Top 5 digital camera for year end holidays

Year end holiday season is approaching! Christmas and New Year 2013 are near, while the school holidays and the Koyo season in Japan are already here. This is the peak holiday season of the year. All travel destinations are drawing visitors from around the world in droves. Travelers are planning their holidays to these holiday destinations to see especially those attractive Christmas and New Year decoration and lighting at night. That said, in order to capture these special scenes at night with your cameras, you need something decent rather than your smartphones or tablets.

To capture beautiful lighting and decoration at night, newer technology has always better capability, so we recommend  these top 5 new cameras. There are tens of new camera models coming out each year. I decided to wrap them and pick the top 5 only at this stage so we can have a glance at the best and latest models for this year end holiday season.

All of these shortlisted cameras are capable of capturing virtually noise free images at high ISO for night shots. Image Resolution in MP and weight in g, the most questioned figures for travel cameras, are stated. Here they are:

1) Nikon D600 (USD2,499.95 with 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED VR AF-S Nikkor Lens – 24.3MP Full frame CMOS sensor, 850g body only). Need we say more? D600 is regarded as the best Nikon camera to date by enthusiasts around the world. Squeezing in the best full frame CMOS sensor into a compact body size, it offers the best image quality capability to those serious travel photography hobbyists without adding too much loads on their shoulder. Weighing 850g without battery, it is only 76g heavier than my D7000 which is DX-format DSLR.

2) Olympus OMD-EM5 (USD1099.99 with M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-42mm 1:3.5-5.6 – 16.1MP CMOS Micro Four Third sensor, 425g body only). Olympus has recently become very popular among travelers with its introduction of Micro Four Third and mirrorless camera system 4 years ago. Combining compact size, light weight and superior image quality that only DSLR can beat, mirrorless lens-interchangeable camera system is now getting better and better. Olympus has recently upped their game with OMD-EM5, one of the best options currently available in the market. With mirrorless cameras on travel, you don’t need a big messenger bag to fit in, and make you travel lighter and smarter!

3) Fujifilm X-Pro1  (USD1,699 Body only – 16.3MP CMOS APS-C sensor, 450g body only). This is another mirrorless camera system with inter-changeable lens. It’s more expensive than most DX-format DSLR available in the market. Having said that, it has great image quality, stylish body, reasonably light weight and most importantly compact in size. With the high popularity received for X100 a years ago, X-Pro1 has become the latest favourite from Fujifilm.

4) Canon EOS-M (USD799.99 with 22mm lens – 18MP APS-C CMOS sensor, 262g body only) – The introduction of EOS-M series of mirrorless camera system by Canon. It proves that compact and light weight cameras have become the main actors in travel photography market. With the Canon logo and a decent sized APS-C image sensor on board, you can’t go wrong with this latest model.

5) Panasonic DMC GF5 (USD699 with 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens – 12.1MP Micro Four Third sensor, 267g body only). This is one of the lightest among all other cameras listed above. GF5 is the 4th generation of Panasonic GF mirrorless compact system camera. With some refinement over its older sibling coupled with a powerful zoom lense, Panasonic DMC-GF5 remains one of the popular compact system cameras around.

I’ve included only cameras with lens-interchangeable system which are always superior to simple Point and Shoot compact cameras. 4 out of 5 of my top 5 cameras for holiday travels are mirrorless system camera as they are light weight and without much sacrificing on image quality especially low light shooting, which is important for outdoor travel scenes at night.

If I were to name an additional DSLR for travel, it will surely be my beloved travel photo gear, the Nikon D7000, with which I carry along on my travel for almost 2 years now. Eventhough it’s already 2-year-old, its reasonably compact size, superior low light shooting capability, 16.2MP APS-C CMOS sensor and of course fast and responsive operation with wide range of quality lenses available, make it still one of the best choice for travel. 🙂 – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.