I don’t own a D300s. My friend John who is flash-packing together with me to Europe next month does. My brother who offered to loan me his camera does. But I turned down his offer. John regretted of upgrading his D90 to D300s just before our trip. Nikon D300s is not for backpacking. D300s is not for budget travelers. Why?

No doubt Nikon D300s is an excellent semi-pro DSLR. It is also Nikon’s current flagship camera for APS-C format or DX format sensor size with crop factor of 1.5. With an inclusion of new HD video shooting capability, improved 7fps continuous shooting burst mode, dual slots for both Compact flash and SDHC cards, D300s is a subtle but significant upgrade from its predecessor model D300. Other features brought forward unchanged are its 12MP resolutions, full customizable menus and controls, best ability so far in image quality and noise control for its sensor size,  flash light commander and auto focus ability. Most attractively, with intense competition from newer technological Canon 7D, Nikon D300s selling price has dropped more than USD300 from its introduction price of USD1800 (this is what made my friend upgraded his D90 to this heavy body).

However, for budget traveling especially backpacking, with these 5 reasons, D300s sucks!

1. TOO HEAVY! Weighing a KG for body only. Attaching a Tokina 16-50 f2.8 pro lens to it will load a whopping 1.7KG to your baggage! My Nikon D60 with kit lens weighs less than 1 KG! For backpacker who walks more than stay on travel, carrying 2KG on your neck for hours isn’t as easy as you think.
2. TOO BIG! It is almost double the volume of a D60 which make it impossible to fit into any camera waist bag comfortably.
3. TOO COMPLICATED TO GET USED TO! With such a short time from its introduction, John couldn’t get used to it easily in terms of its performances and all setting before our Europe trip next month. Though he has been using D90 before, D300s is a lot more difficult to master its operation.
4. TOO DEMANDING FOR ACCESSORIES! Top notch DSLR require good accessories. Pro lens is much heavier. Solid tripod to support D300s and lens is much heavier. Both cost a lot more off course. How much is your budget?
5. TOO RISKY! Wearing a D300s on your neck is too risky in tourist spots. It’s the same thing like wearing your money porch around your waist.
6. BONUS** TOO EXPENSIVE FOR BUDGET TRAVELERS! All in all, from camera, backpack, lens to tripod, this combo weighs almost 5 KG! Apart from the owning cost, baggage cost is also increased! What’s the weight allowance of hand carry luggage for your budget airline? 5KG? 7KG?

After all these 6 reasons, there is still ONE reason why you could still carry a Nikon D300s on your travel…. THE PASSION IN PHOTOGRAPHY! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog.

Since now is still the first fresh month of Year 2010, I still have 11 months to realise this, hopefully. This is just part of my wish list this year for contenting my craving on travel photography equipment. If possible, I hope my wish could become reality before this May. Why? Because I would be better equipped by then. So what? SO I COULD TOUR THE TOP 5 EUROPE CITIES IN MAY! To be exact, I have only slightly more than 3 months to grab them into my packing list to travel! Can I? Let’s check my list first…

What camera system do I need to take with me for my photography travel? Firstly, what camera system do I currently own? As a budget traveler who prefers to travel light, I have a Nikon D60 body. Though it’s not perfect but it’s still good and light to carry around travel. For lenses attaching to it, I have the “3 lens combo for poor man” which includes a Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a Nikkor 55-200mm zoom lens and a 35mm f1.8 prime lens. For capturing day in day out travel photos under good ambient lighting, 18-55 and 55-200mm lenses are good enough. Whereas my 35mm fast lens are normally used to capture indoor or night scenes under available light, which is brilliant (you can see my Chinese New Year photos indoor). I have plenty of 4GB SDHC memory cards and 1 spare battery which should be enough (Europe is using the same power socket as Malaysia, so charging battery there would not be a problem). I’m currently using my only Lowepro Cirrus TLZ15 waist bag to fit in my camera and a single lens. For night scene long exposure (like my shot of Genting Highland), I would bring along my tripod. That’s all my camera system currently.

