I don't know how much of Iceland you're planning on seeing. We tried to see the whole coastline in two weeks. It was barely enough. I found that we spent most of our time driving from wherever it was we had slept that night to the next place. Iceland will close highways during high wind events.

That's a roundabout way of saying that I rarely had to carry my big lens/camera for any distance. We'd stop wherever we were birding, get out of the car, admire the birds, take some photos, and get back into the car. My Canon and its 100-500 lens might have been carried a couple hundred yards. My lightweight Sony, as it was the official landscape camera, was what I lugged up trails to admire the waterfalls and views.

Have a wonderful time! The scenery is amazing, the people are friendly, the food's excellent, and there are puffins to photograph. Just in case you were wondering, you don't have to get any of their money ahead of time. We used our credit cards for everything. I asked at a couple of stores whether there was much of a cash economy, and the answers ranged from none to "just some of the locals."

I took a 100-500 for the wildlife, and I lugged along my Sony Rx10 for everything else. Were I to go again -- and I definitely plan to do so -- I'd take the same kit.

Bring a medium-sized microfiber towel to dry off your optics. Best advice I received from the tour company. If you're making any sort of plane transfers, travel entirely with carry-ons. Icelandair doesn't seem to have any NorCal bases, or at least they didn't when I checked, and Alaska Air managed to lose our bags both ways.

I like desktops, too. When I was shopping for a computer with enough processing power to run PS/LR and hold all my music and photos, I ended up buying Dell OptiPlex 3080 Small Form Factor Desktop 4TB SSD 64GB RAM Extreme (Intel Core i9-10900 Processor Turbo Boost to 5.20GHz, 64 GB RAM, 4 TB SSD, Win. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09987LVFH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It's been a great machine for me, and it's quiet, too.

Are you driving from Prague to Berlin, taking a train, or flying? Nuremberg is a wonderful stop, or at least it was back in '99. Between the old town and the museum, I could spend at least three days there. Bamberg is a beautiful little town.

German museology is first rate. Every museum we've gone to there has been well lit (depending on what was being exhibited), had an informative card, and was nicely displayed. Berlin has Museum Island.

Berlin is one of my top ten cities. We were there in February about twelve years ago. If you're interested in Cold War history, do check out the various watch towers and Soviet monuments. I maxed out my SD Card and had to stop taking photos. Checkpoint Charlie is a bit hokey now with the costumed interpreters who would like a euro or two to pose for you. I'm not sure if they're allowing it still, but back then, I had my passport stamped for East Germany. The airport security guard shook his head when he looked at my passport on the way home.

Not everyone speaks English and some who do won't. When we went to the information desk at the airport, neither person there spoke English. I got by with my minimal German and their even more limited English. With today's phone technology, you could just type in your query on Google translate, show it to them, and they could respond the same way.

I've always asked the venue and/or the event organizer first. Some of them will allow it, but you might be confined to a specific area or have a certain time span when you're allowed to take photos. For example, at Celtic Connections, I could only shoot during the first three songs and the venue dictated where I was allowed to stand.

We've been to Scotland many times, and it's always a wonderful trip. Three weeks will barely be enough. If you want to photograph historical sites, go to https://www.historicenvironment.scot/ and start taking notes. If you want birds in the fall, https://www.the-soc.org.uk/get-involved/where-to-birdwatch . We also popped into RSPB offices. The Fat Birder's website usually has good information, too: https://fatbirder.com/world-birding/europe/united-kingdom/scotland/

The scenery in Scotland is amazing. We toured the Great Glen last time, and it was gorgeous. As for cities, Glasgow has a charming older area as well as one of the coolest old cemeteries around, the necropolis. Edinburgh's Royal Mile is worth the stroll. Do head over to check out the very weird parliament building Holyrood, which looks completely out of place.

Driving is a little scary for Americans and others who drive on the right; however, the Scots are usually very good drivers. Many of the roads are very narrow, so keep an eye open for small pullouts.

And do ask questions. Scots love to help. As a people, they're the friendliest, happiest people we've ever met. Stand in front of a window display and someone will stop to see what's interesting, start up a conversation, and invite you over to visit. Open a map and the whole town tries to help you find where you need to go.

Now I want to go back to Scotland.

These days, your phone will take fantastic shots of most artwork. It has the advantage of being small and lightweight.

