Lessons learned from Greece/Italy

So I've finally finished scanning in all my photos, and now I'm in the final stages of editing them and getting ready to upload them to Yahoo! photos for others to see. I'd say I learned a lot about taking photos from this trip, mostly because of the fact that over 70% of the photos ended up being quite terrible (as usual). Figuring out why is always the learning experience when taking photos. Here's a few things I learned on this trip:

1. On touristy trips like this, people are much more interesting than empty landscapes. The pictures are much more interesting to look at if you have people you know in them, interesting both for others and for myself. This seems self-evident, but I normally don't take pictures of people. It's something I need to work on since I have very little experience with it.
2. Focus, focus, focus! Too often, I had the focus set wrong. I would think that infinity was good enough, or I would trust the camera to just get it right, and it would get it wrong. Especially when you throw people into it. Something placed ten feet away from the camera with f/8 at 40mm is unfortunately not within the depth of field if the focus is set to inifinity. You don't really care when that something is a plant or chair, because it's "close enough". But when it's a person, it's glaringly obvious when they're even just a little bit out of focus. Aside from people though, there were a few times when I had a statue or some other inanimate object as the focal point of the photo, and I just didn't check the focus closely enough, so the photo was ruined. Unlike almost any other technical problem, you can't fix focus problems in post.
   
3. Use the AE and AF lock buttons when shooting people. People don't like to stand around, so you have to work very quickly. If people are in the photo, you can't make them stand around holding their pose while you figure out the right exposure, so you have to do all of that beforehand, and then ask them to pose. This is where the AE lock and AF lock buttons come in handy. I never use them when shooting landscapes because I have time to set everything manually, but when people are involved, there isn't time to take meter reads and adjust the focus ring manually. These buttons are invaluable for those situations.
4. While landscapes are predictable, living mobile things (people, animals, etc) are not. So while with careful setup you can take just one shot of a landscape and have it be exactly what you want to capture, with people and animals you always have to hedge your bets and take a bunch of shots, hoping you get the perfect shot somewhere in there. I got lucky with one picture of a friend that turned out really really nice, but that was pure luck. Many more pictures of family and friends and even animals ended up being wasted because I only took one or two shots and didn't capture quite the perfect expression or action. This is where digital really helps, and I'm strongly considering getting the Canon 5D, I just can't afford it anytime soon! This is also where using a rangefinder instead of an SLR might be beneficial, so I'm considering that as well. Man, this hobby is getting expensive!
5. The 24-105mm f/4 lens is really the correct lens to bring on a tourist trip. The point of being on a tourist trip is to spend time with the group you're with. If you lag behind to take pictures, they get tired of waiting and simply go ahead. While I did take a few days off to just go photograph on my own, in general I preferred spending time with the group than being by myself. Probably the slowest thing about taking the photographs was switching lenses. I brought my standard landscape lenses, meaning the 17-40mm and 70-200mm zooms, which are perfect for landscapes, but really not good for walking around and taking tourist-type photographs. Too often I found myself needing to switch lenses, and on more than one occasion I chose to give up the photo and stick with my group than take the time to swap lenses and get the shot I wanted. And rarely did I end up needing the super-wide or super-telephoto focal lengths on those zooms, a 24-105mm range would have been perfect. That lens is also very discreet, unlike the huge grey 70-200mm lens that I didn't feel comfortable walking around with around my neck. I could have reduced my weight and sped up my shots if I had had the 24-105mm. The IS would have come in handy several times as well. Yet more money to be spent!
6. On overcast days, overexpose!! I had a ton of photographs come out way too dark, and in almost every case it was because the sky was overcast and there just wasn't much contrast. The camera essentially sees a gray card in front of it, and so it pulls everything down to 18%, and it looks ugly. This is something that I'm still trying to understand completely, and I probably need more formal training on it, because I have a tough time figuring out when the camera is underexposing and when it's not on cloudy days. Clearly I'm missing a key piece of information about how the meter works.
   
7. Don't use Sensia 100 on overcast days! Man, this film looks bad when there's little contrast. Just flat and ugly. Of course, it's really just Astia, so it's low-contrast by design. On sunny days it's quite good. But overcast it just doesn't do much. Provia 100F is a much better choice in those situations. Actually, the dollar per roll I save using Sensia instead of Provia is probably not worth it. I think I'll just stick with Provia full-time, since it handles all situations pretty well. Although I feel like I should give Velvia another shot. Oh yeah, Kodak Elite Chrome 100 is just gross, I will never shoot it again.
8. My bag situation is all wrong. After buying four new bags for all different kinds of situations back in February, I'm finding that probably none of them were right. That's pretty annoying. Probably the closest thing to being perfect is the Crumpler seven million dollar bag I have (which I didn't bring on this trip!) It enables me to carry all my gear, but more importantly, stow the entire camera without taking the lens off, regardless of which lens I have on the body, very quickly and pull it out very quickly. This would have saved me a lot of time. The only question is whether or not it would have been comfortable to carry around for eight or nine hours. I'll have to find that out. In the meantime, I have to look for new camera bags. *sigh*