The top 10 ways to make phone calls when you are abroad

by Scott Carmichael on

Welcome to the Gadling top 10 ways to make phone calls when you are abroad. This top 10 list will take a quick glance at 10 ways you can save on keeping in touch with people back home. It’s a well known fact that international calls are quite the racket, and making long calls back home can severely deplete your vacation spending money. Thankfully, technology has opened up all kinds of ways to save on your calls, and I’ll list the 10 that I think are the most important.

Your own phone

The most common way to make phone calls back home when you are abroad is of course to use your own phone with your own plan.

This is all fine and dandy if you only plan to call someone to let them know you arrived safely, but if you plan to keep in touch every time you see a cute giraffe walking down the street you’ll owe your mobile operator quite a lot of money once you arrive back home.

Before you start splurging on the newest technology, decide how often you plan to make a call, and compare the price of those calls with what you’d plan to spend on a nifty new way of making calls. If you only plan to make 20 minutes of calls back home ($20), then spending $50 on a new prepaid card may not be the best solution.
Prepaid mobile phone cards

When it comes to making cheaper mobile calls abroad, the prepaid SIM card is usually the first solution people think of. Prepaid SIM cards are more popular abroad than they are in the US, and you’ll usually be able to find a prepaid SIM card at any store, including kiosks at the airport.

A SIM card is the small chip you slide inside your phone to let your phone know who you are, and what your mobile number is. SIM cards are primarily used in the US by T-Mobile and AT&T (the GSM operators). Verizon and Sprint use a different system, but to make things complicated, they DO have some phones that are GSM compatible, and therefore use a SIM card.

One thing to keep in mind with any SIM card that takes the place of your regular SIM, is that your mobile phone has to be unlocked. You will need to contact your mobile operator to get your phone unlocked and not everyone will be eligible for a free unlock.

Before you consider using a prepaid sim card, it pays to research the rates of the different international operators. The differences in prices of calls back to the US can be staggering. A fantastic resource of all prepaid operators around the world is prepaidgsm.net. It may take 20 minutes to pick the cheapest mobile operator at your destination, but that time could easily save you $100.

For example; if you purchase a Vodafone prepaid sim card in the Netherlands, your standard rate for calls to the US is €0.75 per minute.If you purchased a KPN Mobile sim card, the rate is a whopping €1.45 per minute. With rates like that you’d be better off using your US phone instead.

Where? Anywhere prepaid mobile phone cards are sold
Price? “SIM Only” starter packs usually cost about $20, packs with a SIM card and a phone start around $40

Global roaming phone cards

Global roaming phone cards are not the same as prepaid phone cards – the technology behind them is the same, but these new cards are often issued out of countries with cheaper roaming rates, which allow you to carry the cheaper plan along with you, no matter where in the world you end up. One of the most popular cards on the market at the moment is the MAXroam sim card, offered by Cubic Telecom in Ireland (don’t worry, they’ll gladly ship to the US). The MAXroam sim card replaces the sim card in your current GSM based phone.

The rates on these cards are substantially lower than the rate offered by your own mobile operator. Per-minute rates from most European countries back home to the US are about $0.30.

Of course, you often can sometimes get even cheaper rates with a normal prepaid sim card, but the low rates on these global roaming cards means you won’t have to buy a new prepaid pack in every country you visit.

Another great advantage of these global phone cards is the ability to assign a normal US based number to them, which means you can give your friends and family an affordable way of contacting you when you are abroad, without them having to call an international number.

Where? Research global roaming cards at Prepaidgsm.net
Price? Starts at around $20

MagicJack

MagicJack is a tricky one; they offer a quality product, but cheapen the brand with horrible early morning infomercials and a never ending “buy within the next 4 hours” hard sell.

MagicJack is a $30 USB stick for your PC that provides unlimited local and long distance US calls. You will have to bring your laptop along with you if you want to make a call. Magicjack comes with a local US number, which means your friends and family won’t have to call a foreign number.

