Mount Taranaki region, New Zealand 2009

If budget is limited don't spent your money on a new camera, spend it on a new trip. It's of much greater value to bring back new images with your old camera than shooting the same area, often your neighborhood, with a new one. Plus the images themselves won't be any better either. They may be bigger, sharper or with less noise but a boring image will always stay boring, no matter how expensive the camera is. It's much wiser to pick a destination and try to improve your photo taking abilities on the trip, learn to compose, to handle light, find out what's the best time of the day to take pictures or try to make interesting images of normal every day scenes. Reflecting before taking the picture will have a much bigger impact on your photos than having more Megapixels. Having expensive gear makes you feel less relaxed, too, because it really won't be the camera then when your photos stink ;-) ...

Happy shooting ...

KIKI

Phone camera image, heavily cropped, less than 1 native Megapixel

How many Megapixels do you need? Depends how big you wanna enlarge, 10 MP is probably fine for everything. I print 120x80cm with 12,8 MP from time to time and the prints look stunning. It's much more important to put a sharp lens in front of your camera than blowing up an image that is not the sharpest in the first place. Megapixels are a sales pitch for years to make innocent people buy new cameras. After Megapixels came ISOs. Every modern camera can shoot in every light and give great looking images. The smaller the camera the noisier your night shots but the smallest pocket cameras are still pretty good. It's much more important to improve your techniques and really think before taking a picture to make it interesting. Framing, light, colour, expression, moment are all much more important than Megapixels. That's why women take better images most of the time. They don't care about tech, they care about the image. Think about it before dreaming of the next camera that might improve your photos, it won't and will save you a lot of money ...

KIKI

35mm equivalent

What lenses do you need for a camera? It totally depends. Speaking for myself, if I only had one lens to choose for a camera, in which case you can take any compact or other fixed lens camera, it would be a 24-100mm equivalent lens.

24mm equivalent

Anything wider or longer is nice but not necessary for me. 24mm on the other hand is the minimum I want in a camera, 28mm doesn't cut it for me, as is the standard with most kit zooms. 100mm on the other hand is more than fine for me, I prefer to step closer instead of taking pictures from a distance. In my eyes you take the most dramatic images with a wide lens as close as you can to your subject. A fixed focal lens camera like Fujis X100s are fine, too, and probably all you need, see, most people use their fixed focal lens phone camera as their only camera, but I couldn't live with only 35mm at the wide end. One zoom lens is fine today because all real cameras are good enough to take good images in any light. You don't need a fast prime lens to take better images, they only get you less noise when light gets darker. PLUS, almost all "slow" normal zooms have image stabilization today, which let's you take shake free images especially at night. I much rather have a one stop slower zoom with IS instead of one that is not stabilized as normal walk-around lens. And they are smaller, lighter and cheaper, too.

If I had two lenses to pick I would throw in a 50 1.4 equivalent.

50mm equivalent

Henri Cartier-Bresson only used a fixed 50mm lens on his Leica for all his life and his images are among the very best. If 50mm is fine for you, skip the slow 24-100mm zoom and only take the 50 or a 35, they are lighter, cheaper, faster, give you nicer background blur at those focal lengths and probably make you take better pictures because you have to zoom with your feet.

35mm equivalent

50mm is the classic focal length, it's a very cool perspective getting you quite close if you want and letting you keep a distance otherwise. Most motion picture scenes are shot at 50mm, which often leads to photos that remind you of classic movies. Pretty cool.

If I had three lenses to pick I would put the normal zoom away and take an ultra-wide instead, a 16-35mm for example, it's the zoom most press photographers use. It let's you get everything into the frame in tight places, putting the spectator right in the middle of the action.

16mm equivalent

I would keep the 50mm and add a long zoom like a 70-200. I used this set up almost entirely on my last trip in autumn. Probably next time I would take a second body to avoid the several hundred lens changes during a trip, but if you have some time you're really covered with this three lens combination for everything. I use the long zoom for landscape shots or posed portraits but not for documentary, for that the 16-35 plus the 50 are all I need.

144mm equivalent

Happy shooting and a sunny Sunday!

KIKI

With wedding season ahead make sure to pick a photographer for your special day that takes images you can enjoy for the rest of your life. If you like my style I can cover your day from dress up till last dance. These are some of my photos from the last years ...

If you're interested just drop me a line.

KIKI

There you go! Those will be my twelve images for 2014, all of which are exclusively from this year's trip "East 13". The calender is available in black or white, handmade with 12 supreme glossy prints sized 27x18 cm, reusable afterwards for wall display. It makes for a nice Christmas present once again. 

Pricing is 59 € (incl. MwSt.), 30 % or 17,70 € go to the Philippines. I'll start shipping next week, worldwide as last year. I'll transfer the final donation to Deutsches Rotes Kreuz on 24. December and will publish all information.

To order the calender or any other NIKOLAIKIKI product as part of this year's Christmas event, just send me a message here.

Here are the images ...

Fisherman on Inle Lake, Myanmar

People waiting for sunrise at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Inle Lake resident, Myanmar 

Girl in Tasma, Kyrgyzstan

Monk in Amarapura, Mandalay region, Myanmar

Tiles, Yangon, Myanmar

People on a truck, Jeti Oguz, Kyrgyzstan

Women, Sagain, Myanmar

Women with water buffalo, countryside, Myanmar

Pomegranates, Shanghai, China

Tram, Kiev, Ukraine

Nightscene, Shanghai

I wish all of you a happy Christmas time!

See you

KIKI