Wednesday

Take Care of your Camera and Yourself while at the Beach

Boracay is probably beckoning to you by this time of the year. White sand beaches, great views and beautiful people everywhere. If you’re like all vacationers, you’d want to bring a camera along with you to take pictures of the sights, whatever these are for you.

I’ve been taking cameras to our beach-side vacations for quite sometime now and through the years, experience has taught me a lot of valuable lessons on how to take care of my camera and my eyesight during my photo shoots at the beach – and I like to share them with you.

Protect Yourself

As you all know, strong rays of the sun can be harmful to your eyes and to your skin. If you use a SLR camera with a zoom or macro lens, be careful not to point it directly at the sun or any shiny object that bounces the strong rays of the sun while you’re looking at the viewfinder. Strong rays of the sun can burn holes in your retina. Just imagine what these could do if they are “magnified” through your camera lenses. You might also want to slather on a generous amount of sun-block on your body to protect your skin. After all, we don’t want to ruin what good that papaya soap did to your skin.

Protecting your Gear

The beach has the four S’ that can definitely shorten the live of your camera gear and your stuff – sand, salt, sea and sun. Keep all of these away from your camera, your lens and your film.

Avoid exposing your film and your equipment to direct sunlight, even if they are inside their respective bags or cases. Leave them at a place that is properly shaded or covered. If you plan to leave your camera inside your vehicle while it is parked under direct sunlight, you need to protect it from the heat. You need to place it where it is not exposed to direct sunlight. If the cost of petrol is of no object to you, you can leave the air-conditioner open. Of course, this won’t do your engine any good. You can also experiment on this idea: if you have a cooler packed with ice, store your camera inside the cooler but make sure you wrap your camera carefully inside a water-tight plastic bag so that moisture can’t seep in. However, I don’t have any idea until how long a water-tight plastic bag can keep the moisture out.

If you’re not using your extra film just yet or your camera, it would be best if you can wrap them inside clear, resealable plastic bags. Don’t put them inside one bag however – the exposed film, unexposed film and the camera should go inside separate bags. Well, of course if your camera or lens is too big for a clear plastic bag, the next best thing would be to put it inside the camera bag or lens bag. However, you can find clear, resealable plastic bags that would be big enough to put your camera and your lens in.

But before I put my gear inside the clear plastic bags, I usually check them for minute grains of sand. If I find sand, I remove them either with a soft brush or with a quick blast from a can of compressed air. Of course, if the wind is strong you need to put your back against the wind before you start removing the sand. Better yet, go behind a beach umbrella.

If you have an SLR and you plan to change lenses to take close-up picture of that bootylicous babe sunbathing half-naked, then you need to make sure that the sand doesn’t find its way inside your cam. When changing lenses, turn your back against the wind and keep the camera as close to your body as possible to keep the sand from blowing into the cam’s body. If you’re using a beach umbrella, block the wind with it.

If you need to take pictures while near the water using your point-and-shoot, try this experiment out – place your cam inside a clear, resealable water-tight plastic bag when you’re taking pictures. This drastically lessens the chance that salt air and salt water would find its way inside your camera. However, you do need to make sure that the size of the plastic bag would be just right for the size of your cam and that there are no scratches or surface aberrations on the plastic bag for this can ruin the quality of your shot. Also, make sure that the side of the bag that’s fronting your lens has no crimples else you’d definitely see them crimples on your pictures. For 35mm SLR users, the best thing you can do to take near-water pictures is to take the photographs using a zoom lens. However, if you have a trick that all us can learn from, let us know through this community.

At the Hotel

When you arrive back at your hotel or at the place you’re staying, give your camera and your gear a good once-over. It would be a good idea to clean your camera and your lenses once you arrive to make sure you don’t have any problem and to ensure the continued good use of your camera equipment for future trips.

Then beach is a wonderful place to be during summer to take fun pictures of your family and interesting subject to save beautiful memories. So bring your camera along and take great pictures so that you can relive good memories over and over again. Just remember that an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.

Have fun this summer!

Tags: Photography