I’ve been shooting a lot of my backcountry stills with my Gopro Hero 2 recently. It’s actually a great camera for on-board action shooting (in decent light), does ok with scenics, and is very easy to work with. The downsides are a slight magenta hue in snow scenes (that I sometimes correct, sometimes not), no view finder (you need experience to predict what you are going to get), and no ability to zoom. Those caveats aside, I really like the results.

Couple of examples:

Otherwise my fav is my Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3. A small camera with a big zoom, and brilliant quality pics. I’ve abused the crap out of it (tons of days snowboarding, XC skiing, mountain biking, sea kayaking, etc) and it refuses to die. Love that thing.

@philip.ak wrote:

Otherwise my fav is my Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3. A small camera with a big zoom, and brilliant quality pics. I’ve abused the crap out of it (tons of days snowboarding, XC skiing, mountain biking, sea kayaking, etc) and it refuses to die. Love that thing.

That’s what my girlfriend shoots with and we both love it. The Leica lens is a nice feature.
BTW, your GoPro stills are really nice!

I use my crappy phone. Wife wont let me bring any of “our” cameras 😥 The Lumix is badass though, or so I have been told.

I was gonna say the Canon G12, but I didn’t know about the lack of video zoom.

I had the G9 for a couple years till I broke it, now I have the G12. Really great point and shoot cameras in a small package. Get yerself an Osprey Digistow for your chest strap and its always just a sec away. 🙂

It finally got released in North America last month.
Cheap($350), compact, GPS enabled, 18x Optical zoom amongst other options.
I’ve read a lot of good things about it.

http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/coolpix/style/s9300/

I have a Canon 7D that I shoot with when I want to get serious and I have a subject to shoot that’s worth carrying the extra weight. I also have a G12 that I always have in my touring pack and have shot with a lot more since I got it than my 7D. I’m pretty sure that the frame count is higher on the 7D since it isn’t unusual to shoot ~1000 frames in a busy day but the number of days and the personal memories captured on the G12 in the last 18 months is higher. My room mate has the Canon S100 and it’s a great camera, pretty much the same internals as the G12 without the hotshoe for an external flash and with less external dials. With the S100 you have to navigate through menus instead of using dials which slows things down a bit if you make lots of changes but also makes a big difference between the 2 cameras in terms of size.

I tried out one of the Panasonics but returned it to get the G12 instead primarily because I was already familiar with the Canon menu structure and because I already had a Canon flash that I wanted to be able to use with my little body too.

If you go with Canon and have the money for a nice P&S then pick between the G12 and S100 based on the requirement for an external flash (G12 only), the size (advantage S100), and the speed/convenience of changing settings (advantage G12). I have made good use of the articulating screen on the G12 to shoot pictures of entrances to lines with the camera held out over head and alse to frame self portraits in front of backgrounds that I like. 🙂

One other consideration if you’re traveling in areas that you aren’t familiar with…a P&S is far less conspicuous than a DSLR. I was in London just before I got my G12 and after a scary incident on the tube I didn’t feel comfortable getting my big kit out in Camden Market and missed out on a lot of good pictures but I wouldn’t have had a problem shooting with a G12 or S100.

Cool—thanks bcrider!

@strain wrote:

Micro 4/3.

The Olympus OM-D looks sick. First mirrorless camera I’ve seen that wouldnt sacrifice much from my Nikon SLRs. Stoked.

Ditto – Getting ready to sell my Canon 40D for that one. Doesn’t hurt that the same effective reach is half the glass length.