This time of year I get asked a lot what photo gear I take with me on a holiday. So let’s use my summer holidays with the kids as case study over a couple of posts to see what I’m taking and why. In the previous posts I talked about my holiday workhorse, the Panasonic Lumix GF1 and my good old trusty Canon Ixus 860IS compact camera. I also wrote about diving with my Olympus E-PL1 in the underwater housing. but the Olympus is more than just a camera for scuba diving.
In fact scuba diving isn’t the reason why I bought the E-PL1 and the underwater housing. I got it because I’ve always had this special thing with water and I got frustrated with the fact that cameras don’t like to get wet. There’s lots of stuff I want to shoot in, on and near the water without having to worry about my expensive gear. Kobe and Maya, me two eldest kids, are crazy about being in the water. So I took the E-PL1 with me to the beach to see if I could have some fun with it.
Kobe and his buddy Cedric had loads of fun, jumping into the waves.
Maya and Cedric also had a lot of fun posing for the camera.
At one time we were on the beach, heavy clouds came rolling in. While everyone else was scrambling our beach gear together, I went into the pretty heavy surf to shoot some dramatic seascapes.
On the last two days of our holiday Kobe and May took their first surfing lessons. The weather wasn’t very good but the surf was.
Kobe did extremely well for his first time on the surfboard.
Maya even managed to surprise everyone by standing up on her very first run on the board.
Here’s another one of Maya and one from another girl in her group.
And here’s Cedric with the surfing teacher:
The shot below is probably my favorite of this really great holiday with the kids.
You can probably tell that I’m really digging this h2o thing. It’s so challenging and I got so much to learn and discover. At the moment I’m editing a pretty extensive “educational” behind-the-scenes video of an underwater pool shoot. So if you don’t like my water stuff, stay away from the blog for a while.
Kobe made some very nice pics!
I rreeeaalllyyy like that last picture! Very nice composition. Looks like the ending of a surf movie or something. Nice atmosphere.
Well, I love the water stuff, and you’ve made me think I might like an e-pl1 especially as it’s really cheap on amazon at the moment
Hey Bert,
I love that last shot of your post with the whole family on the beach looking at the very dark sky! Nicely done!
Wow, these are awesome and very lively shots. Thanks for sharing them. The last one is my favorite too.
Thx all
@Simon: I already got a good deal on the E-PL1 and housing because the E-PL2 was out. Now that the E-PL3 is available, you should indeed be able to pickup an E-PL1 very cheap. If you a small camera for general use (not underwater), I’d strongly recommend the Panasonic GF1 instead. The handling is way better than the Oly imho. It’s just that a housing for the GF1 costs more than twice what an E-PL1 + housing costs.
Water and surf are addicting…especially for photographers! I was trying to figure out where you were for these photographs. Doesn’t look like Hawaii…
I’m using the pen serie more and more in my photography lately, this serie is really inspiring…I can safely raccomend the epl1 to anyone…expecially now that can be your so cheap..