MagicJack also offers cheap international calls. I’ve been using MagicJack for some time now, and it’s never let me down. Of course, you will need to be connected to the Internet to get a dial tone. Calls can be made with a regular analogue phone, or by using a headset plugged into your PC.

Where? www.magicjack.com
Price? $39.99 (includes the MagicJack dongle and 1 year unlimited local and long distance phone calls)

Blackberry from T-Mobile

I’ve written about this option before, so I won’t go into too many details. The Blackberry Curve from T-Mobile (along with several other T-Mobile Blackberry smartphones with Wi-Fi) have the ability to roam onto Wi-Fi instead of a foreign mobile network. As long as you can get online, you’ll be able to make and receive phone calls. The advantage of this, is that as far as T-Mobile is concerned, you are “at home”, and will be able to take advantage of the local US rates or minutes included in your plan.

Of course, once you leave the Wi-Fi coverage, you are back on the expensive cellular network. T-Mobile is also the cheapest option for international data because they offer a $20 Blackberry flat-rate and unlimited plan for any email sent or received when abroad.

Where? T-Mobile.com or any T-Mobile authorized dealer
Price? From as little as free on a 2 year agreement + monthly service charges

Skype

Skype is one of the most popular Internet calling applications on the market. It provides free Skype-to-Skype calls, as well as fee based calls to landlines and mobile phones. Skype is available for your computer, as well as several brands of mobile phones, and even on portable devices like the Sony Playstation Portable.

To make a Skype call when you are abroad, you’ll of course need Internet access.

Where? Skype.com
Price? Free Skype-to-Skype calls, $2.95/month for unlimited calls to US based phone numbers

Mobile phone add-on plan

Before you leave, be sure to call your mobile operator. You’ll want to do this for 2 reasons; first to make sure you are allowed to roam abroad, and second to ask whether
they have any international calling add-on plans.

These add-on plans don’t just apply to your regular mobile plan, many foreign prepaid cards also offer options to lower your per-minute rate for international calls. Using Vodafone in the Netherlands as an example again, their normal rate of €0.75 per minute for calls to the US can be lowered to just €0.30 by calling them and paying a one-time fee of about €10.

Where? Your mobile operator
Price? Starts at $5.95 (for example; the AT&T Wireless “World Traveler plan“)

Type, don’t talk

With roaming charges often as high as $4 per minute, it often makes more sense to send a written message instead of a spoken one. Many mobile operators offer add-on plans that add fairly large amounts of international data for as little as $20. Sure, an email may not be the most personal way of staying in touch, but at the end of the trip you’ll have a lot more money to spend on crap at the airport souvenir store than if you had made a bunch of phone calls.

Many mobile phones can be outfitted with instant messaging or Twitter clients that allow you to communicate in real time with anyone who has Internet access.

Just be sure to keep the data to a minimum as international data charges can be even more painful than phone call charges.

Where? Twitter.com or search for “mobile instant messaging client”
Price? From free

Picking the right roaming operator

When you arrive at your destination, your mobile phone picks the strongest signal it can pick up. This may not always be the cheapest provider. When your mobile operator negotiates prices with foreign operators, they won’t always get the same deal. A simple rule of thumb is to always try and stick with partners of your own operator, if you use T-Mobile in the US, pick T-Mobile in the UK and anywhere else you can find it.

Where? Check the international rates of your operator on their own web site.

Not making the call…

This one sounds pretty lame, I know. There is however some logic to it. Before you pick up the phone, always decide whether it’s really worth the money. Sometimes it makes more sense to just drop the folks back home an email. Just 15 years ago people survived fine without a mobile phone, and it can often be quite liberating to spend a week at the beach without the constant interruption of your Blackberry. I would not suggest leaving your mobile phone at home, as it always makes sense to have access in case of an emergency, but you do not need to keep your phone on 24/7.

One other tip to consider before leaving, is to turn off voicemail on your phone before you leave for your destination. If someone tries to call you abroad and reaches your voicemail box, you will actually pay the international rate for them to leave a message.

Do you have any other tips or ways you call the folks back home when you travel? I’d love to hear them, so please leave them in the comments!

