The best travel cameras for photography on vacation
The best camera is the camera you have with you! It's not always the best image quality, but that's why in this article we show you the best cameras that should meet everyone's different requirements. That's why it's important to ask yourself in advance of your next vacation, what makes the trip special?
- Landscape or city?
- Flowers or birds?
- Portraits or still life?
- What is your budget?
These are just some of the questions we ask ourselves when we pack our bags for our next trip. As an example, I have also documented my own travel bag, which you can read about here:
The most important points in brief
The following criteria are very general and are aimed at the needs of most photographers:
- The camera should be as light as possible
- The cameras should be compact
- The Lens should cover a good range of focal lengths or support Macro
- It should offer good battery life
Sony Alpha 7 IV (ILCE-7M4) + SEL 24-105mm f/4.0 G OSS
The top 5 travel cameras - all-rounders
Before we start with the specific recommendations, we want to show you the best cameras that fulfill almost all wishes and offer good image quality, a lot of flexibility and also score well in the most diverse areas!
Colorful, compact, powerful functions: Panasonic Lumix DC-S9
This compact camera is the little sister of the Lumix S5 II, it uses the same sensor, the same autofocus system including the powerful sensor stabilization. However, the L-mount offers a wide variety of Lens and, above all, the Lumix S9 also offers great functions such as the use of LUTs for finished photos without editing, Lumix has cleverly solved this here with an app with which you can also edit images very quickly and easily and the resulting looks can also be converted into new LUTs, which can then be used directly on the camera again.
Specific cameras for different situations
We will now take a look at a few more specific models that are aimed at enthusiasts who are looking for one or two features or have special equipment requirements.
It doesn't always have to be the latest camera
We value sustainability, which is why we continue to focus more and more on our second-hand range and it's always worth taking a look. Modern cameras are very exciting and at Foto Koch we also offer good used cameras that can accompany a photographer for a long time to come. Modern cameras are very robustly built and offer a very long life expectancy, which is why you can usually buy them without any worries.
Used cameras that we offer are checked for their condition and any damage or defects are recorded by us to the best of our knowledge and reported transparently. We are also often offered very new models, which can be purchased for a good price difference to the new price.
The best accessories for travel photography
When it comes to travel photography, there are various camera accessories that can improve your travel shots.
Joby GorillaPod tripod - Thanks to the flexible legs of the GorillaPod, this tripod can be used almost anywhere and enables great shots from new perspectives.
Pocket mount for the camera such as the Capture Clip from Pe ak Design or the Clip from Ulanzi.
Peak Design's system with the universal anchor loops offers a lot of flexibility and gives the user the choice of whether he or she wants to travel with a hand strap (Peak Design) or a camera strap (Peak Design).
You can find the full selection here:
Does the sensor size play a role in travel photography?
That's a clear yes and no. It always depends on the individual requirements, but the technology in smaller cameras has become better and better and offers a high level of resolution, sharpness of detail and adverse lighting conditions. However, in most cases the sensor size determines the final price. Full-frame cameras are usually even more expensive than APS-C, MFT or smaller sensors.
However, APS-C cameras, especially from Fujifilm, now have a lot to offer. In addition to image stabilization and filters, they offer a very compact solution with their own lenses and, with the Viltrox lenses with a very strong open aperture of f1.2, they also offer the kind of free-viewing you love from the full-frame format.
MFT cameras are characterized by the design of the sensor, as well as by their form factor, which simply gives the cameras a raison d'être like no other system, as already mentioned, it is particularly suitable for social media and if you want to get very close to a distant object.
