TexasCPA

On 10/22/2019 at 9:04 PM, p18750 said:

We are on Roald Amundsen. 

We will be on at the end of November headed towards Antarctica...not much in the way of POSITIVE reviews for this ship just yet.  How was your experience?

We booked a private excursion with SPB Tours on their 2-day Deluxe Tour of St. Petersburg.

We have also used this tour company in the past...excellent tours and tour guides (not just in St. Petersburg but in other Baltic ports as well). While some places were overcrowded (even in the fall and winter), this is not the fault of the tour company per se. Would recommend.

Thanks for this -- I enjoyed it! I believe I am on the same Sept-Oct cruise you are (Golden Princess, right?).

I have sailed with Princess before, I always had first seating for dinner. The 6 O'clock time is a little to early, and the 8:00 is a little too late. This time I'm trying anytime dining on the Emerald Princess.....Do I need to make daily reservations? What is the best time to go to dinner? Any helpful hints are appreciated!!!

Recently though, we took our 5 grand-daughters and their parents with us to the Caribbean on the Emerald this past November. Since there were 11 of us all together, we felt that to sit together each night we had to go with seated dining. The service we got was so GREAT we've flipped back now and we're going with seating dining again. :D

Gary Friedman The latest entry on the Friedman Archives Blog has been posted! In this issue I talk about the challenges of shooting grizzly bears in the worst light imaginable (it was dark and it was raining!).

 

http://friedmanarchives.blogspot.com/2013/11/grizzlies-in-rrbl-really-really-bad.html

 

Great write up for those going to Alaska and shooting widlife in low light.

 

Tom :cool:

May go with the D800 and one lens, I have till April till I cruise again!

I must echo what others have said here. While I love my D800 if I had to decide where to devote funds to take the best pictures, the glass is where I'd place at least 60% of my funds if not more. There are features of the bigger FX cameras that you will not get in the smaller, more inexpensive DX format -- and YES I do use many of them. But do I use them all on every trip? No. Many of them are intended for situational shooting.

Hope this helps.

P. S. When I compare camera vs. lens (including my wife's D5200 and my D800), I have spent about 80% of my investment in lenses.

We took a 14 day RT Vancouver Alaskan cruise this past August. The customs and check in process in Vancouver was a real BEATING -- so bad it would make me think twice about going again anytime soon. Multiple check-in and screening procedures and very slow moving lines both at the airport and at the cruise port. We did meet quite a few passengers who had come into Seattle and had Princess bus them up to the ship from there. Not sure if they booked everything themselves or if they did it through Princess Air.

I don't know if this would help bypass the customs processes, but if it does it would be worth it.

Here's a link to our recent Caribbean cruise that was my first all-NEX/no DSLR trip: http://galleries.pptphoto.com/reflection2013

 

Dave

I do not have any knowledge of the Sony cameras, but there are some VERY nice pictures in that link above...thanks for sharing that. Depending on its ease of use, it would certainly do the job. :)

I personally use a Nikon D800, the scope of which is beyond what the OP asked for. I did purchase a D5200 for my wife. She is by NO means tech-savvy...and it was very easy to teach her to use. When I want to shoot with a DX lens (get in a little closer) or if I'm somewhere I don't want to carry a $3K camera, I can get most of the settings I want to use in the D5200's manual mode.

I think a D3100 would be fine -- especially if you don't have aspirations to make photography a hobby...it would probably be GREAT as a walk around archiver/memory capturer. Best of luck!

Great pic of the bear!

 

Hand held 1/45 at 160mm? Impressive! You must have nerves of steel!

I wouldn't say that, but thanks. I've made 6 or 7 years of mistakes and I guess I'm finally getting better at these things. Even so, more than 50% of the shots I took this day had at least some evidence of camera shake. Given that the bridges between platforms were suspension bridges, it's no wonder. :)

Sometimes it's hard to deal with, but many, many of our fellow excursionists can be very pushy -- and this particular day was no exception. This is generally a problem anytime there are animals involved. The only way I am able to try for anything nice is to wait for everyone to get their shots and finish jockeying for position before I try. Since I used to weigh 430+ pounds, I am pretty self-conscious about crowding and bumping into people -- and this is even after losing 175 back down . I'm self-conscious enough that I'd rather miss the shot altogether than to have people whining about someone being in their way. Not worth it to me...

I was really glad I took my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens with me -- most of the shots other people showed me were simply not able to get there. They kept wondering why their P&S box cameras could not get a sharply focused shot zoomed in on a bear. I honestly just didn't have the heart to tell them why. There were a couple of times I wished I had my 400mm f/2.8 with me, but not too often. That lens weighs about 15 pounds by itself and these days I have NO hope of getting anything decent with it unless I'm on a tripod. When I needed it, I added the TC to the 70-200. If the light wasn't great, I just bumped up the ISO.

Very nice...love the look of that sun in the distance breaking through overcast skies. Did you happen to get one with the sun set part of the way or just after it disappeared?

Taken in August 2013.