What else do I need? For a budget traveler with limited budget on travel photography, Nothing else I need. I don’t need a much more bulkier and heavier camera body like D300s to burden our rucksack eventhough though its metering and dynamic range is much better. I don’t need a ultra wide angle lens to capture the whole scene of Coloseum where I could still stitch a few photos up as panorama. If budget is my biggest concern, I don’t need a telephoto lens either. Out of 100 travel photos that I’ve been shooting, only 10 or less photos are telephoto. So I’ll miss only 10% of all photography opportunity.

However, To have a more complete camera system for better travel photography (but also heavier bag and heftier budget), and to ease my craving as a hobbyist photographer, I wish I could own these 5 camera components as listed here:

1. Wide angle Nikkor AF-S 10-24mm f3.5-4.5G ED DX lens costing USD 800. This is the lens for capturing landscape with more impact! I want this first!
2. Midrange Zoom Tamron AF 17-50mm f2.8 SP costing USD 449. This is the lens to replace my kit lens for travel. It’s fixed aperture make it a lot more flexible in shooting indoor and outdoor!
3. Telephoto zoom Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f4.5-5.6G ED VR, costs USD 540. If budget allows, this lens can help you to capture those statues on top of the roof at St. Peter’s Square and PS can’t help you on this!
4. I need a much bigger sling bag preferably the Lowepro Slingshot 350AW sling bag, cost USD115. It will fit in more camera staffs on travel, and can be treated as a backpack cum waist bag, and
5. Finally, if budget allows me to do so, I wish I could upgrade my body to Nikon D300s which cost USD1,500 or RM4,950 only now! It’s tremendously good value now if compare to its original list price of USD1,800!

Other than the above, I would also get ready some ND and polarizer filters for some effects. What are the total cost of all 5 items?  USD3,404.

However, I haven’t got any of the above. I wish I can get some of them (or at least the first 4 items) by end of April so I could fully explore my photography travel to Europe. Or can you think of anyway to support me on this please?

p/s: If you think this travel blog is worth for your reading, please support me by one of these ways: Subscribe to Travel Feeder’s feeds for free upcoming stories via RSS or email; Search and purchase my favourite photos from istockphoto; Get your camera stuffs through my link to Amazon where you won’t lose anything and I could earn some commission, or, buy me a cup of coffee as you like. Thank you. – Travel Feeder.

The title may sound ridiculous. Yes. In terms of overall image quality, my Nikon D60 still has the edge. However, in certain aspect and under certain circumstances, my 15 month old Panasonic Lumix FZ28 is no doubt better than my DSLR, or even most of the DSLR in the market. “Are you sure?”

I’ve been using both compact camera (FZ28) and DSLR (D60) for more than a year now. None of the reviewer will review the same camera again after owning them for 1 year. Most of them don’t even own them in the first place. So, they can’t tell you the actual experience of 1 year usage. Not even 3 months (that was why I did also a confrontation test over these 2 cameras before). Nobody can tell you the actual advantages of using them after that long (or maybe there are?). Since I own these 2 gadgets, and I don’t have plan for upgrade yet, I might as well note them down here.

Since there are still people searching through the web (also this blog) for FZ28 and D60 reviews, I decided to disclose these advantages of an ultra-zoom compact camera (FZ28) over the DSLR (D60) here.

1. Live Histogram. Lumix FZ28 (or most of the compact’s) has it and D60 (or most of the DSLRs) hasn’t got it. Histogram is a very important and useful feature of digital cameras. It tells you the actual key tomes and exposure of your photo. Don’t rely only on your camera LCD.  It’s not accurate. It shows the JPEG image processed by your camera to suit the LCD viewing. Slight under or over exposed shot could not be seen from the tiny LCD until you download it to your computer. The only way to know from your camera whether the photo you just taken has the optimum or desired exposure is from the histogram feature (if you haven’t seen the histogram, check it out by pressing the joystick of FZ28 or the navigating down button of D60. You will see a histogram to show you the amount of lights captured by the sensor. Towards the right are highlight and towards the left are shadows). Both FZ28 and D60 has this feature. The difference between them which is important for fast action shot or ‘one chance only’ shot is the Panasonic has it LIVE on LCD when you compose shot. The Nikon can only check the histogram after the shot. If you shoot under complex lighting and your camera’s metering couldn’t get it right on spot, and you found it to be much under or over exposed, you have to compensate your exposure and shoot again. Off course, this doesn’t cause any hassle if you are shooting landscape or buildings. Imagine this, if Beyonce or Barack Obama is posing for you once for only 10 seconds or so, can you shoot, check histogram and tell her to pose for you again?



