Expect to get wet and chilly on an Alaskan cruise and then be thankful if you don't.  Expect to be lonely out on deck if you want to shoot in rain and fog.  Expect to be treated like a nutter if you are drawn towards being outside during inclement weather.  That's OK though - as the water drips off the end of your nose, just tell people who stare that you're a photographer and that you like it like this!

Heavy overcast, low clouds, fog, mist and light rain - all can add interesting elements to a landscape photo.  The accompanying photo of Ketchikan, shot from the upper deck of Celebrity Constellation, would not convey the same feeling if it was shot of a sunny morning.  With light fog obscuring some of the houses and trees in the background, the photo suggests that this may be a town where it rains on occasion.   In fact, Ketchikan receives 152 inches of annual rainfall!

Bad weather means little or no sun.  This means no harsh bright spots or inky deep shadows.  Your photos will have a pleasing range of tones from black all the way to white.  Bad weather does not always lend itself to capturing vast landscapes as a gray sky often comes out looking perfectly white.  In cases where there just isn't a chance to take that interesting landscape photo, go for the detail shot.  Rather than the mountain range, look for alpine plants or interesting rock formations that don't show the sky.

Don't be afraid of bad weather - embrace it and welcome the opportunity to include some interesting elements in your pictures. 

So - let’s have a little fun, shall we? I’m going to tell you a story and then you can tell me one. 

At the risk of identifying myself as an old coot, I am going to tell you about the first real camera I ever used.  Film camera.  Rangefinder camera.  Collapsible camera.  How is that for old school?

While I really began taking pictures with a plastic, toy twin lens reflex that took 127 film, it essentially fell apart in my hands after only a few uses.  The first “real” camera I owned was given to me by an uncle who had upgraded his own equipment and I became the proud owner of a 1955 Kodak Retina IIc.  I immediately fell in love with it – not only was it the same age as me, but it had that highly polished, precision German feel as they were built in the Kodak owned, old Nagel-Werke factory in Stuttgart. 

It had several quirks that I had to get used to, including a film advance lever on the bottom of the camera.  The 50mm f/2.8 Schneider-Kreuznach lens collapsed into the body, making it a fairly compact camera to carry.  I loved the quality of the images that came out of that camera and I ran a great deal of film through it while it was my primary camera.

Something I remember almost as much as the camera itself was the flash attachment that took flashbulbs.  You really aren’t old school until you have licked the base of a flash bulb, shoved it into the flash socket and had it immediately go off in your fingers – the heat of the flash sticking the bulb to your skin……  Talk about the faith you need to repeat that performance and hope for different results.  I still have that camera (and flash), and while I haven’t used either in years, they have a special place in a list of wonderful cameras I have used.

Now it’s your turn.  I have opened up the comments for this part of the blog.  Please feel  free to share
your “first camera” stories with us! 

Just click on the COMMENTS link at the top right and start typing.  I can usually approve posting very quickly.

My suitcase weighs a ton.  Empty.  Before I put the clothes in.  Before I put the camera gear in.  Before I take clothes out so that I can put more camera gear in.  Jan claims that if I pack one more piece of camera gear and leave out any more clothing, I will look like a hobo on our next cruise.

As I try not to look like a hobo, I have to consider each piece of gear carefully - and the one I struggle with on each cruise is whether to take my tripod.  If I take it, it is a smaller, carbon fiber Gitzo GT2541 with a PhotoClam ballhead. That adds 4 pounds to my suitcase, but the combination will hold 26 pounds of camera and lens.

The question today is whether I need a tripod at all.  New digital cameras have become so incredibly sensitive to light that photos can be taken in all but utter darkness.  A few alternatives to a tripod these days include:

1. Cranking up the ISO setting on my camera - time was that the highest setting was 800 and the results were terrible.  Now cameras are pushing 12800 with results at 1600 and 3200 that are very clean!  With settings like this it is possible to take pictures in near darkness.
2. Use a fast lens.  On an SLR that means something like a 50mm f/1.4 or a 70-200 f/2.8 zoom.  On a compact camera, where you are limited to the lens that is bolted on to the front, not zooming to full magnification will often give you more light to work with.  This is because many lenses reduce the amount of light they gather the more you zoom in on something.
3. Brace yourself.  Cruise ships are ideal for this as there are railings everywhere!  Brace your camera on a railing, point it in the general direction you want, select a high ISO and wide angle, shoot and check the results - repeat until you are happy with your image.
4. Try a monopod like a carbon fiber Benro MC-66n6 which, when braced against an immovable object, can be a reasonable facsimile of a tripod without taking as much space in your suitcase or weighing as much.
   

I am working on these alternatives as much as possible (the photo in this article was taken braced against a hotel window early in the early morning in Anchorage). Still, I find it hard to leave my tripod at home.  So, come to one of our seminars - if I look like a hobo, it means I brought my tripod!

