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Six month backpacking trip around the world - what to take?


manuel_zamora_morschhaeuse

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<p>The Canon 28/1.8 is a fine lens. It's a bit soft wide open, like almost every other fast lens. It's biggest weakness is a tendency to flare when there are very bright light sources in the frame (like the sun or specular reflections of the sun) or large areas of bright sky with dark foreground subject. Overall, it's my most-used lens.</p>
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  • 3 weeks later...

<p>FILM? FILM? FILM??????????????<br>

My goodness? I have been a photographer for over 50 years and I cannot think of any assignment I ever went on, while using film, that I could not have shot easier and better with today's digital technology... and the problems with the weight of film and the problems keeping the film that you are carrying fresh are immense.<br>

A several 4GB or 8GB compact flash cards will have enough space to record what would take you a whole backpack of film to capture. And what about the problems sending off the film you have shot for processing. Many third world postal systems have an efficiency that makes me shudder to thing of entrusting my precious images. Hell, the U.S. Postal Service is not exactly fool-proof.<br>

Even in some of the most undeveloped nations, you can find Internet cafes which will allow you to download your images. You can send off your images to a storage center such as Smugmug Storage and then forget about them. They will be secure. Once your images are accepted by the storage center, you can reformat your cards.<br>

The DSLR cameras are pretty foolproof these days and given decent treatment will probably work fine. I say "probably" because I would never attempt a once-in-a-lifetime trip of this type and trust only one camera. However, while backpacking, two DSLR camera bodies (even the small xxxD cameras) might be more than you want to take.<br>

Unless you have a need for the larger formats provided by DSLR cameras, you might just be better off carrying a pair of decent point and shoot models. Quality P&S cameras are light weight, probably more indestructable than DSLR cameras and can provide very-good o excellent imagery.</p>

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  • 3 months later...

<p>I did a 2-month trip through Thailand/Malaysia/Sinagpore and a 2 week trip through Europe in 2002 with a film Nikon N80. The SE Asia trip wasn't primarily vacation so I took approx. 40-50 rolls of pictures. It came out cheaper than my Europe trip because I was able to purchase a good bit of film in Bangkok. I was worried about taking the film through several airport security measures so I had most of it developed in Bangkok as well. They did an excellent job, the photos were delivered to me in little pasteboard books with each photo in a sleeve and I paid less than half for developing than what I would have paid in the US.<br>

In Europe, film cost as much or more than US so I ordered a big lot of film from B&H before I left. We only stayed in each place a day or two so developing wasnt' an option.<br>

Most of the places I traveled had tons of internet cafes, I imagine there are even more now. If I were to do it again, I'd probably go digital (with my D70) and take an external harddrive to use for backup or backup to the internet every couple of days.</p>

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