Catching the Travel Bug: Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam

by Josh Lew on

Welcome to Catching the Travel Bug, Gadling’s mini-series on getting sick on the road, prevailing and loving travel throughout. Five of our bloggers will be telling their stories from around the globe for the next five weeks. Submit your best story about catching the travel bug in the comments and we’ll publish our favorite few at the end of the series.

SARS. The subject was worked into every conversation amongst the expats and long-term tourists in Vietnam. The government claimed that the virus had been contained in several northern provinces, far away from Sai Gon (Ho Chi Minh City to Communist Party officials and fresh-off-the-plane tourists). Still. There were rumors about people’s neighbors being taken away in the middle of the night to be quarantined because of a persistent cough. Mostly, that was just speculation, fueled by one too many beers or one too many years in country.

Nonetheless, when I came down with a cough and fever, I had thoughts of gasping for breath in a hidden away hospital ward guarded by CP officials who didn’t want their SARS secret to get out. I wrote my illness off as a regular flu bug I’d picked up from being in a classroom teaching eight-year-old Vietnamese kids how to speak English. When my chest started to tighten and my cough to turn into a wheeze, I started to worry a bit more.

I confided in my girlfriend who took me to a doctor who had an after-hours private practice in his home. I was assured that he spoke English. He spoke great Russian because he’d been schooled in Moscow, but only a bit of English (like “Injection” and “Infection”). Between my modest Vietnamese skills and miming and his pidgin of Russian, English, and charades, I was able to get started on an IV of antibiotics. But he wanted an x-ray to rule out the unspoken disease. He kept asking me if I had been up north, to the areas that were hit by SARS. I said no, but he casually slipped a surgical mask on before starting me on the IV.
I got into the x-ray at a hospital the next day. It took two hours in the waiting room, which was not the best experience. Radiology was located by a nurses’ station and there were several people on hospital beds just parked in the hallway. I found out from a smiling but nervous lady in a neighboring seat that they were on a death watch. The nurses could keep an eye on them until the end.

The x-ray technician was unfamiliar with practicing his trade on someone of my height. It took 5 tries to get it right. I paid him 150,000 dong ($10 US) to hand the pictures directly to me instead of putting them up with the others.

My next antibiotic session consisted of me and about 4 others, sitting in plastic lawn chairs in the doctor’s back room with drips hanging from hooks in the wall. One guy smoked the entire time, but no one said anything.

A few days later, I went through the x-ray ordeal again. This time a smiling technician got it right on the second try. Through my girlfriend the doctor said that he chalked it up to a chest infection.

“No SARS?” I asked.

“No SARS.” He chuckled, said something in Russian, and patted me on the shoulder.

Check out the past travel-bug features here.

Galley Gossip: Bids are out! (my schedule, a little airline lingo, and a flight attendant poll)

by Heather Poole on

“Bids are out!”

Those three words are exclaimed each and every month by flight attendants (and pilots) around the world. Perhaps you’ve even witnessed a crew of four (or more) call out the three words above as they briskly walk through the terminal and pass another crew of four (or more) on their way to the gate.

Maybe you’ve wondered, what does that mean, as you stood waiting for your delayed flight to board. And while you continued to stand there impatiently waiting, you watched as four (or more) cell phones were simultaneously flipped open and placed to the ear. Rest assured that call must be made upon hearing those three words. If it can’t happen right then and there, it will happen very shortly, even if the flight attendant has to hide in the lavatory during the boarding process to make it happen. Why? BECAUSE THE BIDS ARE OUT!

BID, BIDS, BIDDING, BID SHEET – a request of choice routes made by each flight attendant to fly specific monthly schedules. At the airline I work for, our bid sheet offers over hundreds of lines to choose from. Bids are awarded by company seniority, which is why those flights to Asia and Europe always have the most senior flight attendants working the trip.

LINE, LINE HOLDER – a sequence of trips a flight attendant is offered each month. A line holder is not on reserve and works each of those trips in consecutive order.

