Hello all! I am off travelling round Central America this summer for 5 weeks, so naturally I am thinking there are going to be some damn good photo oppurntunities. So I want to bring my camera and stuff, but at the same time I am going to be living out of a backpack with limited space, and I am seriously wussy about carrying weight. So I have decided already that the tripod is out. Not that it is all that heavy, but its bulky and to get good use out of it, I'd have to carry it most places which I am just not prepared to do.

So far I am thinking:

-One of my canon EOS 300 film cameras (I have several) cause my other film cameras are either less versitile, heavier or cost more than £45 so I don't want to lose them.

- Polarising filter (do you think I should bring a UV one as well? I have never really noticed much difference from using a UV filter, but then again I live in the UK and there is never that much UV light).

- Colour film. Here is where I am struggling, because I mostly use black and white and when I use colour, I use very low ISOs like 50 or 100. But I think that using them in really bright sunlight will result in pretty washed out looking colours. Anyone expert on what film speeds are good for tropical conditions?

-Lens wise I think I'll bring just one of the standard pretty small ones, again due to weight and space considerations. But then again, maybe I want the versitility of more of a zoom lens....

Anyhoo, please advise fellow photographers! What should I bring?

Ah so lucky, what a photo mission!
I'm about as far from an expert as you can get but I'd say take a UV filter and just heaps of film. Kodak Portra VC 160 might be good for the bright conditions, take some black and white too though. And you could take a mini tripod(£8 from Jessops) , takes up no space at all and is light as a feather

You should bring extra batteries.

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Good advice! Extra batteries is a v good plan, because I buy the lithium ones ridiculously cheap online but I think they would cost a bomb in some small town in the middle of nowhere.

I want to get good film ideas now so I can buy some in bulk off 7dayshop.com - Online shopping made easy ! (cause I have quite a lot of ISO 100 film at the moment, but its out of date and living in my freezer, so not ideal to travel with...) Buying it off the internet will make it cheap, but then I have to be sure I am buying the right stuff...

Yesss get the Portra! Ross told me to bring that to Israel and the results were amazing.

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RECHARGEABLE batteries + battery charger

are you going to Panama? do a photoshoot of Ramon ala bedtime stories

Call me evil for the environment, but my little CR-32 batteries will probably do the whole trip anyway, and if I need two more, that will take up a tiny amount of space in my suitcase- which a battery charger and converter plug will take up loads!

I am going to Panama but I am not familiar with Ramon, or bedtime stories alas. I do want to buy a Panama hat there. Although someone told me they aren't made there- exceptionally disappointing.

If I was you...

1x cheap film body

1x normal zoom lens. 28-80 or something in that kind of region

1x tele lens for pictures of birds and all the cool stuff in the trees. 70-300 zoom would be perfect.

1x UV filter, on at all times. Especially if you're hiking about, then you're much more likely to bash the front of the lens.

1x Circular Polariser, for using when it gets sunny. Makes everything look all lovely and vibrant.

I assume your EOS has a built in flash, otherwise maybe just a wee Sunpak gun.

I wouldn't bother with a tripod to be honest - unless you're going for landscapes or that sort of thing, not worth the weight.

I'm going to elicit my standard response here and preach to the world about how brilliant Kodak Portra 160VC film is. Buy a batch from 7dayshop and you'll be winning. Hellish With Relish and Amity both have some damn lovely shots on this film. I would buy as many rolls as you can carry/afford. If budget's a constraint, try hunting down Ferrania Solaris 200 in Poundland - great stuff for £1 a roll.

Get a Gorillapod

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I am all over all of the above listed things (I bought a new circular polarising filter just earlier this week because I have somehow managed to lose my last one), save the telephoto lens because its heavy and I am lazy. My EOS bodies are cheap and have a built in flash. The most annoying thing is the lightest of them has a weird little screen on the back which shows you in huge what your appature/ shutter speed is, which makes it look from a distance (and when its off) like a digital SLR, which makes it infinitely more stealable.... dilemmas dilemmas. I think I am going to buy some 160VC to try out here before I go, but I trust the general consensus!

Do you need to be able to see this LCD display at all? If not, I'd go for the tried and trusted technique of covering it with black electrical tape. I'd also cover all canon logos etc with black tape if non-stealage is your thing. And maybe a non-branded strap... nothing says MUG ME quite like a big canon/nikon logo hanging round your neck!

This used to be a big game of ours when I worked in a bike shop... making all our posh bikes look cheap, shitty and old by covering them in tape and stickers and marker and stuff like that so nobody would want to steal them. Best things to start with are a roll of black electrical tape and permanent marker

Clever plan! Although I am not sure if I'd be able to do much with the manual settings if I covered the back... Stupid light versus sensibly built. I might go downstairs and weigh them to see what the actual difference is...

I just bought 10 rolls of 160VC off 7 day shop (I was going to buy just one or two, but the postage was £3.99 so I decided just to get a crapload) and now I am wondering- to develop out there or wait til I get home? On the downside of waiting til I get home includes undeveloped film getting ruined by X-ray machines, high temp and damp. And not knowing if my camera is fucking up or not. On the downside of waiting til I return home to develop them is potentially local developers doing it badly (although I never had that problem when I was travelling for 4 months in South America, but then I only had a really cheap point and shoot camera out there so photo quality was already not amazing) and the weight of carrying round the packets of photos (although when I was in Brazil I used to develop the photots then send home the prints and keep the negatives).

So I have been back for more than two months but have only *finally* got round to scanning and uploading some pictures:

From New York and Belize:



Belize City (this picture does not relate the "hole" like nature of the place):


Out in the Cayes:

Guatemala:

Guatemala looks amazing.

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This is Honduras, Nicuragua and Panama (I took nothing in Costa Rica, its such a miserably rainy place):

Rimming parrots (tee hee):

It was! All the black and white photos are from Antigua, the first two are from Tikal. I have more I *might* add but scanning things up with this piece of crap scanner and my ancient shuddering desktop fatigues me just to think about. I did these fresh when I came back (and had some free time unlike now- le sigh) but then took forever to upload them (and was annoyed to find photobucket stopped working so have had to use some weird image hoster that produces pics of different sizes (both strange AND annoying).

get a Flickr!

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