Travel Photography Tips for Your Summer Holiday

Travel photography is one of the most widespread yet least-defined genres in image making. Most people take more photos on holiday than at any other time, be it framing up the sweeping vistas while hiking through the mountains or attempting to visually capture the noise and energy of a bustling foreign city.

The broader concept of a “travel photo” could include any number of subjects and settings. The only thing guaranteed about this genre of photography is that it only affords you a tiny window in which to make a photo that will go on to define your memory of a particular place.

With that in mind, here are some top tips for maximising your photography without minimising your holiday.

Pack light

The last thing you need while tramping through unfamiliar lands in the beating sun is an enormous bag of camera equipment. Travel photographers should pack a reduced kit.

Fortunately for Fujifilm users, the X Series was built with a design philosophy that centres on lightweight portability and enjoyable handling.

Fujinon travel lenses

To keep weight down, it’s best to bring a maximum of two or three lenses when you travel. Alongside making it easier to carry your kit around, this limit also helps alleviate indecision as you look for photo opportunities, reducing the desire to constantly switch between lenses and helping you to take in your surroundings without distraction.

Of course, your preferred form of travel photography may dictate the profile of at least one of the lenses you bring – there’s no substitute for a specialist optic, be it macro or telephoto, if it’s required for your subject of choice.

For more general use, however, the X Series lens lineup includes a great selection of small and lightweight zooms and primes, ideal for when you’re exploring a new place.

For zooms, the 125g FUJINON XC13-33mmF3.5-6.3 OIS and the 240g XF16-50mmF2.8-4.8 R LM WR offer a range of high-utility focal lengths while taking up minimal space in your luggage. These will happily cover everything from wide-angle photos of landscapes and architecture to close-ups of interesting details.

If you prefer a prime lens, check out the FUJINON XF35mmF2 R WR and XF23mmF2 R WR – a pair of compact, weather-resistant lenses covering 53mm and 35mm full-frame equivalent focal lengths and weighing just 170g and 180g respectively.

Meanwhile, for the ultimate in portability, the X Series includes three pancake primes – the FUJINON XF18mmF2 R, XF23mmF2.8 R WR and XF27mmF2.8 R WR. These miniscule lenses combine perfectly with smaller X Series bodies to create pairings that are ideal for taking on your travels.

For more optical inspiration and advice, don’t miss our travel lens guide here.

Fujifilm travel cameras

Once again, a combination of portability and utility is the order of the day for the ideal travel camera. The FUJIFILM X-T30 III is an excellent example of just such a body, packing a 26-megapixel sensor and powerful X-Processor 5 into a slim and lightweight build that weighs just 378g including battery and card.

The rangefinder-style FUJIFILM X-E5 offers even more powerful performance, combining a 40-megapixel sensor and in-body image stabilisation (IBIS) system within a compact body that weighs only 445g with battery and card. Both options include a Film Simulation dial, for rapid switching between characterful colour profiles.

For the ultimate portable photography experience, a fixed-lens camera like the FUJIFILM X100VI lets you replace your entire kit bag with a single compact device. Its 23mm F2 lens is an ideal travel option for everything from street scenes to landscapes. The 40-megapixel sensor enables a digital teleconverter function, providing extra framing options as required.

Smaller still is the truly pocket-sized FUJIFILM X half. Taking inspiration from analogue half-frame cameras, it amps up the fun factor of photography with a raft of retro-infused features and creative functions. An ideal option for travel, this 240g camera offers a level of portability so you’re always ready to photograph the unexpected.

Be ready

Once you’ve picked your travel set-up, it’s a good idea to lock in some camera settings to help you make the most of the imaging opportunities that come your way. The last thing you want is to miss the action while you’re digging through menus.

You can set up your Fn button settings by holding the DISP/BACK button on your X Series camera. Useful functions to have at your fingertips while travelling may include toggling face detection and subject detection autofocus on and off. Don’t forget that you can also customise your quick menu by pressing and holding the Q button, giving you instant access to the settings that matter.

You may also want to automate some of your exposure settings. Working in aperture priority mode gives you control over your lens’s depth-of-field while automating the shutter speed and ISO settings. Combine this with your camera’s Auto ISO mode to set limits on the selected ISO and shutter speeds. Head to SHOOTING SETTING > ISO AUTO SETTING, where you can create up to three profiles. You can read more about Auto ISO in this Learning Centre article.

For fast-moving environments, you can give yourself a better chance of nailing a photo by exploring your camera’s drive settings. Try selecting CL LOW SPEED BURST or CH HIGH SPEED BURST on your camera’s drive dial or drive menu. You can then go to SHOOTING SETTING > DRIVE SETTING to view and set the speed of these modes. By picking a lower speed and shooting in short bursts, you can find a middle ground that increases your likelihood of capturing a critical moment while not ending up with too many images to review afterwards.

Film Simulations

It’s not only the handling and aesthetics of Fujifilm cameras that draw inspiration from photography’s film era. X Series cameras feature a range of Film Simulation modes – imaging profiles engineered to deliver the look and feel of different analogue film stocks.

For travel photography, these can help provide refined-looking images straight out of camera – perfect for sharing samples before you get back home. For a look at how different Film Simulations can be used across a range of subjects and genres, see this Learning Centre article.

To further customise your results, you can delve into the world of Film Simulation recipes and create your own custom profiles. This allows you to adjust the colour, grain and tone curve of existing Film Simulations to achieve a truly unique look. You could save a bank of these recipes to your camera for use throughout your trip or make a single all-purpose look that can give a unifying aesthetic to all the photos from your holiday – the choice is yours!

If editing your images in post is a big part of your process, you don’t need to choose between using Film Simulations and shooting Raw – go to IMAGE QUALITY SETTING > IMAGE QUALITY and select either FINE+RAW or NORMAL+RAW to simultaneously record both a JPEG and a RAW file for every photo you take.

To learn more about making your own custom Film Simulation profiles, read our Film Simulation Recipe Guide– and to get inspired by some existing recipes from our community, head to our X Stories page and look through some FS RECIPE posts!

Share on the go

You don’t have to wait until you’re home again to start sorting through your photos. In fact, it can be great to have a look through your work while everything is still fresh in your mind. Thankfully, with your X Series camera’s FUJIFILM XApp compatibility, you don’t need to lug your editing suite from place to place with you.

Simply pair your phone with your camera and you can rapidly offload files via Bluetooth, allowing you to share or edit images via smartphone from anywhere in the world.

With XApp, you can also automatically create a timeline of all your photographic activity – an amazing way to relive your trip once it’s over. This feature synchronises the location data of every image you make, creating a diary of your photos and marking each of them on a map, so you can see exactly where your photography took you.

Explore every day with FUJIFILM UK

While inspiration for photography often strikes hardest when we’re exploring unfamiliar places, opportunities to refine your imaging technique can be found anywhere and everywhere.

If you want to dig deeper into the world of photography, there are articles on FUJIFILM Learning Centre for people of all abilities to explore a wide range of imaging genres.

Discover more about FUJIFILM X Series and GFX System, and shop the range today.