Your Thoughts: Camera & Strategy

[MassJester]

Greetings,

A buddy of mine is going to backback through Central America for six months (no, I can't expalin to you to afford that). He very much wants to keep a photo record of his trip. The question is: which camera (should be a P&S), and what would you recommend for a photo storage strategy.

Durability and ease of use should be two of your top factors.

I would be glad for your advice.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

What is his photography background?

 

[MassJester]

What is his photography background?

Can most charitably be described as shallow.

 

[My2Girls66]

A friend of mine just got back from a safari in Africa for 3 weeks- I did some research before she went and recommended she get a Canon SX100IS- she also had very little camera experience. She did great with that camera and many of the people on the tour loved it. P&S, 10x zoom, 8mp. As far as storage, I have another friend that travels to Italy every year. Her DH bought an Epson photo storage device to download pictures to. It has a 4" viewing screen and they can hold 1000's of photos.

http://www.amazon.com/Epson-P-3000-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1222649075&sr=8-1

 

[Michele]

I would recommend the Canon G9. Our local paper has been running a series of articles about a photographers journey down the Mississippi and how he documented his trip with only a p&s. This is the one he used.

While technically this is a p&s, it is pretty good size and has manual controls.

 

[bob100]

Can most charitably be described as shallow.

small, compact, lightweight, good zoom, owner only having 'shallow' photography skills -
Panasonic TZ5 - it has a great "intelligent auto" mode


edit:
the Canon G9 is good - larger but it has excellent image quality and with the G10 now out it may be a good deal

 

[klmall]

Cards are so cheap now that they might make a good storage device. In the humid conditions of Central America I would be worried about a number of issues and might switch cards fairly frequently as well as have a back up camera available (to be mailed to me?) For that length of time I don't think I would risk my backup to any one device. Your friend might also try the appropriate TripAdvisor message board. I find them very user friendly and helpful for advice.

 

[jann1033]

when my daughter went to Peru she had a real problem with the light under the rainforest canopy..she had a kodak easy share and really couldn't use almost any of her photos from that part of the trip so i think that light must be very different than the norm and difficult for a normal point and shoot since even some of her inside dark building shots turned out better than those( ie in museums, restaurants with very subdued lighting)...so i would put excellent low light capabilities really high on the list...don't know anything about p &s but that is the feature i would make sure and get...I'm sure he wants to make sure and capture the tarantula migration: perfectly :