peety3

As my wife says too often, the ferry is fun on the way over, and boring on the way back. 🙂

The reality is this: if your cruise ship docked in Skagway, "you've already seen the view" and you're going to see it again. If the perspective of being lower to the water's surface is worthwhile to you, go for the ferry, otherwise I might keep shopping for other ideas (or do it if there's something you'd like to see/do in Haines). If your ship went to Haines instead, then the ferry could be more fun.

I don't know if you'll get three hours facing the glacier. I'd suspect it's more like 20-30 minutes with one side facing, and then 15-25 minutes with the other side.

When I've done time lapses with my DSLR, I've been focused on the long view, so I was at one shot per minute but was trying to capture the whole trip (I missed a memory card change on a four-night cruise so there's a three-hour hole, but otherwise end-to-end). For the glacier stuff, I'd push towards 1/sec if not 2/sec so you can get more of the transition of a calving.

On 5/3/2019 at 4:03 PM, masterdrago said:

I like your pick three.  I would leave the extender at home. Too much of a pain switching for what you might gain. I've pared my bag down to a 10-24, 28-300 and a 150-600 all on 2 dx format bodies. Dropped the 8mm since I can use the GoPro 7 Black for super wide. Dropped the 18-200 due overlap w/10-24. Frees up space in the bag for the chargers and cleaning gear.

I know I'm too late to be of help, but I agree with leaving the extender at home. You're already on a crop camera, so high ISO performance is limited. You're going to want good shutter speeds, so the extender's 1-stop sacrifice isn't helping you.

I almost wonder if you could have been happy with the 17-55/2.8 and the 100-400, nothing else. You really don't need to cover (almost) every millimeter from one end to the other. I usually cruise Alaska with a 14, 24-70, 100-400, and 600, and never feel that I've got a hole to fill.

On 3/11/2019 at 5:11 PM, TheOldBear said:

For Alaska, if I need some extreme reach - looks like rental is the only option short of winning a lottery prize.

Bingo! And if it's the kind of lens you wouldn't use frequently, renting is even more logical.

There's also a benefit of not being locked into a particular model. Although it's been about two years since we last cruised, we've done six Alaska cruises over the past nine years, and each time I rented a long lens. Through the magic of technology, the lenses keep getting better, and by renting, I can keep playing with better options. On our initial 2010 cruise, I rented the Canon 500mm f/4 IS, which I think weighed about 8.5 pounds by itself. Nowadays, I can rent the Canon 600mm f/4 IS Mark III, and it's about 6.5 pounds. Had I bought anywhere along the way, I wouldn't have access to the lighter options of today unless I was willing to take a loss on the sale of the old lens and "buy up".

I would not assume that BestBuy can do much in the way of supporting any one particular camera model.

Generally, the broader the zoom range, the worse a lens will be optically. The 18-400 wins on convenience, but when compared to other lenses in the same price range, won't be as clear/accurate. Up to you to decide if that's a factor.

56 minutes ago, Sunny AZ Girl said:

I related a story on another camera thread about how I was on a small group photo safari in Alaska.  Out of the 8 of us I was the only one with a P&S (actually a Bridge camera).  The others all had fancy DSLR cameras with interchangeable lenses.  When a baby whale unexpectedly surfaced right next to our boat  (it actually hit the boat - our engines were off at the time) I was the only one who got the shot as everyone else had to quickly try to change their lenses as we had been watching the mother and the baby who were at the time we saw them at least 100 yards away.  That is one of the reasons I purchased my 18-200 mm lens.  

That's why I take three cameras and 3-4 lenses on excursions. It varies for each trip, but last time was a camera hanging from my left shoulder with a 16-35, a camera hanging from my right shoulder with a 70-300, and a camera on a monopod with a 600mm. I've gotten very good at "tossing" the big lens/monopod into my left elbow and grabbing either other camera. With good autofocus settings, the 16-35 in particular can be "shot from the hip" for quick close-ups when needed. Lots of ways to solve challenges...

1 hour ago, masterdrago said:

 

I'm most likely thinking of some obscure instruction I had read in my GoPro manual or online. Much better than 2mp.

