Island Mama’s trusty camera, which I used for oh so long, has expired. Now I am in search of a replacement for this season. I’m considering a digital. I’ve been looking at 4 megapixels styles. Does anyone have any experience with them on long trips? Tell me about power supply, flash cards, and downloading. I want to have some good looking pics for the PCT. Thanks for your help!
THA WOOKIE
We have been getting digital pics from our son who is on the trail at this time (Rocket). The pictures are absolutely wonderful. He is shipping us the cards and we ship them back in his drop box. Make sure you camera allows for viewing upon taking the picture. That way you can delete it on the spot and retake it. The biggest issue we are having is the batteries…we need to keep shippping him replacements. But, the memories are well worth it. Check out some of the photos on his journal.
oldRocket
We have been getting digital pics from our son who is on the trail at this time (Rocket). The pictures are absolutely wonderful. He is shipping us the cards and we ship them back in his drop box. Make sure you camera allows for viewing upon taking the picture. That way you can delete it on the spot and retake it. The biggest issue we are having is the batteries…we need to keep shippping him replacements. But, the memories are well worth it. Check out some of the photos on his journal.
oldRocket
Minolta DiMAGE F100 or Sony Cybershot DSC-P9 are both really nice cameras with great features. I know people with both and and they love them. They are small, I am pretty sure they both come with rechargable lithium batteries (still suggest buying extra set), and a large memory card (or two medium sized cards and do a bounce with someone at home with the two). The pictures look great. The only thing that scares me about a digital, especially one as nice as you want (4MP), if you drop or gets wet, that is alot of money down the drain. Try to get an optional extended warranty if available. Personally, I like a good 35 mm or an APS. Film still makes better pictures. Good Luck!!!
Tanner B
I use rechargable AAs in my Minolta C700, takes four. If you keep the flash down it doesn’t use batteries like water. Might be worth getting the wall charger four four cells and mail swap them out. Or Rocket can use a small bounce box and put the charger in it. Mine does take 16hrs or less depending on the state of charge so he’ll have to plan ahead. But I guess if you swap cards with him then just dropp in four fresh carged cells with the package and he can send you his empty ones.
Bushwhack
If you’re a PC based person, the Logitech camera is extremely light with few features…this months Gear Guide issue by Backpacker. I’m Mac based and found a new Sony called the Cyber-Shot U20. It’s compatible with both operating systems and weights 4 oz. It uses the MemoryStick which as OldRocket mentioned about their son, will be mailed back and forth with your transcriper. It’s real easy to use, which for me is important. -Serendipity
Serendipity
Walmart has a 2 megapixel for $99. Takes 2 AA batteries. Nice and light. How good or bad are the 2 megapixels?
Skeemer
How “bad” 2 meg cameras are depends in part on how big you want final prints to be. Over 5 x 7, single images can eat up more than 2 megs.
CeCe
A wally-world special is fine if you want digital pics mainly to post on the internet. With compression, a 4-meg $2000 camera won’t appear (online) much better than a cheapo 2-meg. Like CeCe said, though, you’d want to invest in something better if you’re looking for even mid-quality prints.
–TR
Teddy Roosevelt
It’s not so much the pixel count per say but the format and dementional size of the saved product. The higher the pixel, or dpi(dots per inch), the less grain the picture will have when printed. But that’s not the only thing that effects the grain. eg; my Minolta C-700 is a 2.3meg. Its saved pic size is 17x23". You open the pic on what ever photo software you have like Photoshop, then resize it to the final print format you want, like 5x7. Now when the resample tab on the image box is unselected in Photoshop the dpi goes from 72 to about 175 when resizing to 5x7. You get what looks like about a 200ASA negative type film print in grain quality. If you printed a 17x23 72 dpi pic right off the camera it would look like sand paper. All the resample does is compress the image like holding a bunch of soda straws with both hands, squeeze and the bunch gets tighter. With the camera, the higher the pixel count of the initial pic the higher it will be on the resample and the finer the grain, in laymans terms.
I have a scanner for print film negatives and slides; it SCANS initially at 2300dpi. Use a 50ASA slide like Kodachrome and scan that, use the Epson printer I have and resample DOWN to 600dpi, the prints look like they were painted, no grain. To get close to that fine a print you would need one of those 6 meg+ pro cameras. The printer I got for just that is an ink jet, dots at .001" and archival ink that lasts 100 years. I fooled a pro photographer at one of my shows, she wanted to know what chemicals and paper I used. No chems, dear, off a computer printer!
It all comes to how big a print you want. The bigger the print the larger the pixel memory you need to get a clean piece. Now if you just want one for e-mail or the web, great, all you need is a 72dpi pic of any size to upload, they all look the same. Resize from 17x23 to 7x9 at 72dpi and BAM!, you’re done. The pics on Rocket’s journal are digital. It’s all in the retouch and the quality of the lens on the camera. Popular Photography and sites like Bizrate.com have ratings for cameras from buyers that will give you and idea of the cost to value ratio. $150 gets a nice camera now-a-days. Look at the lens, features-auto flash, or a remote for self portraites on trail?, weight etc, water resistant?. Memory cards are a problem, they come with not much and upgrade cards to 200mb + are around $100. You’ll get a dozen pics on the card with camera in whatever mode, a high end card will get you 200 pics. Also there are different types of memory cards. I have a Smart Card and a reader for it that looks like a 3" floppy. Add the soft ware and load right to Photoshop. Some have USB ports but they can be weird. Rockets swaps out his card for another in mail drops and his dad does the loading.
