You are on a one day tour in the centre of Copenhagen snapping beautiful baroque buildings and landmarks. Being a perfectionist you will take the same object or photo for numerous times to get the best shot, which costs you more disk space and power. Suddenly, you realize your SD card is full and you had barely taken much photos of Copenhagen (Yes you took a lot of photos but it's the same object but different angles). Worst is you realize your battery is running low as well! No thanks to being forgetful about charging your battery the night before.

I was in the same situation before but thankfully I always carry my backup along wherever I go. I will always have an extra SDHC card and additional camera battery in my camera bag. I am glad that I never miss any nice shots because of these issues, else I'll bang my head to the wall ;)

If you're an avid travel photographer, you must always make sure your camera is equipped with enough juice - storage & power. So, bring along your backup SD/CF cards and at least 1 additional battery (If you have battery grip then it's more convenient)

However, human do make mistakes and problems like "Oh I had forgotten" is common too.

So, what do you do in situation where you have forgotten to bring your charger, additional battery, or even extra memory cards (before you start your tour that is)? I have some humble tips that I would like to share below.

  1. Shoot in JPG mode! Avoid shooting in RAW because that will use up more memory/disk space. By using JPG it is good enough quality and its battery efficient :)
  2. Get a large capacity storage card. My main SDHC card is a 16GB so I am pretty confident I won't need a backup, however, shit happens.
  3. Switch off VR (If you're using Nikon dSLR). VR consume quite a lot of battery power (yes, tested by me and proven fact). So try to carry along a tripod or monopod and use low shutter speed to snap your photo without VR. You can also compensate with using higher ISO.
  4. Use higher ISO. With this, you can still use faster shutter speed even with your VR off to capture clear & sharp photos. Heck you don't need flash as well (if possible).
  5. Avoid using flash. Flash drains the battery power faster than VR. I believe with higher ISO you can avoid using flash, but again that's up to what photos you are taking.
  6. Do not Chimp. Photogs love to preview the photos they just taken on the LCD screen. Learn to shoot like a pro, shoot as if you're using a film camera :)
  7. Switch off power when not in use. I know some of the photographers don't turn their power off because they want to do "Photojournalism". They just hang the camera on their neck with power ON so they will not miss any shots.
  8. Turn off auto-focus. Focus manually and turn off the AF assist thing / and the lights.
  9. Turn off Sensor Cleaning. Do you know that your camera will automatically clean its sensor when you switch on your camera?

Hope the points above will benefit you all :) Happy travelling !