1920 pixels x 1080 pixels (assuming 16:9 proportions) = 2.1 megapixels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080p

Assume there will be a modest amount of hurry-up-and-wait. All of the helicopter companies are laser-focused on maximizing the use of their multi-million-dollar assets, so they'd much rather you wait a few minutes than the helicopter wait a few minutes. Otherwise, it's a well-choreographed ballet that holds to a mostly strict schedule: the tour time should tell you how long you're in the air and how long you're on not-exactly-terra-firma, etc.

On 4/2/2019 at 6:00 PM, Oakman58 said:

 

Actually many bridge cameras and point and shoot cameras offer continuous or burst shooting up to 10 frames per second so there is no shutter lag to deal with.

Here's an example of continuous shooting with my Fuji S8200 bridge camera.  Taken from the second deck at Busch Stadium.

Continuous/burst shooting still needs to focus before the first shot and (depending on settings) between each shot, so I wouldn't say there's "no" shutter lag. There's also a lot of action that could happen in between each shot - even my fastest DSLRs only capture about 1% of the true time that I'm shooting in burst, so little things could easily happen in between the barrage of shots that get missed. For things that you're not familiar with (whale breaches are a great example, but perhaps even some sporting events, and definitely young kids), burst can do a good job of getting _something_, but I often feel like what I wanted to capture happened just before the second shot in the burst, so had I simply timed it better, I would have had a better shot.

On 4/2/2019 at 4:28 PM, masterdrago said:

I've read that most of the current mirrorless cameras can shoot video on the fly and grabbing a still shot from that video is not a complicated issue when you get back home. Like someone mentioned, rent a mirrorless and an 18-400  for a few days to check it out.

Video is (almost) never at anywhere close to the resolution (megapixels) that still shots are at. HD is 2mp, etc. So if you're hoping for a great shot as a video extract, dim your hopes. There are also limitations to what you can get from a frame grab depending on the "codec" used to create the video file - only one frame every so often is stored as the entire frame, and then subsequent frames only track which pixels had changes. For situations where a lot of pixels are changing (panning the camera to follow an animal, etc.), the video capture may not be ideal except for the "key" frames where the whole frame was captured. Technology is always improving, but manufacturers also have to deal with compromises all along the way (how fast of a memory card do they want to require, how much storage space per minute do they want the video to consume, etc.).

Check out Seabourn. I've been a long-time Princess cruiser, but decided to just scour the options and their entire experience seems to be so much more relaxed, with so much more potential to experience and enjoy.

On 4/2/2019 at 11:58 AM, Tourist1292 said:

So your original comment is basically pointless.

No, it was not pointless. In the context of a cruise, it absolutely had merit, and you left out a bunch of useful information that only came to light in subsequent posts; regardless, your NASen have no use to you while at sea, and if you think that sitting at a hotspot in port to upload your photos is fun, enjoy your cruise. Your way is, undoubtedly, not the only way to do things.

8 minutes ago, Tourist1292 said:

1 hour ago, Tourist1292 said:

I am going to bring multiple SD cards with me on the cruise to Alaska. They are either SanDisk or Samsung with U1 or U3 rating. I will also bring a travel router and a portable SSD to do daily backup without a computer. I rarely reused an SD after it got filled. I just leave it as another backup copy.

9 minutes ago, Tourist1292 said:

Read again what I said. I bring multiple SD and I rarely reuse SD card. I have all my photo and video in a memory database on NAS which is another copy I make at home through the program I got from Sony. I also have a second NAS to mirror on a daily base. An SD may only be reused after all these processes and if it is relatively new with large capacity and high speed. It may end up in one of my IP camera.

How about you read it again? It's pretty safe for me to assume that neither of your NASen are onboard the cruise ship. So, in the context of "while you're on your cruise", the SD card is your primary copy and the portable SSD is your backup copy. Until you get home and download to your NASen, you've got only two copies. If you're out on the cruise and end up in a situation where you need to reuse a card, which is the context I was referring to (and also given that I hadn't been told that you had those NASen), you are therefore erasing your primary copy, making the portable SSD your only copy.

