS chip) with 24-105mm IS, 16-35mm, 15mm fisheye and 70-200mm IS lenses. I used to use a 8 megapixel Nikon Coolpix 8400 which has a 24-85mm equivalent lens, ie the widest available on a compact camera. Kim shoots an 8 megapixel Olympus E-volt 300 and Joel the latest E500, and both Joel and Kim have compacts. Jamie shoots RAW while Kim and Joel shoot jpegs.

<-- 24mm lens equivalent...