A Lightweight Travel Companion

Modern compact digital cameras provide an amazingly comprehensive and lightweight travel kit in one for online multimedia publications like The Journal. Whether taking stills images, stitched panoramas or catching video action, it’s all in the palm of your hand.

Samsung gave us a couple of their latest high end compacts to try out on our travels and the little Samsung WB2000, you see here, has become a constant companion. It packs a lot into a small package, delivering good quality shots through the Schneider Kreuznach bright f/2.4-5.8 5x zoom lens (equivalent to 24-120mm lens) and has intuitive auto settings.

There are also some very useful special features that come into their own for travel photography. One is the auto stitching panning mode – great for those times when you find you yourself standing in front of a wide vista or skyline just waiting to be captured in one. Another is the Smart Range mode – two exposures combined into one – invaluable when shooting scenes with areas of dark shadow and bright light like those narrow winding alleyways you find in old cities.

The video too is impressive. It can deliver to HDV quality and has the ability to shoot at up to 1000 frames a second which can create some interesting slow motion clips – see the little Brazilian dancing video which was shot with a combination of the WB2000 for the slow-motion opening scene and Samsung’s EX1 for the foot level dance clips.