Best travel camera. Beautiful Whitsundays. Australia.

When you can't sleep.

Yeah..how can you fall asleep when there is the half naked photography opportunities straight in front of you?! The camera is out of your pocket, you switched it on and took an unforgettable shot in a second! It's all possible with Canon G16 or it's successor Canon G7X Mark ii. G7X has the two times bigger sensor and as a result it's better in the details when you crop or print the big formats.

Both cameras have really clear lenses with f 1.8-2.8. That means that the images come out really clear in colours. You can find a lot of reviews in internet. I just want to share my experience of working with this small camera mostly on the Whitehaven Beach and underwater.

Yes, I sold a lot of photographs to the tourists. They got used to see professional photographers with the big cameras. When I was introduced as a professional photographer and they saw me working with the small camera, it looked quite suspicious. The reason I started to do the beach shots with the small camera is that my big new full sensor camera was broken. I didn't want to take my wedding canon cameras on a boat trips, because of the salt water and the really fine beach sand. 

I tried the small G16 and what I discovered, that the number of sales was the same. It's more convenient, easy to use and easy to buy the new one if it's broken. I've already changed two Canons G16's -they died in a rough salt water conditions. Salt water is the main enemy for the cameras and the main remedy for us. 

Perspective shots.

The maximum aperture is 8.0.  You can do a lot of nice perspective and scenery shots with the lens on a wide angle. The automatic white balance is great, so you don't need to adjust it at all. I normally do the perspective shots on aperture priority. I put the ISO on auto, so when there is not enough light the camera keeps the aperture wide opened and because it's 1.8 the underwater images come out nice and clear with the low ISO and the low image noise as a result.

You see, you can have a lot of fun with it. The camera jpeg's come out so nice and clear so you don't need to shoot in RAW files. It saves you valuable time too, because you don't need to edit them. Have a look at this straight out of camera not edited jpeg file.

My lazy camera settings. Set up and go.

ISO-Auto

Colour setting-Vivid

Exposure correction: -0.7 nearly all the time. It makes the pictures look much better than on zero.

Maximum resolution jpeg's.

That's it! Alway look at what you've got straight. If you are not happy with the image, try to understand what setting to adjust and shoot again. 

Flash use.

If you are close enough to the people you can use the flash on the sunny days to equalise the shadows on faces. You can make the flash brighter +2 or dim it -2. It's all upon your taste. 

The Whitehaven Beach has an endless possibilities for photography.

My favourite part of it is the North Whitehaven. There is the three lookouts and you can get really cool shots from them.

Be sure that you come here on a low tide. In this case you can see all that unreal sandbars which spread out in shallow waters of the Hill Inlet. They slowly change, move, appear and disappear. It's easy to find some feeding stingrays and baby lemon sharks here.

If you walk left (north) to the end you can get to the secret Bettys Beach straight behind the rocks. There is the path to it or you can go around the rocks on a low tide.

Macro settings. Soldier Crabs.

This small little creatures live in a sand most of their lives. When you are walking you can see a lot of a small holes..That's them. Sometimes, when the main crab command sounds under the sand, all the crabs suddenly come out at the same time and start to move. I think it's just the location changing and it's easy to disorient the predators when you are all together. This is the thrilling event. You can even hear the helmets and swards shattering on the small running soldiers.

This camera does an amazing job with macro. If you set it up, it can easily take the shot from 1cm from the subject. I shoot it on the aperture priority and put it on 8.0 to make it all look sharp.

This crab is just 2cm wide.

Zoom.

There is not a big-big zoom in this camera. If you are shooting birds on nests or the hunt of the sea eagle take something different, but for me it's enough. When it was the Blue Tigers butterflies time, I did an amazing shots on a full optical zoom. Sometimes the butterflies don't let you to come up close or even you can't come up through the dense bush, so the camera zoom does this sneaky job for you.

Action shots. Autofocus. Dynamic range (DD).

The focus is fast. The continuous focus is fast too. The camera can continuously focus on a subject wherever you point it without even pushing  button. So, when the moment is right it's already in focus.

The dynamic diapason (the difference between the highlights and shadows) is pretty impressive too. The sky doesn't loose it's details when you set up the exposure properly. Remember? It's nearly always -0.7.

Video.

The video is pretty good. I did the half of my one month US trip with it and it came out great! Only one thing, i got the dust inside the camera lens during 3 days dust storms in Nevada during the Burning Man festival. It's not a dust proof or waterproof. You can get a really good underwater housing for it from Meikon.

Underwater.

Canon G16 is my favourite underwater camera. It's not bulky at all to travel with, has the manual white balance, so you can get the proper colour balance from any depth and wide opened 1.8 aperture gives enough light to the sensor even in a low light condition. The images you can get from it are sharp and mind-blowing.

Our life is not the days which had passed but the days we remember.

We can't remember everything. Our cameras help us to save those unforgettable moments in digital images and when we get back to them they lit that adventurous light back, touch our invisible soul strings and our smiles start to get bigger and bigger.

Triggered with storytelling images, we start to plan the new adventures...

Thank you for visiting my web site.

See you somewhere on the intersections of this beautiful planet!

Dimi