Three Great Cameras for Cruising
Steve Frankel, The Digital Cruiser (stevefrankel@incrediblecruising.com)
2/16/2013
My wife and I just returned from a December rounding of Cape Horn, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Valparaiso, Chile, on board the Seabourn Sojourn. Even though it was in the middle of their summer, the weather was terrible with torrents of rain coming down on us every day. Nevertheless, the photos and the ship made everything more than worthwhile.
A major objective of mine was to see how three different photo outfits fared during these varied and challenging shooting conditions. I brought with me a Sony RX100, probably the best of the reasonably priced pocket cameras; a Panasonic Lumix FZ200 which, with has a 25-600mm f2.8 lens, is the most versatile camera in the world today – regardless of price; and an Olympus OM-D with the 12-45mm weatherproof zoom, the 45-140mm zoom, and the 14mm, 25mm and 75mm fixed focal length lenses.
All 3 outfits totaled less than 10 pounds in weight, even including 3 gadget bags, spare batteries and SD cards, chargers and other essential accessories. Generally however, I limited myself to carrying 3-pounds of gear because anything more than that proved too unwieldy to carry and use, and was too hard to secure in tourist settings where pickpockets and thieves specializing in lifting high-end cameras were fairly common.
About 70% of the time the single most useful 3-pound combo was the Lumix FZ200 in a Lowepro Edit 120 bag, with a wrist strap tying the camera to the strap of the bag; and the bare Sony RX100 riding in my pocket (also with a wrist strap) or being used by my wife. Both of these cameras produce superior 13”x19” prints from any decently shot image, as the attached photos will demonstrate, and the FZ200 excels in nature shots where you are at least 30-50 feet away from small birds and animals. It also includes an electronic viewfinder (EVF) that made shooting at very long focal lengths possible. The only accessories we carried were 2 spare batteries, 2 spare SD cards and UV/skylight filters and lens caps that protected the OM-D’s and FZ200’s lenses.
The remaining 30% of the time – especially in driving rain – the ideal combo consisted of the Olympus OM-D with the 12-50mm weather-proof lens (equivalent to a 25-100mm lens) slung outside my rain jacket on a Sun Sniper sling, and the Sony RX100 sitting in my or my wife’s pocket. I carried it for many days in conditions that were likely to destroy non-weatherproof cameras. When I wanted to indulge in street shooting – especially candid photos of interesting people – the Olympus 75mm f1.8 lens (really a 150mm lens) replaced the 12-50mm and yields some astounding results. Similarly, for shooting street scenes at close range., the new Olympus 17mm f1.8 lens (equivalent to a 34mm lens) converts the OM-D into a small, inconspicuous, ultra-high quality camera akin to the Leica and Nikon cameras favored by press photographers before the digital revolution.
I’ll say more about all these cameras in blog postings that will follow later this month.
