Not Paparazzi .... Not Professional

One of the things that I have always wanted to learn to do well is photography. I don’t aspire to be a “professional” but I definitely want to be able to create good photos that I would be proud to share. Retirement will offer me that opportunity and I look forward to learning. It will allow me to post some decent pictures to the blog so our friends and family can keep up with our adventures and actually see what the heck we are talking about.

A couple of years ago I purchased a Canon T3i to begin the adventure. When our son and daughter in law decided to move to Japan they wanted to get a good camera to take pictures to document their adventures and share on their blog. I gave them the Canon setup figuring that I could replace it before we retire.

I decided to do some more research about cameras and see if there was another setup that might work out better for us. I found that when I used the Canon it was nice, but also heavy, and Lin has much smaller hands than I do and she just wasn't comfortable using it.

So about a year ago we decided that the way for us to go was with a micro 4/3 camera. They are smaller bodied, lighter, and still take some awesome photos. Here is what we bought:

Olympus OMD – EM5, 3 additional lenses, a decent flash unit, and the additional battery holder/grip.

Olympus Micro 4/3 Camera

Sometimes it is just too cumbersome or obtrusive to carry around and whip out the DSLR. In those cases we use the point and shoot plus that we have. It is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS4. It is submersible to 40 feet, is GPS enabled, takes full HD video and it can also be used in manual or aperture priority mode unlike a lot of similar cameras. Why did we get the blue one? It was on sale at the time for $75 less than the other colors. Yeah, I like blue just fine.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS4

I have been drooling over the GoPro HERO 3 Black because of all the neat things that you can do with it during various activities. I’d gone back and forth about purchasing one and justified not getting one because they are a little on the expensive side for another camera to our collection. Then….it went on sale and I channeled my inner female and decided I just had to buy it. After all …. It was ON SALE! That means you have to buy it. At least, that what I have been told. And so were a lot of the mounting options and other goodies. Got them too.

GoPro Hero 3 Black at Amazon

So, that’s our camera lineup for our move. In addition to our camera phones we think we should have most of the bases covered to add some neat photos and videos to the blog. We have the geocaching app on our phones so we will discover all the geocaches in Chiang Mai and The_Geomonkeys will be placing more around the Chiang Mai and Hua Hin area when we move.  Geocaching:  Using a billion dollar satellite system to hunt for Tupperware in the woods.

Learn About Geocaching

Now….about that quad copter.