What do you look for in a backcountry camera?

Like a lot of people, I'm not so into photography that I feel compelled to lug a 50oz DSLR into the backcountry. I think a lot of people are in the same boat as me. We want to buy a camera that takes good pictures to remember the trip by, without lugging along a lot of extra weight. Accordingly, I think sub 5oz (or maybe 6oz) point and shoot cameras are a valuable type to evaluate.

What I want is a camera that takes good photos that I can use for posting on Facebook, looking at on my computer, printing off a few 4×7" prints and maybe the odd medium sized print. I'm happy with the quality of photo that a decent point and shoot provides.

So for type of camera, my considerations are:

1) Photo quality
2) Light weight (sub 5oz)
3) Battery Life
4) Durability
5) Video? HD?
6) Optical Zoom (for wildlife shots)

My current camera is Canon SD780 IS. This camera takes 12MP pictures and shoots HD video while weighing just 4.06 oz (4.3oz with battery and card). It uses a rechargable lithium pack which I like because it's lighter and more compact. I can go an entire week one one battery….and I could always carry a second battery pack for longer trips or if I wanted to snap pictures constsantly. One thing I would like is more optical zoom. 3x is the bare minium. I used to have a camera with 12x optical zoom and that enabled some really neat pics.

I wanted to buy a waterproof/shockproof camera like the Olympus Stylus ones, but at 2x the price it didn't make sense. Plus those are 2oz heavier. I think the ultralight way is to carry a lighter camera and take care of it by being careful and/or using a light case (ie. bubble wrap) rather than buying a heavier camera clad in thick metal so you can abuse it.

I want a camera that takes reasonably good photos without a lot of fussing around. That restricts my choices to cameras of the "point-and-shoot" ilk. I use a Canon PowerShot A570IS. It takes excellent photos; a lot better than I need for most of my photography. It has a view finder and I can shut off the screen to save batteries. It uses AA batteries and will last me an entire season on one set of lithium AA batteries even with the screen active. It has wide-angle and telephoto settings and will focus close for flower photos. I have used it for two years now and have had no trouble with it.

1) photo quality (*)
2) weight
3) bulk
4) ease of use

(*) for landscape, i sacrifice zoom to 2)

using atm
-an olympus 420 + 28-84 for hikes in places i surely wont visit more than once : Iceland last year, Scotland CWT and Greenland this year, probably Patagonia next year :)
– a pana lx3 otherwise

what is interesting me atm
-micro 4/3 basicaly an improvement to my 420 in weight/bulk and maybe photo quality
– fixed length like sigma DP1, leica X1.

Charles,

Your comment about not wanted to fuss reminded me of the auto modes on the SD780 I have. The camera is able to detect things like faces, sunsets, landscape shots, indoor shots, macro shots etc and then it automatically goes to that mode to optmize the shot. It's really cool. If you are in a store check it out.

A cool thing that the face detection ability enables is a smart timer. If you take a picture with the smart timer then you don't have to rush to get into the shot because it waits to take the picture until 3 seconds after it detects an additional face in the shot.

as a semi-pro photographer, I'll add a +1 for RAW file format. nature photos can benefit so much from raw, you can't overestimate it.

I forgot to mention that my camera (Canon A710) will not take lithium batteries. At least that's what Canon says in the instruction manual and on its web site. I do use the Sanyo Eneloop rechargeable batteries and, with the LCD screen turned off, have done a week of lots of pictures without having to change batteries.