2. Shooting Macro. Don’t bombard me first. Off course DSLR can shoot macro if you have a dedicated macro lens costing no less than USD500 like the Tamron SP60 or Nikkor Micro 85mm. But the flexibility and easiness to shoot macro with a compact camera is still better. Macro photography is all about sharpness and Depth Of Field. Image has to be sharp and DOF has to be adequate to reveal much details of the object. Thanks to its puny sized sensor, FZ28 can shoot macro anytime with ease. You don’t have to have plenty of lights to capture it but still able to get sufficient DOF. Even I use my D60 attached with Tamron SP60, I’ll need strong sunlight and small aperture up to F22 to capture the same object as with my Lumix FZ28 without exotic lens and sunlight and wide open aperture of F3! The end result of compact camera could be as sharp!



3. Ultra tele-zoom up to 18x or 486mm!! Do you know how much is a Nikkor 300mm F4 telephoto lens? USD1,400!! It weighs over 1.4kg and measures 222mm long!! Even if you use cheaper option of fixing a teleconvertor lens to extend your existing lens by 2, you still need to pay USD500! A brand new FZ28 (current model would be FZ35) camera cost me only USD420 a year ago!!

These are the critical reasons why I’m still using it alongside my Nikon D60 after 15 months. However, other than these 3 aspects (Yes. Only 3), I still love my DSLR. Under most circumstances, DSLR is still better in producing crisp, clean and nice images, as long as you spend enough money to invest some excellent lenses and accessories, and very importantly, spend enough time…  – Travel Feeder.

p/s: If you think this travel blog is worth for your reading, please support me by one of these ways: Subscribe to Travel Feeder’s feeds for free upcoming stories via RSS or email; Search and purchase my favourite photos from istockphoto; Get your camera stuffs through my link to Amazon where you won’t lose anything and I could earn some commission, or, buy me a cup of coffee as you like. Thank you. – Travel Feeder.

Unless we are professional travel photographer, what we normal shoot and how we capture a scene normally is, we take photos of those scenes of our travel destinations whenever we find it attractive or important to capture (as a travel blogger) by the time when we are there in whatever season and under whatever ambient lighting. We don’t care much on the perfect lighting and timing it should be. This is called casual travel photographer.

We travel and we shoot photos. To which we put more priority depends on every individual traveler. Some might travel more places and shooting less for each place, or, some might travel less places but shooting lots of photos from there at different day, time, angle and under different lighting. But we still travel to different places and shoot. We don’t travel to one place again and again just because we haven’t captured the most beautiful moment of the scene. Because we are not professional travel photographer. We don’t take photo for our living and we don’t travel to get paid either.

So, don’t upset if you can’t capture the best moment of that tourist spot. Don’t worry if the weather was overcast when you were only allowed 1 hour to shoot photos of Eiffel Tower. We travel and photograph as our hobby and passion to do so (also hobby to blog about travel ). We have budget for our hobby, don’t we?

