Making your holiday pictures memorable

You are off on the holiday of a lifetime – or maybe just a weekend break. Either way, you want to come back with a portfolio of perfect pictures. It all starts with good preparation.

One of the facts about shooting with a digital camera is that you will take a lot of photographs. After all, unlike film, it costs almost nothing to make a digital exposure. So it makes sense to take more than one shot of an interesting subject, perhaps changing your point of view between exposures, or applying exposure compensation in difficult lighting situations. It also makes sense to shoot at a high resolution, in case you capture a stunning image which is worth printing larger than A4.

All of this means that it is not difficult to fill a memory card quite quickly. To avoid running out of storage space while shooting, it is worth taking several memory cards with you on holiday. Cards are available with capacities of 4GB (enough for 1000s of images) but some photographers prefer to use several smaller capacity cards, arguing that if one card becomes corrupted, it will not affect all their images.

Cards and camera are of little use without a battery. Again, shooting lots of images can lead to an exhausted battery. If you plan to use a battery charger each evening, remember to carry suitable plug adapters when travelling abroad. Alternatively, pack two or more fully recharged batteries at the start of your travels.