I shoot 1-2TB per year. There's no way I'm going to buy memory cards at that pace - I'm going to buy enough to either make it through a cruise, or more likely comfortably make it through a day for my wife and I. If you wish to buy SD cards at the pace you shoot and keep them forever, good for you. I for one would not want the indexing headache of that.
 

My point was simply that people often mistake primary copies as backups. People sometimes come up with on-cruise backup solutions that do not offer a means to validate that the data is copied properly (RAW images are rarely viewable on specialized portable backup gadgets). RAID (the technology often found inside a NAS) is not a backup either, just a means to survive a disk failure (fire, water, theft, controller failure, etc. are all ways that the NAS can get nuked). For anyone else reading the thread, simply remember that it's said that there are two kinds of people: those who have lost data, and those who will.

6 minutes ago, Tourist1292 said:

I am going to bring multiple SD cards with me on the cruise to Alaska. They are either SanDisk or Samsung with U1 or U3 rating. I will also bring a travel router and a portable SSD to do daily backup without a computer. I rarely reused an SD after it got filled. I just leave it as another backup copy.

Remember that if you copy them to a portable SSD then reuse the card, the portable SSD is your only copy and you have no backup.

9 minutes ago, foneguy said:

i have this tamron on my ti6 it works very well, and you can add a polarizing filter. it shoots well stabilization, very good lens. i bought mine on sale traded in a kit lens the total was only $170.00 you may find a deal like i did at my local camera store. below are shots with this set up.i picked a variety, the jets was a super bright day,  as well as the dolphin.

 

The OP already has a 55-250 and wants more reach. Although an 18-270 gives a tiny bit more reach, I think this is going in a different direction. It's a "superzoom", a 15x zoom range. Although very convenient for vacationers, it's not really hitting the OP's request. I'd go more in the direction of a 100-400, or if shooting Nikon a 200-500. And remember to rent if this particular lens doesn't really speak to you as something you'd use often. For the ~$4000 I've spent across six Alaska cruises to rent long lenses (the Canon 500mm f/4 v1, 400mm f/4 DO v1, 200-400/4 with 1.4x TC (twice), and the 600mm f/4 v2 (twice)), I couldn't have bought any one of them, and at least when it comes to the 600mm, I wouldn't even have the current model. So for the rare times when I want a big lens, renting really does give me a lot of options.

3 hours ago, knittinggirl said:

Another item to get would be a teleconverter.  It will take your 70-300 and add a multiplier to it.  So instead of my 70-300 it would be like 70-300 times 1.4.  With teleconverters, you lose a stop or two of light, so it's better to rent a lens with the lowest F stop as possible, and a good teleconverter.   Also, w/ longer lenses, I've seen several that are higher F Stops, and often you'll see a lens w/ a graduated f stop.  Like F2.8-F6.3.  You'll have F6.3 at the max zoom.   Teleconverters go between the camera body and the lens.

Be cautious with a teleconverter. Not only is it better to have a lens with the lowest aperture possible, if you don't pay attention to the limits, you won't have auto-focus. Many cameras need f/5.6 or f/6.3 to be able to autofocus, so your lens aperture (when multiplied by the TC's strength) needs to remain under f/6.3 to keep autofocus. Example: a 70-200 f/4 with a 1.4x TC becomes a 98-280 f/5.6, so you'd be OK, but if you swapped it out for a 2x TC, it becomes a 140-400 f/8 and you've just lost autofocus.

You should also check the compatibility list of the TC itself. Many times, they won't work on a "superzoom" (the 10x or greater zoom range lenses like 18-200, 18-270, 18-400, 28-300, etc.).

3 minutes ago, Katwoman007 said:

hahaha! Let me hold up this huge ipad 😉 I am researching renting a full range lens for my DSLR. I normally use a 18-140, but have a 55-200 with VR, but my 55-300 does not have VR. I just do not want to be like, dang it, I am tooooo close now! 

