What Gear for Alaska Cruise?

redleash

I am going on a cruise to Alaska, plus extra days in Denali NP, in 2 weeks. I'm doing last-minute shopping and don't want to forget any camera gear. I'm looking for tips on what to take and also any shooting tips for Alaska in early June. I'm shooting with my Nikon D80.

We will have some chances for hiking/ wildlife viewing so I won't be shooting only from the ship/bus/train/plane!

Here is what I have; I appreciate any suggestions on what to take/leave. I do have some health issues that impact hiking and carrying ability so I need to take as little as possible without seriously compromising my chance to get good shots; also looking for lightest gear.

Nikon 50mm 1.4
Nikon 85mm 3.5 macro
Sigma 10-20 4.5
Tamron 17-50 2.8
Nikon 70-300 4.5

I only have the oncamera TTL flash. Am planning to get a hot-shoe flash but don't know that I want to do it now and take it. I am set on CP filters but need to get a grad ND--suggestions?

Tripod? I have a nice one but it's heavier than I want to keep up with. Can anyone suggest a good travel tripod? Would a monopod work? I have a tough time with camera shake even with VR lenses.

I am really torn about the 70-300 b/c it is heavy. I can't shoot it w/o a tripod or stable platform (i.e., a rock v. a person's shoulder) but I am afraid I will lose out without something long.

Would extenders be helpful at all for the macro for this trip?

I welcome any and all help! I might have posted this weeks ago and started shopping . . . except that I am such a last minute person! :rofl

Thanks!!!

Lauren

raebrown

We did a 15 day repositioning Alaska cruise last September...absolutely loved it. Coastal Alaska is in a rain forest so don't forget your rain gear...including those plastic sleaves for keeping your camera and lens dry while shooting.

Sam

Lauren,

Send me a ticket and I will be your Sherpa.

OK enough jealousy. I recently bought a carbon fiber tripod and a light weight ball head. This reduced the weight of my pack, and I am pleased with the set up, but it ain't cheap.

Are you taking a laptop? I would highly recommend an external hard drive in addition to a laptop to back up your images. I have a 250 gig Lacie rugged hd for this. In the field I always want two copies of each image. Make sure you have enough memory cards to last a day or two of shooting.

I would also have items needed to clean your sensor. Have extra batteries. Don't forget the charger.

Think about the type of images you plan on taking as well as what you historically take. Wide angle telephoto, etc. If on a cruise you will have a base (your room) to work out of and don't need to pack every piece of gear for every excursion.

Looking at your lens line up I wouldn't think of not taking the 70-300.

Filters are specialty items, so if you have an idea of what you want to achieve then that will answer you question. If you don't really have anything in mind and are only thinking in general terms then I would say don't worry about nd or other specialty filters.

As for extension tubes for your macro lens I wouldn't be too keen on taking them. When using tubes the dof is so thin it's very hard to use them hand held. But again if you have some specific goal in mind that will help answer your question.

Good luck and have a great time!!!!

Sam

canonboy

My wife and I went on an Alaska cruise in August last year along the Inner Passage, and we did several shore excursions. For Alaska, you'll want as much reach as possible.

I shoot Canon, so my recommendations will be Canon-specific. I brought a Canon 100-400mm lens on the cruise, but I don't think Nikon has an equivalent lens. Actually, Nikon has the 200-400mm f/4 lens, which costs an arm-and-a-leg both to buy or to rent. I used it for whale watching excursions, bear watching excursions, and photos of eagles.

Even at 400mm, I was itching for even longer focal lengths! But 400mm seemed to be a pretty good telephoto focal length for Alaska. They say that no matter what lens you bring, you'll always want more "reach". It's a never-ending battle.

I also brought a 50mm f/1.4 lens for the low-light shipboard entertainment. And I brought my 17-55mm f/2.8 lens for my general walk-around lens both outside and inside the ship. Looks like you've got equivalent lenses to these.

The external flash and tripod came in very handy, too. I've been learning a lot about using external flashes and bouncing my flash to improve my photos. I used a tripod mainly to take photos of me & my wife together on our balcony. Otherwise, we wouldn't have any photos of us together on the cruise, except for the $20 8x10 photos they sell on the ship. I didn't use my tripod for anything else during the cruise.