RESERVE – Reserve flight attendants do not have a line. They bid for days off only. When they don’t have a day off, they remain on-call, meaning the company can (and will) assign the flight attendant a trip at any time of day (or night), with at least two hours time to get to the airport. Reserve duty is much like an on-call doctor. We must stay within a manageable radius of our base (mine covers three airports JFK, LGA and EWR). The flight attendant must be duty ready whenever on reserve. This means you must be ready to board a flight within one hour of its departure, which means there are no late nights out and absolutely no alcohol, since you can (and will) be called out to work any time of day or night. I remember one night having a quiet evening at home with a movie and Chinese take out. The food had not even arrived to my apartment and I was already leaving for a trip to London! There’s no warning, no lead time, and no excuses.

JUNIOR, SENIOR, SENIORITY – Refers to a flight attendants years of experience. Years of experience with an airline is based on date of hire. Seniority is everything at an airline, which is why the merging of most airlines does not happen smoothly. Junior flight attendants have to serve on reserve. In order to avoid having to do reserve duty , I commute from my home in Los Angeles (one of our most senior bases in the system) to New York (our most junior base). For me it is better to commute and be a big fish in a little pond than to work from home and have the uncertainty of my schedule loom over our family.

BASE – City in which a crew member originates and ends a trip. All trips start and end from ones base.

COMMUTE, COMMUTER, COMMUTING – the process of getting to your base city. I commute to work from Los Angeles to New York before each trip. Most airline employees who commute to work spend the night in a crash-pad. Like many flight attendants, my crash-pad is located very close to two of the three airports in my base city.

TURN, TURNS, TURNAROUND – any trip that originates from and returns to the same city on the same day. It is not uncommon for a flight attendant to see several cities over the course of 48hrs, only to arrive back to the city they left from. I have flown from LGA to ORD to DFW back to ORD and arrived back in LGA only to come home, shower, sleep and do it all over again the very next day.

Last week, after spending a good four days in a row staring cross-eyed at the bid sheet, I found out that for the month of November I was awarded line 50. Chicago turns. My particular trip will depart to Chicago a little after noon and return to New York just before midnight on the same day. Turns, are not my trip of choice, but we’ll get to that later.

Flight attendants bid once a month, near the end of the month, for a schedule the following month. I know, it’s confusing, but stick with me. Each line shows exactly what days and which trips a flight attendant will be working for the month. So whenever you see a couple of crew members sitting in the terminal, or on the jump-seat, with their noses glued to a packet of papers for hours on end, nine times out of ten they’re studying the bid sheet. This is not the time for chit chat, so unless you have a serious concern to discuss, or food to share, do not disturb the flight attendant. Bidding, for a flight attendant, is very serious business.

TRANSCONS – a transcontinental, across country, or coast to coast flight.

TRADING, DROPPING, PICKING UP – the act of swapping, giving away, or taking another flight attendant’s trip.

BACK UP, BACKING UP: working several trips in a row in order to have several days off in a row.

WIDEBODY – any aircraft with two aisles. The bigger the airplane, the more senior the crew.

NARROWBODY – any aircraft with a single aisle.

When I bid, I choose to work the transcons because they are easy to drop. I’m a commuter, and because I don’t want to waste my precious days off flying back and forth across the country, I back my trips up. That means at some point during the month I’ll fly to New York as a stand by passenger, spend the night in my crash-pad, work back and forth across the country as many times as possible in seven days, and then fly home to Los Angeles, which is where I’ll stay because I’m done for the month. Yeah, I know, it’s a good life – until all the flights to base are oversold, canceled, delayed and I’m unable to make it to work.

But remember, unlike most of my colleagues, I’m a low time flier, which pretty much means I work part time. In order to do this, I have to hold something desirable, not necessarily what I want to work, but what others prefer to work. Transcons on the widebody are the most sought after trips. Since I’m now a domestic flight attendant, I bid the flights to Los Angeles from New York. They’re easy, worth a lot of money, rarely ever cancel, and if I do decide to work one, I can layover at home with my family, not the layover hotel.

