Digital Camera Advice - Better Family Vacation Pictures

Over the last few years I came across zillions of family pictures. Some are good, some are excellent, but I’ve seen so many common mistakes that I decided to write this article, to provide you with some picture taking tips. Don’t treat them as state of the art knowledge, but rather some digital camera advice coming from a seasoned photographer. So you have planned your vacation for months. You have everything set up in the back of your head, and now the big day has come. You have your bags packed up, left the front door key to Aunt Martha to water the flowers and feed the dog and programmed your navigation system to point the route to the destination and you’re set to go. Of course, you want to take many pictures, because this is going to be a vacation to remember! What now? Well, here we go…

1. Bring the camera along

As silly as it may sound, one in five families have left their camera at home on their dream vacation at least once. I always put my camera, lenses, batteries, charger, data cable, memory cards and all the accessories that come with my DSLR in the backpack next to the laptop - it’s less likely that I leave both the laptop and the camera at home.

2. Center the shots on your family, not the scenery

Again, this sounds funny, but I’ve seen family pictures … with no family! The photographer was so focused on capturing a road sign that he simply forgot about his wife and kids, who appeared somewhere in the lower-left corner of the frame.

3. Candid pictures are good

Don’t always take posed pictures, it is not a studio shooting for the front page of a magazine. Candid shots of people in action can be such great memories. One of my dearest family photo is my wife falling off a hammock on a trip to the mountains: I managed to get her on the very moment she lost her balance and was hitting the ground.

4. It’s all in the numbers

Take lots and lots of pictures. If you don’t have a laptop to download the pictures when the memory gets full, buy one or more spare memory cards. They got so cheap these days, you simply have no excuse to miss memorable moments due to lack of disk space!

And, of course, keep your fingers out of the frame!

Getting the perfect camera, is never an easy thing, especially with the way digital technology is constantly changing. Fortunately, there are plenty of helpful websites online, that can narrow down your search and help you find the camera with all the features important to you.