Vietnam Packing Lists

Vietnam is an amazingly beautiful place with lots of fantastic picture taking opportunities so make sure you bring a good camera with lots of film or a digital camera with lots of storage.

Camera Recommendations. I bought my first digital camera specifically for this trip and was quite happy with the results. It was wonderful not to worry about the cost of each picture I took.

Shawn’s Camera bag
+ Olympus 35 mm w/ Film (back up camera and needed for situations when low light and telephoto lenses is needed)
+ Nikon Coolpix 31000 Digital Camera
+ Radio Shack 20 Gig I/O portable hard drive
+ 2 – 256 meg memory cards
+ 1 quick charge battery charger (for 110 and 220 volts)
+ 6 sets of Nickel Medal Hydride Rechargeable Batteries (NMH are the longest lasting rechargeable batteries)
+ Small Tripod

Camera Review – I loved the Nikon Coolpix's small size. It was easy to use and the overall picture quality was adequate. The battery usage is better than average and shutter lag was less than other digital cameras I tried. The other problem with the Coolpix is that there are no manual settings, which are very helpful for someone who knows f-stops and shutter speeds like I do. Since the ASA is set at 50 you are quite limited to the pictures you can take in low light (including late afternoon). Subjects were often blurry unless in the direct sun. The other limitation of the Coolpix is the zoom is only 3X not near enough to capture the candid people shots I love to take. I would definitely recommend this camera to a novice photographer, for the more advanced photographer the Coolpix would not be my first choice.

If you are serious about photography I would recommend the larger and more versatile Cannon Powershot A70. While the Powershot is quite a bit larger than the Coolpix, this camera offers manual settings, has an optional telephoto lenses and underwater casing, takes alkaline and rechargeable AA batteries and can be set at ASA 50 or 400 so it is more versatile than the Coolpix.

The Portable hard drive I took with me worked flawlessly and I would definitely recommend it to others. And with 20 gigs of memory I never had to worry about running out of memory.

Film development shops worldwide are now starting to download digital memory cards to CD for about $5 so that is another option for people traveling for extended times.

A note on rechargeable batteries….hotels in Vietnam seemed to turn off the electricity to the hotel rooms when patrons are not in their rooms. This means that you cannot recharge your batteries while you are out of your room so I would recommend bringing 6 sets of batteries just in case. Vietnam uses 220 volts and European sockets, get a charger that accepts 110 and 220 and you wont need a lug around a heavy converter.

Vietnam Packing Lists

Visiting Vietnam?

Visiting Vietnam?