Ob1 Loc: Utah

Ideal excursions would be the Mystic Fyords plane ride and the Brooks Falls trip. I don’t know if you have enough time for these. Your 28-300 lens along with the 24-70 best 2 lens choice, have fun.

tsca Loc: USA

We're booked on the Magnificent Misty Fjords by Floatplane. Since large bags aren't permitted, I'm thinking we should only have one camera and one lens per person. We will have a D850, D500, D5300 and several lenses on the ship. My wife will probably use the D5300 with either a 16-80mm f/2.8-4, 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 or 35mm f/1.8. I'll use the D850 with either a 16-35mm f/4G ED VR, 24-70mm f/2.8, 24-120mm f/4G, 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6, 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6, 85mm f/1.8 or 300mm f/4E PF.

I'd appreciate any suggestions about which combination of camera & lens would be best for the floatplane from people who have been on them or similar small planes.

Thank you, Tom

Katcas Loc: Rhode Island

We are departing on the 28th of this month. I am bringing my D850, my 24-70 and my 28-300. I am considering bringing my IR D7100 with a 24-120. I just left the travel agency and the size limitation for carry ons for the motor coach, and train is 17x14. Hope this helps. P.S. I may replace 300 for 70-200 but 309 is much lighter

tsca Loc: USA

Have a great time. We sail out of Seattle on September 8th, returning on the 15th. I'm still undecided on what to carry on the floatplane. I saw someone comment about not having much room to maneuver a longer lens, so maybe I'll just go with shorter wide angle lenses for the flight.

iosa Loc: Fairbanks, AK

When it comes to the motor coach, I wouldn't worry too much about the size of your camera bag, within reason. Unless you have some pretty ungainly gear, you should be just fine carrying your camera in your lap, with bag under the seat or in the overhead. You should assume that anything that gets checked into the main luggage compartments will be basically inaccessible during the day. All of the motor coach operators in Alaska will keep your time between rest stops to less than 2 hours: typically, they'll shoot for something closer to 1 to 1.5 hours between stops.

On board the train, there is no overhead storage and extremely limited luggage storage in general. This will vary somewhat between companies. I'm not sure about the luggage space on the Midnight Sun Express (Princess Cruises). The McKinley Explorer (Holland America Line) has some very limited luggage space on board its train cars, but that luggage is totally inaccessible during the ride. Wilderness Express (pretty much everyone else) has no luggage space on board the train cars. That said, the seating arrangement is quite a bit more spacious than on board the motor coach, or even on board commercial aircraft, so keeping a camera bag at your feet probably isn't a big deal. All of these operators have full-dome cars that sit somewhere between 16 and 18 feet high, with kitchens and dining facilities on the lower levels: hence the no luggage space. The absolute longest you will be on the train would be 8 hours, if you are traveling between Denali National Park and Anchorage in one leg.

I've worked for multiple of the major tour operators in Alaska for more than a decade. I started as a motor coach driver and am now a manager at one of them. Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of experience with the various flight seeing operators, and none at all in the Kenai Fjords area. My limited there experience suggests that you should be ready for a cramped cabin, but your mileage may vary by tour.

Hope that helps! Enjoy your trip.

tsca Loc: USA

Thank you!