Even though I also brought a monopod, I actually never ended up using it. I brought it along a whale watching and a bear watching shore excursion, but it just didn't work out for me. Toward the end of the cruise, my monopod sat lonely in the cabin room closet. :cry

If you like to geotag your photos, bring a GPS receiver. I brought a laptop and an external hard drive to download my photos off the card every night and quickly review them in Lightroom. I also geotagged my photos in Lightroom, as well.

If you do end up needing / wanting a lens last-minute for your cruise, you can try renting a lens. I've heard good things about lensrentals.com and borrowlenses.com.

Here are some of the photos I got with the 100-400mm lens:

redleash

Thanks for all the great tips so far. I don't want to take 5 lenses but I may have to. I'm tempted to leave the 10-20 and just use the 17-50 for wide landscapes, maybe shooting some panos. The lens doesn't way much at all but I could use the pack space for something else. I think I'd already decided to bring the 70-300 before reading Sam's comment!

I am not taking a laptop unless I buy one this week. My old Windows laptop is too heavy to lug around. I plan on getting a Macbook someday so I can use my same software from my iMac. Maybe "someday" is here now!

I don't have an external HD for the field but I do need one. I have a Lacie HD on my desktop so I know it is good. I'm looking at a multimedia viewer or something just to unload the cards onto. I'd love to do some editing in my cabin but my main goal is to get a backup for the cards and to be able to reuse the cards. Maybe I should just put that money towards a laptop.

Am already working on the extra batteries, cards, etc.

I would like to know more about what folks think about bringing a tripod. I can't imagine shooting an Alaskan sunset without one!

I'm trying to accept that I can't have every piece of equipment for every possible scenario . . . and that I can use what I bring to its best advantage and make the best images I can from that. Still, I don't want to make any dumb mistakes and leave something out that I really "need."

Thanks for the comments. Anyone else have ideas?

ian408

Most of what you want to shoot will be far away. So, 70-300 and the 17-50 should be enough. You might invest in a TC for the 70-300. Keep in mind that it can be dark and dreary in AK and the TC will eat away at aperture.

Your Denali trip will be on the bus with a hot chocolate stop at the turn around. It's a great ride and the drivers all seem to be well versed on the wildlife. Hopefully, you get to see Denali.

Enjoy your trip (and for anyone considering AK, do it!)!

redleash

Thanks, Ian. We are spending an extra land portion (2 days/nites) at the cruise lodge at Denali; also 1 extra day/nite at McKinley lodge. I think we'll opt for the NP shuttle buses into Denali NP, so we can get off and on at the stops. Yes, I want to take lots of photos but I mainly just want to breathe the Alaskan air . . . I spent 1 weekend there on a USAF trip a few years back, was sick the whole time but still loved every second of being in AK . . . and that was in Nov!

ian408

The green buses are much nicer with regard to getting on and off. The brown ones are the tour buses--they stop once or twice.

We did the bicycle tour which goes from Anchorage to Valdez. That was a nice way to see the state too.

Sam

One of my main thoughts is to make sure you get your images home with you. Can you borrow a laptop? If you were near me I would let you have mine. A Lacie external HD isn't very costly. One can be had for $100.00 to $150.00.

I would never trust one copy. As an example I do seem to have an issue or two writing from my laptop to the Lacie portable drive. I had maybe a dozen corrupt files out of 3900, but because I had two copies all was good.

Also you just never know what could happen to one storage device.

Beg, borrow, rent, (don't steal, the government hates competition) a laptop.

Never leave home without a tripod!

Sam

redleash

Thanks, Sam--good advice as always! I am going to check out the local camera store today or tomorrow, for a lightweight travel tripod. Maybe time to spring for the carbon! And I told my husband I may have to break down and go to the Apple store to buy my long-awaited Macbook. He said "I want to go with you." That doesn't mean he wants to be sure I don't spend too much . . . it means he wants to look for something he would like to have!

For those of you who fly with your gear, do you stow the tripod in your checked baggage? I don't see how it would be permissible to carry it on board. Everything else will be in my camera bag . . . plus a laptop bag if (when) I get one.

Oh Sam, thanks for the offer of your laptop--so generous of you!

I will report back what I decide on everything. Still leaning towards taking the 10-20 lens but not sure it's worth the room/weight--I'm pretty sure I can capture the broad views with the 17-50.

