DSLR
Let’s talk photo travel blog. I started this travel blog, Travel Feeder in year 2008. When this blog was created 3 years ago, it was initially my personal travel blog to share all my tips, guides and experiences gathered from my travels during the past 6 years. During this period, I traveled to numerous parts of the world from Asian to European countries, from east to west, from China, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia to UK, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, German, Denmark and Netherland. With my deep passion in travel, I was able to keep traveling and sharing new tips and guides on my travel blog. Travel Feeder has now more than 540 original articles being published on the blog.
Coincidentally, I fell in love with travel photography within the same period. I bought my first digital camera Nikon 4100 after losing my old film SLR Nikon F70 on my travel to Gold Coast. It marked the beginning of my digital photography journey. Before I went to Shanghai in year 2008, I bought myself the lovely Panasonic Lumix FZ28 ultra zoom prosumer camera. From there on, I was completely spoilt by the art of photography. In year 2009, less than a year of owning the FZ28, with the encouragement of my affection towards travel photography, I bought a DSLR, the Nikon D60. It was my first ever digital DSLR. It was also the time when I decided to include my limited knowledge of digital photography into Travel Feeder, and to expand it to become a more interesting photo travel blog, with much more exciting stories on both travel and photography.
I was then confused with the title description of this blog, whether Travel Feeder should call itself a photo travel blog or, a travel photo blog. A travel photo blog is a blog sharing mainly travel photos with captions, while a photo travel blog means a travel blog sharing various tips and guides, with helps from photos. Contextually, both are equally right. In fact, Travel Feeder has more to offer than just each of these 2 niches. With a synergy effect, it actually combines both niches into a wider aspect which more people are getting interested in nowadays. It features articles that encompass the entire range of scope from travel to photography. So, Travel Feeder is both a travel photo blog or a photo travel blog! 
Today, Travel Feeder has emerged as one of the top photo travel blog on the internet with numerous pages ranked top 10 in Google search result. Among those pages are:
- Top 10 places to visit in Malaysia
- Nikon D7000 category
- Packing list – Power socket adaptor for china travel
- Top 5 travel tips for booking Airasia flight
- My western Europe tour itinerary 1st draft
As you can see, these popular pages are about different locations of this world. However, they are aiming to the same group of people, or travelers. Who are they? “Budget travelers?” “Bingo!” You are right. I’m a budget traveler so I’m blogging for budget travelers! I’m an advocate of budget traveling who believe traveling is for anyone who loves to travel, regardless how much money they have in their bank accounts, and how old actually they are. Anyone who fall for the hobby, Travel Feeder will surely enlighten you some how, some where.
Now, how do travelers normally find this blog in Google search engine? Which search keywords are most likely to put Travel Feeder on top of the search result? Let’s see some of the top keywords or phrase queries that could reach me in top 10 search result:
With over 35k impressions each recorded in last month, ‘Nikon‘ (photography) and ‘go‘ (travel), are both the most popular keywords to find this travel blog in the top 10 search result. This again both the core interests of Travel Feeder are well accepted. Also, Airasia and Europe are popular keywords as well.
Next. Let’s talk about what most bloggers are really keen on. Let’s talk monetisation. Travel Feeder has been around in the blogosphere for 3 years. Apart from my passion and enthusiasm in travel and photography, monetization of the blog is the next best motivation for me to keep writing articles and blogging travel! By adopting various monetization system into my photo travel blog, I have successfully made more than enough money to support all my travel expenses as well as photography equipment. And this is the best part of my blogging journey: I travel to blog, I blog to make money and I make money to sponsor my next travel! Let’s come back to this afterward.
Next, I wish to touch on some innovations found on Travel Feeder. In Year 2008, I ran a link love campaign on my blog and it has successfully attracted more than 100 travel blogs and sites to join us. In Year 2009, I joined istockphoto as a contributor and the photo slide box has since been a prominent feature on my blog’s side navigation bar. In October 2010, in conjunction with my Birthday, I announced the launch of my Photography blog, Cecil Lee Photography. Early this year in March, I launched my online photo e-store. All my top travel photo selection could now be bought or downloaded free in the e-store. Being inspired by my second travel to Europe early this year, I announced 2 months ago in August the launch of a new category named “From Travel to Photo“, featuring mini travel guide on how to plan your Europe travel. And finally…
Finally today, to celebrate my birthday this year, I’m excited to announce another new feature on my blog. This would be the 3rd announcement of Year 2011, a breakthrough on my blog. I believe it’s going to be another hot cake around, since most of the blogs found on internet currently were created with hope to make money. Yes! I’m here to introduce a brand new, dedicated page on Travel Feeder. It’s all about “How to make money online from blogging“. Starting from today, bloggers who are fresh in blogging, or bloggers who are frustrated for not making money so far, can click on the Menu Bar on top of any Travel Feeder’s page to gain access to this exclusive guide on how to make money blogging. This page is dynamic with the content being updated every now and then when I found necessary. This guide gathered things that I have been doing to make me enough money for all my travels and photography expenses and hope it will help you in the same ways. And this is the biggest announcement from Travel Feeder for Year 2011. Happy reading. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel guide to Europe
p/s: This post is dedicated to the late Mr.Steve Jobs, the former CEO and co-founder of Apple and one of the greatest leader and entrepreneur in the world, who left us on 5th October 2011, the day after Apple announced the latest iPhone 4s in the media conference named “Let’s Talk iPhone“.