Nikon D800

Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8g

Manual/Handheld - 1/1250, ISO 100, 14mm, f/2.8

Taken in Sept 2013, on our last night of a 14 day RT Vancouver on the Sapphire Princess. I was messing around with my wife's D5200 and came up with this...a little more grainy than I usually like, but a nice memory. :)

Nikon D5200

Nikkor 35mm f/1.8

Manual - ISO 200, f/13, 1/160

(Some Noise Cleaned Up/Shadow Recovery With Photo Ninja)

I took this from our ship balcony on 12/12/2008 - the last night of a 33 day transatlantic cruise on Grand Princess. Since this is a larger size, you can really tell the limitations of the shooter and the camera. There's lot of ISO grain and not a little camera shake that even the VR cannot solve. At a smaller print size however (up to 8x10), it looks OK. I still keep it as one of my screensavers on my home computer. While it doesn't hold up to some of my more recent work, it's not too bad either.

The reason I have this up -- we happened to have reasonably calm seas that particular evening so if you look closely you can see a cool flowing effect in the moonlight reflected on the sea from the 1.6 second exposure. It's certainly not publication quality, but I like it. :)

Nikon D80

18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G VR

Aperture Priority - f/3.5, 1.6 seconds, ISO 400, 18mm

Taken from Devil's Island, December 2008. Grand Princess anchored offshore.

Nikon D80

Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 VR

Center Weighted Metering

Aperture Priority - 1/250, f/10, ISO 140, 112mm

I've attached a larger version of this picture...the light was really tough that morning, so the slow shutter speed and the ISO show a little bit...but you can't really can't tell when it's printed at 8x10 or smaller so I'm happy.

I could not believe it when the bear turned and looked at me right in the eye. Check out the water falling from its mouth and the freshly killed salmon at its feet. :)

Nikon D800

Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VRII (No TC)

Manual - f/2.8, 1/45, 160mm, ISO 800, No Flash, Handheld

No Post Processing Other Than Cropping & Conversion To JPEG

Pretty happy with this one, he was about 300 yards away, this is >100% crop from the original. The RAW file is outstanding...this one plus a great black bear pic taken the same day made my entire trip. If anyone wants to see that one, let me know.

Nikon D800

Nikkor 70-200 + f/2.8 TCE-III

Manual - f/8, 1/500, ISO 800

Nikon D800

Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G

Manual - f/16, 1/60 sec, ISO 100, 36mm

I don't use any solutions or plug in gear. My method is to simply plan ahead a little bit - in the morning when I wake, I'll take my cold gear and put them in the cabin window, or if I have a balcony, I'll put them there, so that they warm up while I'm getting dressed and ready to go. If I'm headed out to a port, I'll bring the gear bag up to breakfast on the lido, sit outside and let the gear acclimatize. By the time I'm ready to head out, everything has equalized and I can shoot immediately.

I went back and forth about taking my 400/2.8 with me, finally decided not to and go light.

A quick question...did you miss it?

Call your credit card company and tell them your location(s) and dates. That way they won't stop them if they see a charge from a "strange" place.

+1 on this.

However, the last time I did this in April almost every one of my CC companies told me I could now do this online instead of calling them on the phone. Haven't tried it yet -- but since I pay all my CC bills online and since CC companies are always looking to save money by reducing person-to-person time it makes sense.

Hope this helps -- that way if you FORGET to call before you go, you can theoretically still do it from the ship's internet.

My favorite "secret" that many newer Princess travelers aren't aware of is lunch in the main dining room on embarkation day. It is a wonderful menu including a lovely salmon and a sliced beef tenderloin entree. It is offered in only one of the dining rooms, usually the one located at the back of the ship (that is hard to find!) and only goes until 1:30.

 

Most people tend to run up to the buffet for lunch, but lunch in the dining room is one of our favorite experiences and a lovely civilized way to kick off our cruise!

Agree with this. The menu usually includes fried popcorn shrimp and/or fried scallops (both in dire need of seasoning -- can anyone say Old Bay or salt at least?). Once we were surprised to find some crab legs there...not many and they went FAST. Perhaps they had extra and were concerned they might go bad...well, no worries that day. :D

Note: I have never ordered anything that is not listed on the room service menu for breakfast. Don't want to go there, especially if I discover they will deliver bacon. We try to eat "light" for breakfast. LOL[/font]

Sue from Fairfield, CA

We have frequently ordered from outside the menu -- usually bacon, english muffins, etc. We also find that if you order "outside the menu" and "not using the pre-printed card" that often the coffee is hotter and the food a bit fresher, if that's possible. They always bring whatever we ask for and have never denyed anything. we haven't been out of control however.... When you order outside the menu, I think most would agree that it's in good taste to tip decently too. YMMV. :D

Not sure if anyone's mentioned this yet, but if you have multiple electronic devices that need to be charged (camera, iphone, laptop, etc.) I would recommend picking up a cheap power strip. I usually carry the kind I find for $2 at hardware store sales. That way if the bags are full at the end of the trip if can just be left behind.

Would agree with others here that a supply of $1 bills is also very handy. :)

The mini-bar you receive for being Elite or a Suite passenger can be exchanged for two Coffee Cards.

Call Room Service to have this done. Don't drink any of the items, even a water, as they will need the entire setup in exchange.

This is good to know as we are not drinkers. Thanks! :)

I collect music on itunes, and have since before I got my ipod. You can buy songs for 99 cents, it’s incredibly easy to use, and they can be burned to CD, not just loaded onto the ipod.

P. S. For ease of use, my LW and I both use Zunes. She can be computer and technology challenged, and she finds it easy to use.