The reason I bid Chicago turns, and not transcons, for the month of November is because that line was the first line I could hold with Thanksgiving off. Yes, believe it or not, this will be the first Thanksgiving I’ve held off in thirteen years of flying. I’m way too junior to hold a holiday off on a line of transcons. In fact, I can barely hold transcons on non-holiday months, and if I do, I’ll most likely be working in business class, the most junior position on the aircraft, which is not a position you want to work if you’re trying to drop the trip.

TRIP TRADE, TRIP TRADER – the act of trading trips with another flight attendant. As this can prove to be a daunting task, flight attendants hire a person who manages, (for a fee), several different flight attendant schedules at once.

The first thing I do when bids are finalized is call my trip trader. She is one of the most important people in my life. Without her I don’t know what I would do. She makes my life work. Actually, what she does is make it possible for me to work, because it’s not easy when you have a two-year old child at home and you are married to a man who travels over 100,000 miles a year, and you don’t have family around to help when you’re out of town.

Now I have no idea how my trip trader does what she does, but the girl works magic, and I love her for that! In fact, I just checked my schedule and most of my Chicago turns have already disappeared. YES! And I’ve got two fantastic San Francisco transcons backed up in the middle of the month on my schedule! WOO-HOO! I love my trip trader, and life is good.

So good, in fact, I’m about to purchase three airline tickets to fly home to Dallas for the Thanksgiving holidays. Remember, this is the first Thanksgiving I’ll be celebrating at a home, and not in a dumpy airport hotel. Yes, I can fly for free as a stand by passenger, but like I said, I actually want to make it home for the holidays. What I don’t want to do is spend the holiday weekend getting bumped from flight to flight traveling with the family on the busiest holiday of the year. Oh no, I want to eat delicious turkey and dressing at my mother’s house, not a turkey sandwich and fries at Chili’s in the Los Angeles Airport.

Are you a flight attendant? If so, take the following poll. If not, check out this cool website and test your knowledge of even more airline lingo.

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Photos courtesy of: (flight attendant legs) Laszlo-photo , (airplane interior) Carrib, (turkey) Xbermathew

Big in Japan: Green tea is good for the body and the soul

by Matthew Firestone on

All this month, Big in Japan is bringing you a special series on Zen. From ancient scriptures and Buddhist mantras to austere minimalism and the sound of nothing, we’ll do our best to help you find your own little slice of inner peace and enlightenment.

Everybody knows that a cup of green tea (?????; ryokucha) is good for the body. High in vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants and a whole slew of anti-aging and cancer fighting compounds, green tea – a cup or two a day – will certainly keep the doctor away.

But, did you know that green tea is also good for the soul?

Believe it or not, the appreciation of this humble beverage is actually one of the key components of Zen (??). In fact, the Japanese tea ceremony or chad? (?????, literally ‘the way of tea’) has been strongly influenced by the core tenants of Zen Buddhism.

So, want to learn how you can turn an ordinary cup of Starbucks green tea into a vaulted object of philosophical admiration? Sure you do!

On that note, today’s post, the final in our special series on Zen, is all about the way of the tea.

The way of the tea or chadō is one of the most complicated aspects of Japanese traditional culture. Entire volumes have been written by learned scholars, expounding on the importance of every precise movement leading up to the first and last sip of green tea.

However, without having to dedicate the rest of your life to finding deep meaning in mere dried leaves, the take home message in both chadō and Zen is that new perspectives and insights on existence will lead you down the road to enlightenment. So, rather than just gulping down mouthfuls of hot tea in an effort to get your morning caffeine rush, slow down, and appreciate the beauty and sophistication of this humble beverage.

In chadō, each tea bowl, whisk and tea scoop is ritually cleaned before and after their use according to prescribed motions. This ritualized ceremony enables the practitioner to fully appreciate the amount of preparation that goes into making a single cup of green tea. While you can’t exactly replicate these motions at your local Starbucks, you can still find peace of mind in a seeping tea bag.