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Camera lens filter is a thin piece of glass that fixed or screwed on to the front end of any camera lens. It acts as a filter to lights that going through the cameras’ lens. There are many different types of lens filters in the market. Most of them are invented way back in the film photography era. While they are probably one of the most important SLR’s elements when you are shooting films, most of them are less significant if used with digital SLRs. However, less significant doesn’t mean useless. There are still occasions or conditions when lens filters become handy. How about travel photography? Are lens filters important enough to become an essential item in travelers’ packing list?
I’m going to share my views here the importance of various lens filters in DSLR for travelers who shoot uncountable travel photos on their holiday. There are currently four (4) main types of photo filters available in the market, namely UV, Polariser, Neutral Density, and Colour filter. They exist since those old days when we shot only film. Let’s see how each one of them performs in today’s digital photography.
- UV Filter – This filter is important since old days as films are sensitive to UV lights which can cause a picture looks hazy and blurry. Hence, UV filters are invented to cut down the Ultra Violet light spectrum from going through the camera lens and then the film. However, image sensors of today’s digital cameras are less receptive to UV light. Together with special coating on the latest lenses that help reducing UV lights, UV filters have become a less than critical element in digital photography nowadays. Instead, they act as a lens protector more than a filter.
- Polarizer filter – They work by reducing the amount of reflected light that passes to your camera’s sensor. Similar to polarizing sunglasses, polarizers will make skies appear deeper blue, will reduce glare and reflections off of water and other surfaces, and will reduce the contrast between land and sky. Polarizers are filter to visible light reflection so they are still important in today’s digital photography. They make your photos more vibrant than the actual scene you see, so they are creative filters.
- Neutral Density (ND) filter – ND filters are simply a darkened piece of glass to reduce the amount of lights entering through your lens into image sensor. The degree of darkness normally indicated as code numbers, such as Hoya’s ND2 means reducing light by 1 f-stop and ND4 by 2 f-stop. It is useful to reduce strong natural sunlight hence reduce the shutter speed or increase the Aperture of your camera setting to achieve identical exposure. Situations where ND filter is handy when you need to capture smooth flow effect of waterfall or ocean movement, or when you shoot portraiture with reducing Depth-of-Field. Again, this is a creative filter for capture something which your eyes won’t see and your post editing software can’t achieve.
- Colour filter – It could be cooling, warming or specific colour filter. It basically changes the White Balance of an actual scene, to either correct or create an unrealistic color cast. It is useful for film but not digital photography. Any digital camera currently including phone camera has this White Balance feature. They act the same way. Better still, digital WB setting can be fine tuned to your liking and it doesn’t need an extra piece of glass obstacle in front of your lens. So forget about it if you are shooting digitally. Check out my post on how to adjust your digital camera’s White Balance setting.
>>*Some in-depth explanation on camera lens filter can be read on Cambridge in Colour.
Do we need any of these lens filters in travel photography? The only filter we need to bring along is the UV filter. Travel photography is all about capturing what you found interesting on travel. UV filter will marginally improve the colour contrast and saturation of a photo to match what you see in actual. More importantly, for digital photography, it provides protection to the front element of your more expensive lens. It should be attached to all your lenses at all time. But bear in mind that lens filter, though is thin, adds an extra layer to your lens. This could harmfully affect the quality of lights or reduce lights that enter into your DSLR image sensor, hence, affect your image quality. So make sure you get the best quality UV filters in the market. Hoya HMC UV filters are a good start.
(A good example of travel photo taken with only UV filter attached but still matched what I’ve seen in actual scene)
Other creative filters such as polarizers, ND or colour filters are not essential in travel photography. Unless you wish to create some artistic effect to your travel photos, these filters can be kept at home, with only one exception. The only time you will need them, especially polarizers or graduated ND filters, is when the best lighting or best time to photo cannot be planned or hoped for, or my LEICA 5-steps theory can’t be followed. Hence polarizers or graduated ND filters can be used to salvage some of the bad colour cast from bad weather or to enhance the vibrancy of colour found in a dull scene. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo guide.
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One of the most overlooked but critical issue of our DSLR is a dirty image sensor. We tend to neglect the effect of a dirty sensor or, like me, always thought that image sensor will not get dirty easily if I change lenses carefully and set my camera’s internal sensor cleaning function to work frequently. I thought a dirty sensor would definitely be the last problem to face since I didn’t get any problem with my old Nikon D60 after 2 years of shooting. I was wrong! I got a seriously dirty image sensor of my Nikon D7000 after just one month of shooting!