My brother is buying a new lens for his Canon for this trip--not sure what he is getting, but I wish he had a Nikon! (Or maybe I shoulda bought a Canon? Naw!!)

denisegoldberg

redleash wrote: »

For those of you who fly with your gear, do you stow the tripod in your checked baggage? I don't see how it would be permissible to carry it on board. Everything else will be in my camera bag . . . plus a laptop bag if (when) I get one.

I stash my tripod in my checked bag, but I did ask TSA folks staffing the Manchester, NH airport if a tripod was acceptable as a carry-on. The answer I got was that there was no restriction on tripods. But the individual I spoke with indicated that while they are allowed with no questions in that airport - it's safer to check them.

I just did a search and came up with indications that some airlines have different policies than others.

Tripods are not on the TSAs prohibited list - http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/prohibited/permitted-prohibited-items.shtm.

--- Denise

canonboy

redleash wrote: »

My brother is buying a new lens for his Canon for this trip--not sure what he is getting, but I wish he had a Nikon! (Or maybe I shoulda bought a Canon? Naw!!)

Well, shoot! If your brother has a Canon, tell him to buy or rent the Canon 100-400mm lens for this trip! It's well worth it for Alaska, especially for that 400mm end! It's only $131 (with insurance included) for a 14-day rental from lensrentals.com (link).

redleash

Thanks, Denis. I appreciate the info and research on the tripod.

Great idea, canonboy! I'll mention it to my brother.

I'm off to buy my laptop . . . .

WillCAD

I have always liked using a single walkaround lens when on vacation, so I won't have to lug around a lot of spares, and so I won't have to change lenses in the field.

I took a vacation last year to the desert southwest, where I did a bunch of hiking. My walkaround lens at the time was a Sigma 18-125, which I figured would not be long enough for some of the wide-open spaces of the Mojave, so I supplemented it with a 55-250IS. On most of my hikes, I started with the 18-125 and carried the 55-250, switching whenever I wanted to make a longer shot. What did I find? I used the 55-250 about a half-dozen times, for a total of maybe 20-25 shots over a full week.

There were a few more times when I could have used the 250mm zoom, but I tended to avoid using it in the field unless the shot was one I absolutely had to have, because I started finding dust inside my camera's mechanism after changing lenses outside. I have since changed to a Canon 18-200IS as my walkaround lens. Sure, it's not a 400mm, but it's more than adequate for hiking and mobile photography, allows me to travel light, and gives me enough zoom range to eliminate the need for multiple lenses.

I chose not to carry a tripod with me, and mostly I didn't need one, because I didn't do any night, dawn, or dusk photography. Instead, I used a Trek Pod Go!, a hiking stick/monopod/tripod combo. It was great as a hiking stick, and great as a monopod, but pretty shaky as a tripod. If I were to take low-light photos requiring long exposure, I would certainly have hauled a tripod along with me, but I would have hesitated to take one on an all-day hike.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, before you load up a camera bag or vest with 50 pounds of lenses, tripod, flash, and other accessories and try hauling them around the back country all day, it might be a good idea to try hauling that stuff around your local zoo or state park all day. Get a feel for what you really need to carry, how much it weighs, and exactly how you'll carry it for maximum comfort and for easy accessibility in case you need a particular piece for a quick shot. How long will it take you to switch lenses when you're standing on a hillside with all your stuff in a backpack or sling bag? How long will it take you to set up and take down your tripod in the wild? How tough is it to get a lens out of your bag with the bag hanging on your shoulder? What if you can't set the bag on the ground because the ground is muddy? What if it's drizzling when you want to change lenses?

Once you try everything out, you'll find stuff that you didn't use and can leave on the ship, and you'll find stuff that's missing from your setup, and you can adjust as necessary.

Oh, and get yourself adequate clothing for an Alaskan holiday; since you're from Texas, you might not have the proper shoes, clothes, and outerwear for Alaska.

redleash

What kind of teleconverter can I use with my 70-300?

I bought the new Macbook Pro 13" last night!!!!! DDDD

redleash

WillCAD - thanks for the great info. Eliminating stuff I won't use is key. I am limited to how much I can carry and how long I can walk, so what goes into my sling pack must be essential. I do like sunset shots, so I will likely take a tripod. There won't be much hiking for me, I'll leave that to my brother--I'll have to enjoy the bear shots he brings back from his encounters! And thanks for the warning about clothing; fortunately, since I visit my brother in Maine quite often, I am set for the weather.)