Bushwhack
The S45 is a new camera made by Canon. It is a 4 megapixel camera with maunal and automatic modes. It also has a movie mode that can take up to 3 minute movies (the longest of any digital cam. on the market right now). The camera weighs in at 11 oz without batts. The battery pack is very lightweight and small making it easy to carry with you in your pack. The batts charge in about 2 hours. The batts have enough power to take a few hundred pictures. (Not sure how the movies affect this. I’m sure it sucks up the batt. power, though.) It can use up to 1G memory cards. It comes with one rechargeable batt, batt charger, 32 meg card (could be 64, I can’t remember.)
One thing I don’t like about this camera is there are alot of buttons to learn on this camera. The manuel is about an inch thick!
Good luck with finding a camera you like. Hope this helps.
Pushing Up Daisies
I absolutely LOVE my digital camera,the Konica KD400Z. It is 4 MP and 3x optical zoom (optical zoom was very imporant for me). It is great as a point and shoot camera for a beginner but also lets you control white balance etc. for more advanced photographers. Also, it is the first digital camera with a dual slot for memory. It takes both secure digital and memory stick cards. You can keep two cards in at the same time and switch between saving on the two cards. The best part-it is the smallest camera in its 4MP class and only weighs 6 oz! and the battery only adds about 0.2 oz. It also takes awesome black and white photos. I looked at canon, nikon, and many other small digital cameras and was very happy with my decision. List price is $499(actually cheap for a 4MP with 3x optical zoom) but I would highly suggest buying it online because you can easily save $100+ off the list price. I got it for $350. One drawback is that the charger is very light and small but comes with a long chord (which is somewhat heavy) whereas the canon cameras I looked at came with a charger that plugs directly into the wall without a chord. I am thinking about splicing the chord to make it shorter and lighter or putting it in a bounce box. Hope this helps!
Mary
Ok, lot’s of advise here, thanks a lot and keep it coming! It seems theres lots of options. I’ve looked on-line quite a bit, and will check out what you all have mentioned. BUSHWACKER- just curious, do you have a tripod for that slow film you use? I’m so sad my Nikon F3 is so heavy…but that slide film is the best:) MARY- does that camera take AA size batteries? I hear the lithium ones last long and can be replaced w/o a charge. Thanks all
THA WOOKIE
Wow, I guess that Bushwack does know his stuff! I just think back on my venture through the Grand Canyon. I decided to save on weight and quality. I used a 110 instamatic! It was light, it was easy to stow, film was cheap and easy to find…Oh yea, You could not blow the pictures up to more than a 2" x 3" or the grain made it look like some weird mural. Spend a little extra…not necessarily for now but for 20 years from now when the memories will really matter!
oldRocket
The Konica uses a lithium battery. I’m acutally about to go look into how much they cost right now becuase I’m going to need an extra on the trail. good luck!
Mary
Mary
Mary- Extra batts are around the $60 range depending on what your camera takes. I also decided that I needed a second one. 
Pushing Up Daisies
Has anyone had any experience using a pocket sized memory card reader so they you can download pictures for email and journals on the spot at a library/hostel computer? I’m thinking about using one becuase my memory cards are so large I will only need to send them home a few times.
Mary
We used a small Samsung 35mm last year. It had zoom and more features than we could remember on the trail. We had the pictures printed and a disk make with a digital image. It worked out great. The camera weighted only ozs. only replaced the battery once, film was always available and we have great 35mm quality plus the digital for publishing. We did see some trouble with the digital. Most of the problems were batteries. Straycat missed some nice shots, more than once in New England, because of a dead battery.
Papa Smurf
Well …my trusty old Cannon all-weather camera died too and I had to find a replacement. I wasn’t going for max resolution because I don’t intend to print my shots. I use them mainly for e-mail attachments and PowerPoint presentations in which 1 - 2 mpixel res is sufficient. I did a pretty extensive search and played with a lot of cameras. Was interested in something that was light and easy to use but still had some nice features. I locked in on the Panasonic DMC-LC20. It tops out at 9 oz with batteries. Have had it now for several months and I’m very satisfied. It uses the SD Media cards so I’ve gone ahead and purchased 5 of the 32 mbyte capacity and plan on sending them back home for upload here on Trailjournals.com. At the resolution I intend on using I can get 170 pics per card. Not bad.
My intial concern was battery life. This camera uses 2 AA sized cells. Alkalines were out of the questions and the next best choice was the NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) cells. As you can imagine there are a ton of different NiMH batteries to choose from and I wanted to get the ones with the most power and longest life. So, I did a little searching on the internet and found the following website:
www.imaging-resource.com/ACCS/BATTS/BATTS.HTM
This guy has done a masterful job at taking the mystery out of measuring battery power/life and he even publishes the list of available cells and how they stack up against each other. Based on his article I went ahead and purchased a set of 4 top end batteries and have been getting great life out of them. When I first got the batteries I tested to see how many shots I could get on the camera before the “low batt” lite came on. To my amazement I got almost 300 shots (without flash and not using LCD display). That’s more than adequate for my purposes. So, I’m carrying a total of 4 batteries on the trail. 2 in the camera and 2 in a small plastic container. Just as a precaution I stuck a back-up set of 4 batteries in my bounce box. I also scored a light (5 oz) charger made by LENMAR that tops off the batteries in about 2 hours. The nice thing about NiMH batteries is that they have no memory (like Nicads) and there is no damage caused by “topping them off” before they’re totally dead. I figure with about 4 - 6 day intervals between towns or hostels I would be able to shoot over 400 shots (easy) before having to re-charge my battereis, which is more than I can imagine taking.
Footslogger
If you are uploading to windows xp you shouldnt need a reader or software installed. (just use usb from camera-xp has generic software installed) If you bring a reader and use win 98 I’d guess you would have to install software (drivers) to get the photos off the cards.
Rob A