If you plan to go to Kuaui, make sure you have enough ways to keep the gear dry.. They get 480" of rain a year. We had a video camera and it took me three days to dry it out. The Exakta did better, but the short zoom fogged up and had to be dismantled to be dried.

Matt

I have not had time to read the whole thread, but in case it has not been said, try to get to watch them flush a ship through the lock. When you get to Saute Saint Marie, drop DW at the visitor center, they have a board there that lists expected passings. While you are there, take in the Valley Camp Museum Ship and the River of History Museum too. Decide if you want the three for one ticket as the tower is not all that great.

The locks will be running for a few more weeks, the latest I remember coming through was Thanksgiving. Whitefish Point is good I am told, but I couldn't stay there long. I had trouble with the lifeboat in Valley Camp, too.

UP is almost like Alaska. It just does not fit in cameras.

Matt Colie

Pdubya,

Alaska is too big for cameras. But don't let that stop you from trying.

When we did the Alaska thing, I did that wrong. This was still 35mm days and I carried 50# of gear and it didn't work.
Carry what is handy and easy to manage. Wide lenses are almost a waste of time except in the "cities". Long lenses will never be long enough. (I could go from 24 to 800 and it was still less than I might have liked.)
A monopod is a good idea for the long lens.

Do you know how to create a panorama? If you do not, shoot a lot of images that you know will overlap and stitch them when you get home.

Shoot a lot and at the highest resolution and fix it when you get home.

Otherwise, see all you can, take all the side trips you can afford and always carry extra memory and batteries.

Enjoy the excursion.

Matt

My laptop does that when a device is near full, so I heed the warning. But, I don't try (any longer) to clear the SD. They are just too inexpensive.

I have a better idea. All drives are unreliable with age and use and shock. When you get near full (use the properties choice in Windows) just put the SD aside.
When you get to it, look at what is on it and write a summary as a *.txt (so anything can read it) and put it in the root directory so when you go hunting for those images, you have a hit.

Other hit. With my Canons, I frequently shoot Raw and Jpg. The camera makes a directory for every day. In the explorer you can look at thumbnails and think of a title. Use F2 to add the title to the directory name so that they stay in chronological order. That way the images are easy to re-locate.

After finding three loose SDs in my travels, and only managing to find the owner of one (and that one was a miracle), I put two files in the root both are "Owner" one *.jpg so a camera can display it and the other is *.txt as noted above.

Jradose,

We are all beat into believing that we need the heavy high end stuff to get great shots like that, but with advancing age and the associated issues I have come to realize that the order of importance is really:
The mind,
The eyes,
The glass,
The camera resolution,
The understanding of post processing.

You clearly have most of that covered.

(This also explains why phone-camera pictures look the way that they do.)

I used to lug a heavy bag of Exacta all over Hell and gone.....

Matt

Jerry,

This very much depends on the model of Garmin. The simple answer is NO.

This is one of the reasons that I hate trying to plan on any little stand-alone. All Garmins seem to have an unhealthy highway fixation. If you dig around, you can usually find an "Avoid" for highways and toll roads. Problem: Common to all these, if you use the "Avoid" feature, it may take you a merry ways to do the avoid, as opposed to run one exit of either.

If your Garmin has the "Trip Planner" app, you can set start and finish and then put in a stop that makes the route go the way you have in mind. You have to be careful to add it to the route and maybe re-order the route so it makes sense. Remember, these things are not smart, they are obedient.

Matt

By this time, I have had catastrophic and unpredictable failures of every single manufacture's hard drives. It has gotten so bad that nothing important is stored on only two devices. Images and other things the I expect to need access to are on a machine drive and a NAS. I think that they are 2T, but sitting here, I am not sure. That makes for my random access.

For storage, I buy chips like some people buy chips for snacks....
SD chips are so cheap, that I do not reuse them. If you old enough to remember the cost of chemical photography, you will understand. I am currently hunting up old memory because I have a single 64G that I am already getting lost in. It is just too huge. I have an incoming order for a fist full of 16G.

Next trick: In most OS (I use two and neither is Mac) you can add names to the daily daily directory that my Canons create. I do this almost daily. I pop the chip out and stuff it into the traveling laptop and look at all the directories that are still only the camera name. This does cause an issue that some cameras now cannot access the image for viewing, as I only rename the directory when that shoot/event/excursion is over, that has only caused a little difficulty.

How do I store them? Good Question and I am glad you asked. (Can you tell I have been asked before?)
When the chip gets near full, I use cut and paste to print the directory list to a text editor (word processor?) for printing. I frequently have to pull this into a real editor to arrange the directory in columns so it will only be one page long. Then, I print it and attach the chip to the page and throw it in a file. Hopefully, when in the long distant future, I go to find these images, the technology to read them will still be available.

Matt

Many Years Ago, I had an acquaintance that had been a friend of Ansel Adams. This man told me that he (Adams) had gotten one keeper out of 1000~1500 pictures taken. That made me feel better when I got one good shot out of a 36 exposure roll.

Now in the digital age, where cost is virtually no object, I probably collect 2~3000 images a year and probably print about 6. I do have some on walls here that are years old. The panorama of the launch field at Albuquerque is one. That was one of six that day. If you have been there, this needs no explanation, and if you have not, none will do.

I have given up reusing SDs, they are just too cheap. You can go in and add labels to the directories so it is possible to relocate an image later.

I also always add an "Owner.jpg" to them because I found one in a parking lot once.

Matt

When I needed a remote release for my newer Canon (sudden and a lack of foresight on my part), I found the downloadable app for my phone. It's called Camera Connect. It is WiFi, so it can take a little arm-waving to connect, but then the phone also shows you what the frame is doing. It also has zoom and some other controls. I only used it the once.

Matt

OK, Odd Man Out here,

I take lots of flower (more or less macro) and sailboat (nothing like macro) pictures.

Very early with both and in your case here, your have to decide if it is a picture of a bird or a scene that you want. Then you can work with the file and see what you can do. Sometimes I want a flower center frame and sometimes not. Sometimes I tighten the F-stop so more is in focus and sometimes not. I have even turned down the ASA (try that with a 35) so the focus of the background softens.

All four are good, but all four are also different. This is where artistic value comes into play.

Matt

I would add the front face SD slot. My primary editing computer has that and it seems faster than the USB adapters even though it is actually a USB device. (And it never gets lost on the desk somewhere.)

Matt

From Experience, it is very difficult to safely photograph a solar eclipse at other than totality. You can get successful images as low reflected (black backed glass) or simple camera results (pin hole and white paper in a box). During an eclipse in the late 60's an acquaintance actually damaged the mirror and curtains of an expensive camera. If you are in the path of totality in the US, that totality will last a little over two minutes. The partial will last for hours. The advice of someone that was/is a celestial navigator.

Matt

I am always ready to learn something new and just as ready to pass old but hard won lessons learned.

Matt