Look at this photo below that I shot towards sunlight with small f20 Aperture:
Can you see those tiny dark spots in the sky? This is the evidence of a dirty DSLR’s sensor. What is a dirty image sensor of a DSLR? Image sensor is a light sensitive panel device in all Digital cameras that acts like the retina tissue lining in our eye balls. It transforms analog light signal to digital data that will then be calculated and reproduced images. When any dust, pollens, or any object falls and sticks on the low pass IR filter in front of the image sensor ( a dirty sensor actually refers to a dirty Low Pass Filter in front of the sensor), tiny dark spots will appear in your photos, and you have just got a dirty image sensor! However, it is only apparent when you shoot photos with smaller Aperture, such as f20, as deeper Depth-Of-Field will reveal clearly any dirt on the sensor. The above photo show you how dirty is my D7000′s image sensor! Take a closer look at those tiny dark spots that spread all over the place!
I zoomed into the same photo to let you see more clearly on those dust or pollen accumulated on the sensor. I did not realize this until I shot some sunburst photos on top of Jungfrau mountain of Switzerland, when I stopped down my camera’s Aperture to f20. I really got a shock! Oh My God! What had happened to my D7000? Did my DSLR’s sensor expose too long to direct sunlight? Have sun beams just damaged my camera’s sensor? Are they dirt? How could my D7000′s sensor be so dirty after only few months of shooting while I did not have this problem with my old D60 after 2 years? Are they condensation under freezing temperature? Are they permanent? There were too many questions circulating in my mind.
Dirt accumulation does not depends on your camera’s age. It depends merely on how you handle your camera and how you change your lenses. Changing lense more frequent means higher chance of dust sneaking into your camera’s body. I normally changed lenses very carefully. I always face my camera downward when changing lenses and I’ve been doing this since my D60. There haven’t got any dust on my D60′s sensor, why my D7000 had more than a dozen of them? I think I know why.But sadly only after my Europe trip… 
Ever since DSLR manufacturers incorporated Live View and video recording function into their latest DSLR, they have also deliberately introduced a second gateway for the dust! Whenever you shoot still photos or video in Live View mode, your DSLR will keep the mirror flipped and locked up to let lights go into image sensor for as long as you wish to. This process has also opened the gate of a camera’s body access for other unwanted objects, such as dust, dirt, pollen or hair to sneak into the heart of a camera, which is the image sensor device! It will get even worse when you shoot with a long zoom lens. When you pull your lens or zoom out, you have, at the same time, pumped external air into your camera! If you shoot in Live View, you are actually pumping air directly onto the image sensor! This was why my Nikon D7000′s sensor was so dirty after only a few months of shooting while my old Nikon D60 hadn’t got this issue even after more then 2 years of shooting!!
So now you know that having a dirty image sensor is very easy nowadays, especially when you use zoom lens and always shoot in Live View mode. The lucky thing is that we can still take photos with a dirty sensor, as long as we set the Aperture no smaller than f3.5, or keep shooting in wide open Aperture. However, the unlucky thing is that we would not know our sensor is dirty until we shoot in small Aperture, for me, for day and night landscape shots, or sunburst shots, and it would be too late to know by then! We can not do any thing about it on site or on travel, unless we wish to risk ourselves for damaging the delicate image sensor by cleaning it ourselves in dusty outdoor environment! REMEMBER: Nikon has put a disclaimer clause in most of their DSLR’s User Manual that cleaning of the image sensor should be done by Nikon Service Centre. In Malaysia, cleaning a DSLR’s image sensor by Nikon Service Centre is fast and relatively cheap. It can usually be done in 15 minutes for a cost of RM20.00 if your camera is still under warranty and RM60.00 if it is not. You should check your local Nikon Service Centre for actual cost and time needed.
Conclusion? Make sure you check your DSLR’s image sensor a couple of weeks before each photography travel for its cleanliness. You can do this by shooting bright sky or well lit plain colour wall with small f22 Aperture. Any dirt or particles stuck on the sensor could be revealed clearly in the photo. You will still have enough time to send in your camera for cleaning by specialists. The cost and time for cloning out those dark spots in your images in post processing is definitely much much more than that of cleaning the image sensor before each travel! I have it very well experienced recently with my D7000 on my Europe Travel MkII, which had even spoilt my photo taking mood! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel blog
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Happy 100th Anniversary of international Women’s Day! Today, the 8th of March, is a big day for all women. All ladies, girls, daughters, mother, sisters or who ever female in this world are celebrating on this day to recognize themselves as an important person playing an important role in various sectors in our social, economical [...]
I have recently posted a White Balance setting explained for DSLR write-up on my photography blog. For those who are still wondering what is White Balance and why it exists in digital cameras, check it out now before you find out that your travel photos are all lacking some eye-catching elements. Why setting White Balance [...]
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