Portugal

As my holiday to Portugal approached, I spent a bit of time preparing my camera bag and which kit I was planning on taking with me. I decided to leave the Minolta lens at home but take the Sony SAL-55200 telephoto just in case. I didn't anticipate much use for a telephoto lens whilst there but figured I take it just in case (as my camera bag had space for it!). I also took my macro lens and very glad I did as I got some of the bug pictures in my previous post. Then for everyday use my SEL-1855.
I opted to take both my Gorillapod and my tripod as well.

Every holiday differs and some just offer more photo opportunities than others do. This holiday was a very relaxed affair and we didn't spend a great deal of time visiting places so I didn't get a huge array of pictures - some of the activities I did such as scuba diving and visiting a water park meant that I couldn't really take my camera anyway.

I did find myself using the panorama mode quite a bit though, it really is a great way to capture a scene and I took plenty of landscape shots with it of the view from our villa and from the highest point in the Algarve. One or two panorama shots I took on the beach at Praia da Arrifana highlighted a bit of an issue with the panorama mode which is that when taking the pictures, obviously the camera stitches the images together but if all that is in some of the shots are moving waves then it struggles to match a moving target. The result is what would have been a beautiful picture being corrupted and useless. Sadly I didn't realise this had happened until I returned home and reviewed on my laptop.

Corrupted panorama

I guess there are 2 possible solutions to this, one is to always have something else (such as sand) in the picture for reference, the other is to move the camera through the panorama quicker to reduce the amount of wave movement.

Some of my favourite pictures from the holiday were:

Bird drinking - multiple times every day, swifts would dart over the swimming pool and take a drink mid-flight. I managed to capture this picture on one of the first days there but was determined to get a better quality image. The birds however seemed to have a different idea, whenever I sat there equipped with my telephoto lens they just stayed away - it must have been the camera which put them off because at other times they would fly down and drink while we were still in the pool!

Bugs - as already mentioned, my macro lens was used to full affect and I got a couple of nice pictures of the local wildlife!

Flower - just a quick snap of one of the flowers whilst I was hunting for bugs, the macro lens allows close up focus and I like the way the colours extend beyond the end of the image - I could imagine this as a canvas on the wall.

Tree frog - this little guy appeared one evening and whilst trying to get a picture of him he jumped onto my arm, at which point my wife took over photography duties and got this nice little snap of him!

Landscapes - as mentioned, I used the panorama mode to full effect to capture this great landscape panorama from our villa.

Pool panorama - another great panorama picture, this one really captured the full effect of our living / pool area as well as the view beyond. Just not possible without a panorama shot.

Water droplets - at first I took a picture of my daughter through the fountain but then took a faster shot to capture the water droplets (just as my daughter lost interest and turned away).

Monchique art - there were a number of decorated walls like this but this one just seemed to be perfectly framed by the 2 trees and my patient daughter happily posed on this one. I just really like all of the colours and the composition of this shot.

Dolphins - I took my camera along on a dolphin watching trip armed with the SEL-1855, zoomed in to the max I set to high speed repeat capture and just snapped away the whole time. I took a total of 90 pictures and maybe a quarter of them had reasonable shots of the dolphins, these were the best.