I don't think the photo safari part will be that bad. I mean, it is only a small group and maybe be more directed than being left to fend for ourselves at the glacier? hahaha 

I will hurt you and throw your iPad into the ocean!!!! 🙂

You will not be too close for a <fill in the blank> lens. This was shot with a 600mm that had a 1.4x TC on it (so effectively an 840mm) and is not cropped in post: Whale Tail - click the download button (downward arrow) and save it at original size if you'd like, as it's from my 50mp camera. Here's about the closest I've ever had them fill the frame, at 560mm: Unexpected Orca sighting - honestly my biggest fear at that moment was that they were going to end so close that I wouldn't be able to focus on them, as that lens had an 18' minimum focus distance and it felt like they were getting close (I doubt they really were). Note that neither of those lenses have any zoom whatsoever, so to get anything wider I'd have to grab another of my cameras (I do most Alaska cruise excursions these days with three cameras, with a 24-70, 100-400, and 600/840 ready to go and a 14mm in a pouch if 24mm isn't enough).

Rent a 100-400 or similar and I think you'll be very happy. I suggest LensRentals as their testing and repair capabilities are lightyears beyond the competition. Be sure to have it arrive two days before your flight and check it carefully but quickly. If there's any issue, they'll overnight another lens, but you've got to get that ball rolling before it's too late. Or have it shipped to a FedEx Office near where you're going to cruise from (though you'd need to bring their shipping materials with you or stash them somewhere you'll have access to somehow), but be mindful of your timing.

41 minutes ago, Katwoman007 said:

I really hope so! We went back and forth on the 14 vs 20 group and decided to just do the more "photo" one, as that is what I am more interested in, anyways. I mean, I want to see whales and not be fighting over one side of the boat to try to get a photo that will be too late. That happened on a whale watch cruise in San Diego. We had a momma humpback and baby and the full breach was on the opposite side of the boat and everyone ran and it was choppy and yeah, I missed it, not even able to see the whales. lol Also, the Ocra Lodge meal tour was the SAME price as the other two, but again, ZERO idea how many people as the boat capacity was listed in the 150s!!!!!! YIKES!! In 2 months we will be in Ketchikan! 😉 CANNOT WAIT! We have had our cruise booked for over a year now. Aft corner balcony and layers and I will be out there as much as I can as well! 😉 
 

All of Gastineau's boats are so much better than anything else I've seen out of the popular Alaska ports. The 20-pax boat shouldn't be any worse than the 14 because of the extra uncovered space. On our second cruise, we figured we didn't need the photo safari and my wife wanted me to experience the salmon bake, and that's when we realized that the boat really matters. Not sure the operator's name, but the "North Star" boat holds about 40 people and has sliding windows, so they're never more than 45% open. My wife is short, so if people were willing they could let her get in front and she'd still be out of the way, but there were so many big guys/gals who would hog the railing and then hold their full-size iPad at arm's length (trust me buddy, it's an iPad, an extra arm's length won't make a difference to your picture) so it was near-impossible for either of us to get good shots. We've gone back to Gastineau since then and won't go elsewhere.

2 hours ago, floater said:

Peety3, thank you for sharing your fabulous photos. I have a similar camera and I would like to ask a few questions, if I may, about your camera settings. I noticed that most of your whale shots are with an ISO of 400, and 800. Additionally most are with a shutter speed between 2000 and 5000. I understand why these settings would be beneficial, but they seem pretty extreme compared to my normal everyday stuff. Do you set a specific ISO and shutter speed in a programed mode? What priority mode do you use, if any. Thanks for any advise you can give me.

Imagine trying to photograph while standing on a bumper car driven by a 9-year-old, with one or two paper towel tubes taped onto the end of your lens. 🙂 When you're on a rocking boat and staring through the viewfinder of a 400mm lens or trying to inverse-rock so you can keep a 600mm (maybe even with a 1.4x so it's behaving like an 840mm) pointed in the exact right direction while using a monopod to hold it up, you go for fast shutter speeds to stack the deck in your favor. 🙂

Part of what you're seeing though is that my wife is terrible at the technical side of photography. Some of the shots I post were taken by her, others by me. If she took it, I may have preset her camera, and would have done so with a buffer zone so that if she bumps a knob and doesn't notice it for an hour, her shots still have a chance of being OK.

