What camera do you use? Our Recommendations Part I

Probably the most frequent question we receive. In this new series, we will brave the digital frontier. We suffer so you don’t have to™ is our motto and our mantra. This is Part I of the series.

The Nikon Coolpix p900 is an all in one camera with a spot on autofocus. Great for birders, travel, landscapes. You are going to take great photos with this camera.

Positives:

• Light and easy to carry
• Autofocus grabs and holds
• Easy learning curve
• Great price for the great photos you will be getting. Having a good tool like this makes everything a pleasure.

Not for:

• Macro work and middle to extreme distance shots of things smaller than a landscape.

What to buy:

Get the camera here.

You also need 2 big honking (a technical term) Memory Cards and a good lightweight camera bag or case and this filter pack.

Yes, you really do need them all

Here are the good work habits you want to acquire to make using your camera a pleasure.

• Put on the UV filter and forget it is there. It will save your camera from almost anything, think of it as cheap insurance. Use the polarized filter for dramatic sky contrasts and for whale watch photos. Just screw it on right over the UV filter. The case will save your camera in a rain shower, again think of it as cheap insurance. Make sure you have a light rain jacket that you can wear over the case for even better protection.
• Download your photos at the end of each day, delete bad ones and sort the good ones into relevant folders. Run the backup to an external drive on the whole thing.
• I like the  Western Digital My Passport Ultra 4TB drive or the Pre-formatted for a Mac Western Digital My Passport 2TB drive.
• Now you have two copies of every photo.
• Reformat the card and recharge the battery while you are running the backup and you are ready for the next day.

Happy shooting!

More on troubleshooting problems and cropping your photos for professional results in a future post.

-Kevin