When choosing a camera, get one that does everything by itself and fits into the waist pouch. Wide-angle lenses are best. Don't bother with replaceable lenses, no matter of how you feel about point-and-shoot cameras. Make sure you have a spare battery. Do not take them to the beach if there is a risk of sand or water getting into the camera. I used to use a Nikon AF-600 with the Panorama switch glued in the off position, but today (2006) I use a digital Canon S80 and I can't believe that I ever put up with a pre-digital chemical camera. I love my Canon.
You'll enjoy the pictures only if you take some care composing them. It is impossible to take a picture of a landscape panorama, for example - all you'll get is a picture that is divided into a blue and a green half with some indiscernible tiny detail at the boundary. Here are some rules I use:
Mt. Marmolada, 8.6k
* Don't make postcard pictures. The pictures should help to remember the trip, not impress your friends. Prefer pictures of things of personal significance. A picture of your hotel room will prove more valuable than one of the Eiffel tower.
* Make sure any picture has both foreground and background. The foreground element should have an identifiable size to give a reference point - a person or bicycle will do, perhaps plus a tree or street light.
* There should be an element that connects foreground and background to give a sense of perspective and depth. A road or the edge of a forest work fine.
* There should be a focus element in the center of the picture. If there are two interesting elements make two pictures instead of combining them into one with a big void in the center.
* The foreground should be darker than the background to increase the depth impression.
* Choose a point of view when the sun is to one side, not behind or in front of you (unless you want to make an effects shot); the shadows give structure to flat surfaces.
* If the scene has some very bright spots, point the camera to an evenly lighted area and let it do its light measurement there. Most cameras do the measurement when the button is pushed halfway in and takes the picture when it is pushed all the way in. Otherwise the picture will be all dark and mushy except for the bright spot. If you insist on using an old-fashioned chemical camera, the lab will mercilessly overexpose dark pictures to reach an average light level.
* It's extremely hard to make a picture that shows the steepness of the road you are on. Don't even try to point the camera down or up to show the incline; keep the view axis horizontal.
* Another tip for chemical cameras: the first few pictures of a roll of film should not have bright colors or unusual brightness because the lab uses them to calibrate the development machinery. Also, the first and last picture are often lost or taped over by the lab. Quaint.
The picture above is an example from my Marmolada tour. There are riders in the foreground who give a size reference, a road distorted by perspective, dark trees in the foreground with a tall one in the center, and a brightly lit mountain in the background that almost seems to float. It happens to be a downhill but one can't see that.
I have replaced my old chemical camera with a digital still camera (Canon S80, replacing an older S40 and a primitive Sony). The choice between chemical and digital is not one of storage medium. The digital camera is a completely different device because it encourages taking snapshots at any opportunity. I now take at least five to ten times as many pictures because they are so wonderfully easy to take, review, delete, store, and process. No more guesswork, waiting for prints, extra expense for additional prints, and stacks of paper printouts. Bring one to a party and everybody starts posing and having fun. Digital cameras are a true revelation.
Professional photographers, and aspiring amateurs, will tell you that point-and-shoot chemical cameras and digital cameras cannot take serious pictures. This may be true if you are a professional photographer but it is nonsense for people like me who want to take high-quality snapshots with little preparation and posing. I have digitized well over a thousand old chemical photos, and let me tell you, chemical photography is the pure horror. Film ages, gets scratched by the camera, the lab, and in storage, and it inevitable attracts dust that gets embedded in the emulsion. Another thing I never stopped to think about: chemical cameras cannot compute a white balance, so most pictures will have incorrect blue (sunlight) or yellow (incandescent light) tints. Take a close look at older film and you will be shocked, and amazed how the lab could possibly get decent prints out of such information garbage.
(That said: of course I realize that film has a higher, S-shaped dynamic range while digital cameras have a narrower ramp range, so shadow and highlight detail gets lost more easily. Film also has a somewhat larger color gamut, although it may discolor with age while digital images never change. However, this is getting us into the domain of professional or semi-professional photography, where light composition is an art, and it doesn't invalidate my statements about nonprofessional photography.i And I notice that professional reporters have gone digital too, and modern digital SLRs can make stunning pictures.)
Take my advice: do not use a professional, adjust-everything-manually camera if you just want to take snapshots. My Canon does have manual modes and I have beautiful night shots with them, using a tripod of course, but much of the time you'll just want to whip out the camera, take a picture, and ride on. In such a situation your pictures will be worse with manual adjustment unless you are a whole lot more meticulous and willing to spend much time to prepare each shot and adjust the camera than I am. If you must stick with chemical cameras (they are still cheaper), use a fully automatic camera with a good lens; if you want to get good pictures get a digital camera with a good and not too small lens! I am serious. You can still make mistakes with a digital camera, of course, but at least you'll see your mistake immediately, and once taken a picture never degrades or gets scratched. And, to repeat this important point, a good large lens is much more important than whether it has two or ten megapixels. Don't even think about the toy cameras built into most modern cell phones, and their megapixel claims, the lenses and CCD chips are a joke.
I used to have a Sony F55E but the swivel lens killed the printed cable inside. My new Canon is far better than any Sony I have checked out. Also, I am truly tired with Sony's overpriced proprietary memory sticks, and I wanted CF cards. Half the price per byte, and available with eight times the capacity. Sony is off my list. Anything that needs xD cards too. Check out www.dpreview.com for good reviews.
(Silly digital camera trick of the week: they are sensitive to infrared light, so you can use them to test IR remote controls and IrDA ports.)
See also an article on " Bicycle Clothes"