The next time you’re taking your teatime, stop and pause for a moment to reflect on the beauty in your cup. Green tea, served steaming hot without any milk or sugar, is a simple pleasure that refreshes the palette, warms the body, and tunes your mind into the ebb and flow of daily life. Considering that the key to Zen is discovering the Buddha-nature that inhabits the ordinary, perhaps Nirvana might truly be closer than you think.

Well, that concludes our special series on Zen (禅) – hope you learned a few new things! Be sure to tune into Big in Japan next month for our usual assortment of the weird, the wacky and the wonderful from the Land of the Rising Sun.

** All images courtesy of the WikiCommons Media Project **

Through the Gadling Lens: What kind of camera should I buy?

by Karen Walrond on

Maybe you’re about to take the trip of a lifetime: your passport’s ready, you’ve bought all the latest guidebooks, you now have an entirely new wardrobe/set of luggage to take on your trip, and you want to make sure you capture every perfect moment for posterity — but your camera skills are a bit lacking. Or perhaps you’re tired of going on fabulous vacations, only to return disappointed that the hundreds of photographs you took don’t really capture the brilliant blue of the ocean, the way the sun turned everything golden, the teeming humanity or the grandeur of the mountain ranges.

Well, today’s your lucky day: welcome to Through the Gadling Lens, Gadling’s newest weekly guide to ensuring you enjoy your travel shots for many years to come. I’ll give you practical tips on how to frame your shots, how to use Photoshop or other photo editing software, how to archive your shots, where to find great online photography resources and other tools to help you capture your very best images. In fact, if you have any burning questions about travel photography that you’d love to have answered, be sure to shoot me an e-mail at karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com, and I’ll be happy to answer them right here on the site.

In the meantime, let’s get started with the basics: choosing a digital camera. Ask any photographer, and she’ll likely confirm that the number one question she’s asked is “what kind of camera should I buy?” This question, obviously, isn’t easy — besides the fact that there are literally hundreds of brands and types of cameras to choose from, the truth is that the answer depends strongly on how you plan on using the camera in the first place.
Given this, these days the decision ultimately comes down to a choice between buying a single lens reflex or SLR camera (read: the kind of camera where you can switch out lenses), or a point-and-shoot (read: the kind of camera where you can’t). When making your decision, here are some things to consider:

You should buy a point-and-shoot if:

  • You like to travel unencumbered. Let’s face it: SLRs are bulky. They’re heavy. And worst of all, they take up precious carry-on baggage space. If you’re the type of person who likes to pack light for trips, go sightseeing without so much as a backpack, and your rule for daytrips is that all necessary gear must completely fit in your jeans pockets, then clearly, an SLR would be exactly the wrong kind of camera to take with you. With the designs and profiles of compact cameras getting smaller and smaller by the day (without, by the way, losing any snap-taking-power), a good point-and-shoot would definitely be the way to go.
  • When visiting a new place, you don’t like to have anything on you that screams “TOURIST!” Nothing says “foreigner” like a large camera hanging around your neck — and I say this as a person who has a large camera perpetually around her neck, even when I’m at home. If you’d rather not stand out, and prefer to take your images and keep your tourist status on the down-low, a compact camera will likely be more your speed. Bonus: its easier to sneak the point-and-shoot into places where photography is discouraged — just make sure that your flash is turned off!
  • You just want a camera that will take quick shots of scenery and snapshots of you and your friends on holiday. If you couldn’t care less about apertures and f-stops and your eyes glaze over when people start talking shutter speeds and ISOs, then a SLR would likely be more camera that you require. Do yourself a favour and simply buy a good compact camera. And the good news: with a few tricks of the trade, you’ll find that a point-and-shoot is capable of images as high a quality as an SLR, even if it might not have the range.
  • You don’t have unlimited funds to purchase a camera. Brand new single lens reflex cameras are expensive; conversely, you can get a fairly decent new point-and-shoot for hundreds, rather than thousands of dollars. Then, once you’ve purchased the SLR body, you’re going to have start buying lenses and other accessories to really make it sing. If you really want a new camera, but don’t have the time to save up for a good SLR, a good point-and-shoot is your only alternative.