In the olden days, I'd probably shoot whales in aperture priority with ISO 400 and either wide open aperture (on a super telephoto prime lens) or maybe a stop under wide open (on a zoom telephoto). Nowadays I might go manual, on the premise that every whale is under the same light, though if the sun may dip behind clouds I'd probably go back to aperture priority. WB to daylight, MAYBE to shady if I knew it was going to be yuck all afternoon long, but we shoot raw so I can fix it later. ISO 800 when I really don't trust the shutter speeds to stay good, and/or I'll review a shot and see what it needs. Target acquisition with perhaps anything over 300mm can be tough on a rocking boat so you might be late to the shot if it doesn't happen the way you're pointing.

6 hours ago, Katwoman007 said:

Thank you! We had booked through Princess the Whale, Glaicer and Orca lodge meal but the 20 person count never counted down when we bought our tickets. So, after reading this thread, we decided to change it to the 14 passenger tour as mentioned and it counted down to only 8 seats left! 🙂 

You're going to love this tour! We've done it three times, and there's something special about it.

Gastineau Guiding offers (I think) three tours via Princess, and the Photo Safari (usually coded JNU-700) is the same price as the Alaska's Whales, Glaciers & Rainforest Hike (usually JNU-705), yet (to me) the Photo Safari is a better choice. Fewer passengers (though a smaller boat than what they use for their 20-passenger tours), the opportunity for a little photo instruction (the guides don't mind if you're not interested, and I've also had an instance where the guide rapidly surmised that no one really needed help), and I find the photo guides to really love their job (which rubs off on the passengers).

We did the third option, Discover Alaska's Whales (usually JNU-670 I think) last time, and I'm not a big fan. They try to incorporate a "citizen science" element, but as a whale watch fan I just see it as a distraction (take me to the whales and let me watch them until our time is up). We picked it because of price, as I made arrangements to be able to "do a double" (bus ride to marina/dock, did one tour, while out on the tour got the radio message that there was room for us on a second tour, returned to the dock, waited 15 minutes tops, then boarded a different boat and went back out to the whales for a second tour, took a different bus back to town) and it didn't make sense to pay more for 700/705 which have a short hike that we were going to skip anyway. That said, if price is explicitly a concern and/or you have absolutely zero interest in the hike (it does show you a lot about the history of Mendenhall Glacier, and we did see it calve on our 2010 tour), this is your option. Still the same 20-passenger boats as JNU-705, just a minor distraction while on the water, and no hike component.

Here's what the 20-passenger boats look like: Gastineau 'Zephyr' at the whales

Here's a closer shot of the magic of their boats (notice how the ENTIRE window swung up inside and was pinned out of the way): Gastineau 'Seeker' close-up

Gastineau 'Mariner' close-up

The 14-passenger boats don't have the aft outdoor viewing platform and are a bit shorter, but they all have the forward viewing platform. That platform and the windows are only opened when at low or no speed.

6 minutes ago, TheOldBear said:

 

Clouds [nice dramatic, high contrast lighting]

Sun angle & compensating polarizer rotation

The background [dry land, glacier, rolling waves]

If you're changing your shot from "all the stuff on the ground, whether wet or dry" to "I'm going to aim into the light source", then yes, you've changed what light your subject is "in". Otherwise, this is all in the same light, so if the exposure was right up front, it's still right.

As others have said, you've got to consider your willingness to put up with travel logistics. We've done two northbound Vancouver-Whittier, two Seattle RT to Tracy Arm Fjord, one Seattle RT to Glacier Bay, and one Alaska Sampler, all on Princess. We're both into photography, and I love renting a big lens to capture the wildlife in Alaska, so for me, travel logistics matter. If you've got kids that need to be marshaled, travel logistics probably matter.

Flights out of Anchorage are a chore, depending on where you're going. On our first cruise, we were heading back to San Antonio. I had several choices of three legs (ANC-Seattle/Portland-Houston-SAT), but we went with the unique option of a late-evening/red-eye non-stop ANC-Houston (three hours time difference and six hours flying meant we landed IAH around 6am). The logistics of getting from the cruise ship docking location (few if any actually go to Anchorage, so you're looking at a 90-120 minute drive or train) mean you simply cannot safely choose a pre-noon flight.