Big black cameras are like cute dogs.  When you take either of them out for excercise, someone will come over and want to pat them.  Both are great ice breakers and a wonderful way to meet people.  I was once at the Alaska Raptor Center in Sitka taking photos of the rescued eagles that now call the Center home.  I had, at the time, a Canon D30 with a large, white 100-400 lens.  As I raised that combination to my eye a fellow guest stopped beside me and asked if I had a license for "that thing" and what caliber it was.  That opening lead to a great discussion of all things camera and bird related.

That was just one of many wonderful conversations I have had with fellow travellers based on the color and size of a lens.  When folks spot my camera, now a Canon 5D MkII, I am often asked if my camera takes good pictures. I usually say something like, "yes, the camera takes great photos, I'm just trying to figure how to find them in there!"

I was once standing by the railing on a cruise ship with the usual black camera and white lens when a petite, elderly lady slid up beside me.  After looking at my photo gear for a few moments she pulled a very small digital camera out of her pocket and said to me, "you know dear, you should get rid of that old, heavy camera - new cameras are much smaller these days you know!"  She then proceeded to show me how quick and easy it was to use her camera and how it fit into her pocket with room to spare.  I thanked her for the advice and assured her I would look into more modern equipment just as soon as I got back home. 

I love having the opportunity to meet and talk with fellow cruise passengers as I travel.  I wonder if I picked up a Canon 1200mm lens if I would be able to have even more chats - although I am certain the lady with that tiny camera would be very disappointed in my choice :-)

One of the best whale tails I have seen recently was from the upper deck of a cruise ship bound for Ketchikan.  The whale surfaced and then dove just off the starboard side of the ship - water falling from the fluke and glistening in the sunshine.  And there I was with a wide angle lens trying to do landscape - rather than wildllife - photography!  I bring three lenses for my Canon dslr when I travel : a 24-105 (my landscape lens), a 70-200 (my wildlife lens) and a 50 f/1.4 (my available light lens).  I tend to carry all three with me to shore but on board the ship I will put one on my camera and leave the rest back in the room. 

So there I stood, on the open deck of the ship about as high above the water as I could possibly get when Jan - who can spot whales miles away from the ship - calls out "whale"!  I swung into action with the entirely wrong lens but fired off a few shots anyway.  What looked like a punctuation mark in the original image turned out to really be a whale tail when heavily cropped.  And that's one of the advantages of today's digital cameras - the resolution is so high that images usually stand up quite well to serious cropping.  Is this any kind of award winning image?  Not a chance, but it does show that even when you aren't prepared to take a proper picture, sometimes you can make do with what you have.

I am often asked what kind of camera to take on a cruise holiday and my answer is always the same - take the one you are most comfortable with and that gives you pictures you like.  The camera may not have all the features you want or have the ability to zoom in on a goat half-way up a mountain, but if you know the strenghts and weaknesses of you camera, you will create beautiful pictures within that range.  When Jan and I started to go to Alaska in 2001, I took along a state of the art digital camera - an Olympus D-620L 1.4MP SLR.  The pictures were great (some of them are on display on this site).  It had a moderate wide to telephoto 3X zoom lens and took remarkable photos.  It was slow to use indoors and couldn't magnify a moose standing out in a field, but with that camera captured some stunning images.  I still wish for an SLR as small and light as that camera.

Of course, if you feel you want to replace that older camera of yours for an upcoming cruise, think about the kind of pictures you like to take, your tolerance for fiddling with buttons and how much you want to carry. If you enjoying photographing landscapes, a fixed lens or wide angle may be all you need.  If you want to capture wildlife from a distance, you will want a telephoto.  Oddly enough, you may want a telephoto for landscapes as well.  Many photographers make the mistake of trying to take in an entire range of mountains in a single wide angle shot and come home with mountains that look like bumps on a log.  Picking out details the represent the entire scene will give your photos more impact and detail.

One of the thing I tell people interested in buying a new camera is to hold it in your hand and try out the controls.  Do they feel natural to you?  Are the control settings buried in menus on the display screen or are there actual buttons to push?  Today, almost any camera randomly picked up from a dealer's shelf will produce decent images.  What you need to decide is if the camera is comfortable and logical to use.

An other camera consideration is how large and heavy the thing is.  Will it fit in a pocket or purse?  Inside a jacket pocket?  Does it have to hang around your neck?  A camera that is too heavy to bring with you off the ship is the same as no camera at all.

Choose based on what you want to photograph and what feels good and logical in your hands - you will rarely go wrong.  And don't worry about what new camera may come out tomorrow (and they always do) - if the camera you just bought meets your needs today it will tomorrow as well - unless your needs change!