You should buy a SLR camera if:

  • You’re interested in learning about photography, independent of your upcoming trip. Again, single lens reflex cameras are pretty expensive — I wouldn’t recommend purchasing one unless you consider it an investment. And once you discover the power of a single lens camera — the variety of images and technical depth you can achieve with one — you’ll want to spend some time learning how to harness that power.
  • You want to take specific types of pictures. Perhaps you’re interested in taking huge, wide-angle, panoramic views of stunning scenery, like the Grand Canyon. Or maybe you’re interested in getting nice tight, magazine-cover-quality shots of beautiful local faces, or even really up-close macro shots of the stamens and petals of an exotic flower. Or all three. The truth is that a standard point-and-shoot rarely has the range to do every type of photography out there. And if you’re interested in a specific type of photography, and really sticking to it, then investing in a good SLR might be a sensible option.
  • You’ve got some money to spend. In addition to buying an SLR camera body, you’ll have to buy the proper lens … or two … or five, depending on what kinds of images you want to take, and how serious you want to get. There are things like macro lenses, fisheye lenses, portrait lenses, zoom lenses … and the list keeps going and going. Then there are flashes. Tripods. Reflectors. Clearly, you don’t need to get all of these things at once, but once you have a SLR, there’s always some new gadget that promises to increase your ability to take that stellar shot. Never let it be said that photography is a cheap hobby.

Now that you’ve decided what kind of photographer you’re going to be, here are some additional tips for going out and actually picking a camera:

1. Do some research. Ask friends what kinds of cameras they use, and how they like them. E-mail professional photographers, and ask for advice on specific products. Go to review sites, like Digital Photography Review for example, to see how the various brands stack up against each other. As with any expensive purchase, arm yourself with knowledge before plopping down the cash.

2. Once you’ve narrowed down your choices, actually go to a camera store and try them out. Review sites and blogs can only tell you so much — the truth is that using a camera is a very personal experience, and what might feel good in the hands of one person may not feel so great in yours. Go to a camera store and actually look through the viewfinder. Play with the dials and meters. Click the shutters. Decide which feels right for you. Then make your decision.

3. When it comes to online purchases, buyer beware. Recently, I was in the market for a new SLR camera body. I knew how much the suggested retail price was for the specific camera I wanted, so when I found a site that purported to sell the camera body for almost half the amount, I was thrilled, and placed an order. Two days later, I received a call, and the person online wanted to “clarify” if I wanted a battery with my camera. And a battery charger. And a manufacturer’s warranty. By the time the “extras” were added, the price was more than I would’ve paid going to my local camera store — and that was all before shipping! Needless to say, I canceled the order, and purchased the camera from my local store. It was a lesson that I should’ve known before placing the order: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

4. Don’t be afraid of second-hand. Photographers are a fickle bunch, often trading in their relatively-new cameras for the latest and greatest. My first camera was purchased second-hand 15 years ago, and it still works beautifully (when I’m in the mood to shoot film, that is!). Buying second-hand is a great way to get a powerful camera for a fraction of the cost. But if you choose to do so, be sure to actually try it out before buying it (see #2, above).

5. And finally, when it comes to purchasing an SLR camera, remember that what you buy today is likely what you’ll keep buying 10 years from now. For example, I’m a Nikon user — and the Nikon D300 I just bought takes the lenses that I bought for my original Nikon FE Series camera fifteen years ago. As such, be sure to buy an SLR from a manufacturer that has a long history of service and support, that you can be sure will be around for a while, because you don’t want to spend $1000 on a lens that you won’t be able to use twenty years from now. In my experience Canon and Nikon are the most popular brands among professional photographers, so I would certainly consider them when looking for an SLR — but if you’d prefer another brand, be sure to look into history and longevity before making a purchase.

Good luck with your camera purchase! Stay tuned for more Through the Gadling Lens features: next week we’ll talk about what various lenses can help you do. And again, feel free to send me questions directly at karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com — I’m happy to tackle them here on Gadling!

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.