A lot has been written about selecting the perfect camera for travelling. The most recent article is this detailed post from National Geographic: “The 10 best compact cameras“.
We have to agree with their selections of of some really great cameras, although we are kind of surprised that our trusty Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ80 (subsequently replaced by updated models TZ90, TZ95, and TZ200) didn’t make the list. The TZ in the model names stands for “travel zoom” and the standout feature of these cameras is 30X optical zoom at the touch of a finger, without the need for changing lenses. Plus the TZ line is considerably more compact than most of the cameras on the National Geographic list. Smaller size, and charging using the same charger as our phones, are key considerations for “carry-on only” travellers such as ourselves.
Over the past dozen years or so, we have gone through three of Panasonic’s travel zoom cameras and have always been satisfied with the results. However, over that same time period mobile phone cameras have undergone an exponential increase in quality, so that we now rarely travel with anything beyond our cell phones. The only trips where we consider a separate camera to be essential are safaris where wildlife rarely walks right into cell phone camera range! Our recent trip to Namibia and South Africa includes some great wildlife shots that required zoom capability. The lions pictured below were over 50 metres away and would have been blurry specs in a cell phone picture!
There’s no denying that professional photographers and enthusiastic amateurs (with lots of luggage space!) will want a higher end camera and probably multiple lenses. The rest of us can probably get by with our phones and a point-and-shoot with decent optical zoom.
