Cameras

[naj131]

Hi

Just getting my stuff together for my trip and got confused about cameras, about whether to take a normal 35mm or a digital.

Digital is smaller and lighter, but then what do people do about the limited number of photos you can get on a memory stick - how easy do people find somewhere to download their pics?

I was thinking that the old film camera's is probably the way to go as I will be travelling for 4 months or so.

any thouhgts/answers?

Naj

[space virgin]

There are pro's and cons with both. With digital, it's easier than you think to find a place to download your images and burn them to a cd. And with regular film cameras you have to drag the little canisters around with you, and if you're going to be traveling for 4 months or so, that's going to be a lot of canisters and/or developed pictures to lug around. However, if you compare the cost of a specific digital camera to a film camera for the same price, almost always the film camera is going to be far more advanced. (This is not ALWAYS true, I know.)

If you're going to be gone for 4 months, I would take both! That way you can decide at some point which one is suiting your needs better and then perhaps mail the other one home to yourself.

Good luck! Where are you going for 4 months?

[naj131]

I heading over to the US/Canada and also catching part of S America. Fist proper backpacking trip, so always have 101 questions and choices

I didn't have this problem until I got given a Digi camera as a leaving present from my work last week- really great of them - but more choices!

[MolsonGirl]

I take my digital camera and bought a 128mb mem card, on the lowest quality setting you can take 1200 pictures.... but it's true that it's not hard to find somewhere to upload/burn/whatever your pics (especially in North America where we're obsessed with things like that) <---- I totally think luke smiley is beating darth smiley!

[cliffo]

I'd go the digital route for sure. A portable hard drive solves all your storage problems however it is quite a large financial outlay. Other than that I just got back from 3+ months in Europe and there are tons of places that you can have your photos burnt onto cd.

Word of advice though - look around for the cheapest place. I found some outrageous prices. Best I found was a Internet place in Munich that charged 10 euro to burn 4 gig of photos to a dvd. Other places charged more than twice that for buring onto CD.

My gf took a film camera and she now has to wait until she has the cash to develop the photos which depending on how paitient you are could be a bad thing when you get back.

cliffo

[LiveFreeorDie]

I agree with the above posts that it is easy to find camera shops that take your memory card and burn to a CD. My experience has been it runs around $10 U.S. to $15 U.S. per memory card (so bigger memeory cards save you money in that regard). One additional advantage to digital is not having to send your film to the lab for development. I recently lost a whole roll of film from my Australia trip because the lab f*@%ed up and ruined my film (my underwater pictures from scuba diving on the the GBR). Not easily replaceable. They were nice enough to give me a complimentary roll of film

I realize this doesn't happen every day...but it is one more strike that makes me prefer digital now.

[space virgin]

^wow. A crappy complimentary roll of film, huh? Those CHEAP BASTARDS!!

One other expense to remember about digital is that at some point you're probably going to want to print out some of your pictures. Of course, it's going to cost WAY less than film because you probably won't be printing all of them. It's usually about 25-45 cents (american) per print, depending on where you go.

[naj131]

I used one of those photo processing places once where you send off your film -

It was some spectacular shots of the Grand Canyon including some at sunset - they lost the film, and all I got was an appology

[omisan]

Cliffo - great idea with the portable hard drive. Unfortunately, I don't have the cash to put up for that before the trip, but here's an idea I had:

I know iPods can be used with card readers, but I have an old-school one that can't. I can, however, hook it up to any Mac and use it as a 5gb hard drive. Only thing is, I haven't seen any internet cafes in Europe w/ Macs for use. Does anyone know if these are common? If so, I can just take my iPod, hook it up, connect my camera, and dump everything over - with the peace of mind that I can take zillions of pictures.

Speaking of which, digital's my vote. I love using a 35mm SLR (as badly as I do it), but as far as point-and-shoot goes, digital is great - you can take tons of shots, review them, delete them if the lighting is bad, and bad snaps don't cost you a penny! And inkjet photo printers are so cheap now, you can get really nice prints at home - and have the bonus of cleaning stuff up in Photoshop first if you like