People who see my touring pictures often ask me what sort of camera I would recommend for bicycle touring. In answering this, I need to make a distinction between what sort of camera I use myself and what I would recommend for other people. I am an admitted photo nut. I often carry a full SLR system on my bicycle, sometimes even a medium format rangefinder system. If you were that photo-obsessed, you would not be asking for my recommendations, because you'd already have your favorite system put together.
So what do I recommend for people who aren't obsessed? What do I use myself when I'm more interested in riding than in perfectionist photography?
I recommend a lightweight, reasonably-inexpensive point-and-shoot camera, one that's weather-resistant and easy to use with your gloves on. Light weight is an obvious advantage for touring -- even when I carry a full SLR system, it's the very lightweight and compact Olympus OM-series, not a massive auto-everything wonderbrick. Low cost makes sense for a camera that may be dropped, sat on, or lost. I'm not suggesting something so cheap that picture quality suffers, but nothing gold-plated, either. The need for weather-resistance is obvious, you don't want a camera that stops working in a light drizzle or goes haywire over some spray at the beach.
So with those criteria in mind, what specific cameras do I suggest?
If you prefer a film camera, the Olympus Stylus Zoom 80 Wide DLX can be found used for very reasonable prices. Like the rest of the excellent Stylus line, this camera is compact, light weight, very weather resistant, and quite durable. Its main distinguishing feature is a wider-than-average 28mm lens. I often find the usual 35mm wide angle zoom a bit too narrow for crowded interior photos, like a group of riders inside a tent or in a booth at a restaurant. The 28mm wide angle of the Stylus Zoom 80 Wide can fit in a lot more field of view in small spaces.
My wife's previous pocket camera was another excellent model, the Pentax IQ Zoom 105WR QD Date. The 38-105mm zoom on the Pentax isn't quite as wide as my Olympus, but the camera has excellent features and is extremely weatherproof. One feature it boasts over my Olympus is spot focus to override the standard automatic focus. Another is mid-roll rewind to let you change film in the middle of a roll. It's a little bigger than mine, but still weighs in at under a pound and still fits easily in a jersey pocket.
When looking at Pentax cameras, film or digital, be sure to watch for the W or WR designation, for Weather Resistant -- some similar models are not nearly as suited to touring duty.
This page written by Josh Putnam. Please feel free to email questions, comments, corrections, suggestions, etc.