I have a question for all of you that are more experienced than I, although that really may not take much. My wife and I are looking at a cruise through the Panama Canal in February. With the opening recently of the new locks, it should be quite interesting.

I want to be prepared for some low light and HDR opportunities, but not sure how a tripod may work on a ship idling through the canal. Google was not much help, and I did a search on UHH but found only one reference to using a mono-pole strapped to the railing, but the writer gave no account of success with this arrangement. Has anyone tried this or something similar and could you relate your success, or lack thereof? I've though of using some sort of gizmo to attach a camera to the railing, maybe using an alligator clamp arrangement? This worked well for me last year with a GoPro recording the calving of the glaciers on an Alaska cruise we were on in June, 2015, but a DSLR and lens is much heavier. If you know of a tripod that could be adapted, I would be willing to part with some dollars (need a new one anyway).

I have taken a few cruises in the past, but it was not until I did the Alaska cruise that I became interested in getting back into the photography hobby (in the 1970s I was into 35mm slides with a Canon FTb QL that I still have). I used a D5100 on the Alaska trip, all hand held, and captured some great shots, but I recently moved up to a D750 and working my way up to being more conscience of composition and hoping to do more low light, longer exposure pictures.

Anyone have experience with degradation of pictures due to the constant faint vibration of the ship? I was thinking of using some foam or soft rubber as a vibration absorber in some fashion that may help, but its hard to experiment before you're on the ship, and then the resources are limited.

Thanks in advance for any ideas or words of wisdom.

If you have been dealing with them for so many years, why does this come as a surprise to you? The religious observance days have not changed - ever. They are always closed for Sabbath, and always closed for all of the important (to the Jewish faith) holidays throughout the year, especially Rosh Hoshanah , Yom Kippur, Passover, Channukah, etc. I suggest you have changed, not them, and the problem is all yours.

If you need to buy from others - there is nothing stopping you.

L'shanah tovah tikatevu!
(and I am not even Jewish, but I am a New Yorker)

I'm glad that your immediate problem is solved. For the day when you move away from Picasa, you might want to know that another software program will not pick up the edits that you saved in Picasa - it will get your original, unedited photos. If you want to retain your edits, you need to Export (near the bottom of the screen in Picasa) your photos. This makes another copy of the photos that includes the Picasa edits. I'd hate for you to be shocked that the hours you spent editing photos was lost.

Reading this, I fired up the old Picasa 3 app on my iMac, selected a photo in Picasa, and was able to email it using my default email application (Mac Mail) - Not sure why you can't do that, unless perhaps you never set up the Mail app on your computer and relied on Picasa only.

Note - Picasa does not "contain" any photos, they are all on your hard disk and Picasa only knows where they are - using Finder you can look in any folder on your computer to find your photos and share them in many ways thru your Mac.