On Photographing in China
As many of you know, one of my strongest passions is for travel photography. Every year a great deal of time is spent determining where we will go on our next trip. Once the next trip is decided upon, I spend a great deal of time debating which lenses and equipment to take on the trip and what types of things I want pictures of.
After spending seventeen days travelling through Beijing and Xi’an in mainland China, then Hong Kong, the following is a post mortem of what wound up working well for me and what did not.
What went well
Having two cameras
This is the first vacation where I took both my 5D2 and my 7D. This provided quite a few advantages over a single camera – primarily that I did not need to change lenses often and could rapidly switch between closeups and wide angle shots.
The configuration I most often used was a TS-E 24 II on my 5D2 and a 70-200/4 IS on my 7D. I would often zoom in on details of a building with my 7D, then take the entire building with the 5D2.
I did not always have both cameras around my neck at the same time, and on some short trips I took only one camera (typically the 5D2) so as to not overly annoy my wife, but overall the combo was extremely useful.
Using tilt shifts
As I use my tilt shift lenses more and more, I really am starting to feel that autofocus is truly overrated. Sure, it is extremely useful for action, sports, and wildlife shots – but for most travel photos it is just a convenience – not a necessity.
On this trip I brought my TS-E 17, TS-E 24 II, and TS-E 90. By far the TS-E 24 II was the most used. I also used my TS-E 17 for a number of situations – though for the majority of situations it was too wide. The TS-E 90 was used sparingly – primarily from our hotel room.
I used shift far more than tilt for most shots. I did take a few shots playing around with tilt – such as above, but the majority of shots used shift for architecture.
Arranging for private tours in Xi’an and Beijing
Mainland China can be difficult to figure out. I chose to not bother trying and pay a local to do this for me. This enabled us to very quickly move from site to site – whereas in other trips we would often spend a tremendous amount of time finding places.
What went OK
China Tours
We used China Tours (ChinaTours.net) to book the private tours. The guides were cordial and we saw for the most part the places we wanted to see, but what we really did not like was that each day we had to stop at one or more shops and spend a specific amount of time there. We paid for a tour – not to stop in shops.
For others travelling to China, I would not recommend this agency and I would instead specifically enquire whether any time would be spent in shops. Once already there, it is generally much better to just hire a taxi – as they were OK with us not wanting to go to shop (they didn’t even ask).
What didn’t work well
Monopod
I did not use this a single time and for our next trip I will not bother to take it. A monopod works extremely well when shooting with longer lenses such as my 300/4 or 100-400, but for the shorter lenses it is fine to just shoot hand held or when not a tripod is required.
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Tags: china, photography, tour, Travel