If you really want to take your camera into the Louve, then have fun. There are the usual challenges, like all the amazing things inside the many, many, many glass cases. You might want to invest in a polarizing filter. My husband usually wears a hat, and I have a lot of shots with the shadow of the hat trying to get rid of the worst glare from the lights on the glass. My last trip through a museum, I took my Sony RX10 and set it to auto. The shots were fine.

Take at least one extra battery and maybe an extra card. Plan for a couple of days so you don't exhaust yourself. The Louve is overwhelming.

PS study the map before you get there. There are a few restaurants inside the museum, and you'll need to know where the few bathrooms are, too. I'll bet there's an app these days with all that information.

Now I want to go back to Paris.

While we didn't use a guide, we did take a ton of photos on our May-June trip to Iceland. Depending on what you want to shoot, you could easily take a car to most sites. If you want to photograph puffins, there are two options, one of which is physically challenging as you have to hike up a steep beach sand hill. The other has a series of stairs with platforms from which to shoot.

Shoot me a PM if you want to chat about what to expect. Iceland is amazing, but it is challenging physically.

I'm on Win11. I use Explorer all the time. I couldn't find any way to view them, nor could I find anything on "tags" or "keyword" when I did a search in help. I did find an option under properties of an image that I could update, but when I clicked on the image to scroll through using MS's picture viewer, I didn't see any of my changes.

I am very curious about using Explorer as an option.

FWIW, ACDSee, which I use for quick edits, might have what I need. More testing is in order to see.

I'm in the process of digitizing about thirty years of photos. While having folders that mostly correspond to specific events is fine, what I'd really like is software that would allow me to have a text file associated with the images. Something that would show an image, have a tag or tags associated with it, and the optional text.

I've searched on "digital scrapbook" or "digital photo album." Those have returned colorful templates that are more suited to wedding albums or a single event. I'd like to use this over all of my computer's images.

If you could suggest a better search string, I'm happy to go search on my own, but apparently my Google-fu isn't strong these last several days.

Make sure to check your airline's size requirements. Everything I usually used was officially too big on our last trip. I really liked my Osprey messenger bag, but as it was too large and I was too stubborn to buy a new bag, I made do with a newer older one that turned out to be nothing but annoying.

Think about the way you want to use your bag. If you're the sort who likes separate compartments for everything, then you're in luck. Most of the newer backpacks have a ton of separate sections/compartments. That didn't work for me, my R5, and its 100-500 lens, plus my Sony RX10. What has worked since then was an old-fashioned backpack, the kind with one or two exterior pockets and a large interior. I rolled up socks and shirts for cushions around my gear. The older backpack squished under the airplane seat.

I always enjoy these threads, if only to see all the variations in bags.

Canons are tough. I tripped and fell on my 7D with its 100-400. Everything was fine. My R5 decided to leap from its camera bag onto a tile floor in Iceland with its 100-500 lens. No problems. I just need to work on paying attention to where I step.

The print from the lab was better. The reds were there.

I'm not ready to invest in more gear for this project. I had a fantastic scanner, the Canoscan, that did a very good job of negative scanning. It will not work with my current computer/OS. I tried all the tricks, and the best I could get was a semi-functional at best connection. I wish I'd started this two years ago, before I upgraded everything. However, since most of what I'm running into are old museum photos that were taken in bad light with overhead lighting reflecting on the cases, I'm not shedding many tears. Those I'm saving for the clipped-in-half negatives.

The Wolverine scanner does a mostly okay job. The image you see on the screen doesn't always match the image you get. While I have a lot of really pale friends, most people photos have them paler than normal. My friend's red hair is on the yellow side. All of these are easily fixed with a little fiddling, but it does show that the scanner isn't magic.

It also shoots only the center of the frame. If you took the image with the intention of the subject filling the frame, you'll have to decide which part of the scene is most important to you.

All in all, this is still a good buy. If, for no other reason, it's giving me a chance to enjoy old memories and also show me how much my photography style has shifted. Back in the days of film, every shot counted. Processing was expensive, especially back in my twenties on my salary. I just finished an envelop labeled Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury Museum, Devizes Museum and Portchester Castle. All on one roll of film!

I've only done one envelope, and the images are not worth sharing yet. I should try to dig out the original prints and see how good or bad they were. Ah, I see I left out a word. Should have read the shots are low quality, as in someone must have been laughing while taking several of the shots.