What we should do to produce ourselves some nice photos of places we’ve been to (not bought from pro travel photographer) is more important. If a casual travel photographer could take fantastic photos, it would be great pleasure. If a casual travel photographer could capture what only a pro can, it would be more satisfactorily. Here are the top 5 things a casual travel photographer should do:

1. Set your travel plan along side your photo plan. We know the best photos come from the best surrounding lighting to the scene. So fix your travel period to that country or city to suit the weather we want for our ambient lighting. If you plan to photo snow scene, go now!
2. Take as many photos as you can. Shoot the same scene with different composition of light, different exposure compensation EV value, high or low key setting (I’ll come to this other time), different shutter speed and aperture or even with and without flash.
3. Bring along your camera accessories like ND filters, polarizer, tele-convertor, tripod, flashes and so on. You could then explore different ways of capturing the same scene. If you don’t have any of these, buy them now!
4. If we still couldn’t get what we wanted or no where near it, plan your travel to be less ambitious. Travel lesser and spend more time or days on each place;
5. Thank god. If nothing from the above has been achieved, we still have our final tool. In this digital era, we have photo editing tool like Photoshop CS4, lightroom or Elements! They can savage poor lighting, poor colour or even poor composition!

Finally, we should be more happy to be a casual travel photographer. We can shoot whatever we like. We don’t have to worry about copyright infringements, contract requirement or so on. Happy shooting and traveling! – Travel Feeder.

I’ve been following Malaysian satellite Astro TV travel game show ”Ready To Fly?” lately, and am sitting here at home asking myself the same question: “Am I ready to fly?” The countdown of my Phuket vacation travel is just around the corner. If I’m not wrong (can the flight ticket wrongly printed? ), I’m going to depart to Phuket Island, Thailand, tomorrow!

I’ve been busy preparing and packing for my latest self-travel to an island that I haven’t been to before and the decision to fly was only made a couple of weeks ago. What have I done and what else should I do before checking in? Here are somethings that I’ve done:

1. Off couse, I have booked a hotel online. I need to book it upfront as my in-law mother and sister are travelling with us and I don’t expect them to follow me searching and asking around for accomodation only when we reach Phuket. I was looking for discounted hotels in Patong Beach area (I heard it is the hottest spot in Phuket Island). Though I would prefer to book it through my affiliate partnership with HotelsCombined but unfortunately the hotel that we chose is sold out. So I tried LateStay and got it with a last minute bargain! Though I’m not the affiliate marketer of Latestay, I still find them a goood option and competitive if you are looking for great discounted rate with plenty of hotel choices! Reservation was done smoothly. Final comment? Until I got back from Phuket…
2. Next would be the confirmation of our air tickets. Off course we have booked and confirmed tickets from AirAsia. But who knows? They are “famous” with postponed flights if less people turned out or over sold their tickets! I’ve got enough experience with them in my Bali trip and I want to make sure at least we have seats in our original flight this round. So I’ve done the web check in yesterday (within 48 hours from your flight time) and purchase checked baggage and reselect seats. Final comment? Until I got back from Phuket…
3. Another important aspect of this travel is no doubt taking many many photos that I can afford. In order to avoid dissapointment, I have to get ready my photography equipments! While still deciding whether to bring along both my D60 and Lumix FZ28 or only D60, I bought an extra 4GB SDHC card and an additional backup battery for my D60. Now I have 4 cards and 2 batteries with my D60, just in case I need them. I’m going to pack the battery charger off course and also our power socket adapter from China. So, I think it should be enough…
4. The only headache for me now is which and how many lenses should I bring along. I’m an eventualist of light traveler. I don’t like to pack any extra stuff in my luggage (SD cards are exempted since they are too light to include in ). I have 3 lenses: 18-55mm zoom, 55-200mm zoom and 35mm prime. And I’m thinking to fill my camera in my Lowepro Cirrus waist bag only. So how? I don’t know. It would my final decision to make before check in!
5. The last thing is defintely money! How much Baht should I change for the trip? 100 baht is to RM10.60 currently. Should I change less and rely much on my credit cards? Entrance fees for Fantasea show is about 1500Baht and Phi Phi Island day trip is around 1800Baht per pax. So I think at least 15,000 Baht is needed for Jean and I for 5 days there, as part of our budget travel. Beyond that only we swipe our cards. Enough? I don’t know. Will only know once we got back from Phuket…

These are the 5 most essential preparation I’ve done for our ‘budget’ travel to Phuket Island. I hope we will have a great vacation there. We shall depart tomorrow and will post again next week. See you then. Am I ready to fly? Subscribe to my RSS feeds for free updates of my stories – Travel Feeder.