Seattle round-trip makes a lot of things easier. Fair warning though: the Seattle conference/convention season runs from about January 1 to perhaps December 31, so hotels are never cheap. I truly believe in flying in the day before so you have a buffer to not miss your cruise, but be ready to pay. Plan to stay down by the airport for lower hotel rates, which will impact your options to "be a tourist".

The one-way itineraries are generally a little better balanced. My standard comment on the Seattle RT Tracy Arm is "hurry up, wait, hurry up, HURRY UP, wait, HURRwaitleave". Hurry up to board the ship, chill out for ~36 hours en route to Ketchikan, then the next day is a LONG day with TAF around 6am and then Juneau to 11pm, followed by a 7am or 8am morning in Skagway and quick be back on the ship by 5pm. Now it's 49 hours non-stop cruising to get to Victoria, and in that time you have a formal night, pack your suitcases, then eat dinner and run around Victoria for a few minutes before getting back on the ship to wake up in Seattle. The Seattle RT Glacier Bay is a little better, but the NB is essentially a day at sea, then something to do each of the next five days.

As much as I want more Alaska, honestly if it wasn't for all of my photography gear and the fact that we live in the Seattle metro area (40 minute drive to the terminal), I would fly to CA for the 10-day. There's something about relaxing on the ship while you're totally unplugged that I seek. It's probably why I'm now dreaming/aspiring to do an Alaska cruise on Seabourn, as their itinerary just seems so much more relaxing to me. Calgon, take me away! 🙂

On 3/17/2019 at 6:30 PM, Earplug said:

Forgot to mention that the train tracks and the road thru the tunnel are one & the same.  If a train is scheduled the tunnel is closed to vehicle traffic.

 

Late to the party, but the train is already factored into the schedule. It's 15 minutes/hour for one-way vehicle traffic, 15 minutes/hour for one-way train traffic, 15 minutes/hour for other-way vehicle traffic, 15 minutes/hour for other-way train traffic.

If you're going to go through the tunnel by vehicle, plan to arrive early. Traffic is queued by vehicle type, and throttled through the tunnel to remain within the constraints of the ventilation system and fire protection systems.

Two approaches come to mind:

#1: Manual. Lens aperture one stop under wide open. If the lens has variable max aperture (i.e. the text you see on the label or the filter mount says something like "f/4.5-6.3", it's VMA), one stop under what the lens can do at longest focal length. Shutter speed to 1/500th and ISO to 400. Now adjust shutter (hopefully faster) and maybe ISO (lower if you can, higher if you must) to get either a proper exposure or one where the sky retains its blue and definition (in which case you'll probably need to boost the "exposure" in post, but you'll have gorgeous skies and some latitude for faster shutter speeds which can be good).

#2: Aperture priority. Lens aperture one stop under wide open. ISO to 400. Exposure compensation 0 to -1 depending on your willingness to edit later and your desire for more sky detail (if the sky isn't in your shot, you obviously don't care, but it's somewhat a question of your lens choice). If the shutter isn't in the vicinity of 1/500th or faster, raise the ISO.

Two reasons I'm not a fan of shutter priority: "get in trouble", and "variable depth of field". It's too easy to get in trouble - if you set 1/1000th (for example), unless your camera has Auto-ISO with very good logic and you use it, you run the risk of shots that can't get enough aperture from your lens to expose properly. And if the aperture is walking all over the place, minor variations in framing/composition can result in moderate changes in what the exposure meter sees and interprets via its algorithm, and now the aperture is changing a lot, resulting in changes to the depth of field. I consider DoF to be the most artistic of the three sides of the exposure triangle, and not taking some level of control of that is just artistically a struggle for me. (There's also the notion that many lenses just aren't great optically when the aperture is wide open, so as the light gets weak, the aperture opens up, and now the image gets less sharp with more distortion. It's almost "double impacting" your pictures.)