Bahama Cruise 23 - At Sea

One evening I tested the adjustability of the factory preset for incandescent white balance. Seems to have worked well. While there I also tested the ISO, and this picture was passable at even 3200...

Bahama Cruise 22 - Freeport

This is a scene from a vast container yard, where huge cranes stacked them onto waiting ships. These odd looking vehicles were positioning those containers so the cranes could pick them up. I could not help but imagining one of these things tooling along, then hitting a rock or tripping over a curb...

Bahama Cruise 21 - Freeport

Older, rustic things (or rusty, as in this case) are very attractive to many photographers. This was taken from the deck of the ship as it was awaiting clearance to leave the port.

Desaturated quite a bit of color in this shot...the cyans and reds came down about 30%...

Bahama Cruise 20 - Freeport

Don't know what kind of bird this is, but it stayed up here for a good while, overlooking a large pond within the Garden of the Groves.

Bahama Cruise 19 - Freeport

Along with the Big Cahoona I bought a set of three filters: ultraviolet, polarizing, and neutral density. The reason for the neutral density was for waterfall shots like this.

However, I discovered that it's not necessary to have one of those to slow the shutter long enough to get results. As stated before, the lens is a bit slow anyway. Using aperture priority for the first time, I cranked it all the way down to F-22 and held the thing as still as I possibly could. The exposure time ended up being 1/6 of a second.

Bahama Cruise 18 - Freeport

This is one that I fell into by accident. Since the green was so dominant I decided to use Levels to reduce the saturation of just that color. For some reason I ended up moving the slider all the way down and violá, here we are. After completely removing the green, then the cyan, this is the result.

Bahama Cruise 17 - Freeport

Once manipulating exposure became second nature, pictures like this were finally within my grasp with the Big Cahoona. For outdoor shots I generally notched it down 2/3 of a stop. From a technical standpoint, don't think I could have done this with the Fujifilm s7000...

Bahama Cruise 16 - Freeport

The next stop was Freeport. We all took a bus to the Garden of the Groves, named after a guy that developed the town and built a garden area for tourists. The mimosa trees were blooming...

Bahama Cruise 15 - Nassau

On the walkway back to the ship we encountered these birds. Amazingly, the Big Cahoona was able to focus fast enough to catch some of these guys in flight.

There's another lamp right behind the one you see in the lower-right corner. If I were to ever make a print of this, that second lamp would be cloned out...

Bahama Cruise 15 - Nassau

This shot was cropped in some, and needed some color correction. It was quite windy that day, but the shutter speed was just quick enough to freeze the swaying of the foliage, at 1/200 second.

The backdrop is a building...snapped on the way back to the ship at Nassau.

Bahama Cruise 14 - Nassau

Had to sneak this one in, as the owners of this bottle were chatting very nearby...

Bahama Cruise 13 - Nassau

We were walking along this moat and saw these fins approaching...first one, then another about eight feet away. They were poking up at random, and we thought, "Hey cool, look at the sharks." As they passed us, however, we realized that both fins came from the same animal! A large manta was gently gliding by, the tips of those huge wings surfacing as it propelled itself slowly along...

Bahama Cruise 12 - Nassau

Our next stop was Nassau. The kids went on a "Clear Kayak Adventure" while us old fuddie-duddies took a bus to this big hotel to look around. It was magnificent - huge - complete with salt water moat that boasted sharks, rays, etc. This little guy was walking along the edge of the moat outside.

Bahama Cruise 11 - Key West

This is another one of those sailing ships, cropped way in from a much wider shot. Thanks to the Big Cahoona's 12 MP resolution, one is able to choose photos within a photo, increasing options...

Bahama Cruise 10 - Key West

This little island was pretty interesting: no cars, only golf carts, sort of like Mackinac Island up in Michigan. Would be willing to bet those houses are fairly expensive.

I did several panoramas of the whole island, but they did not turn out well, as I did not use manual mode. Though the content blended well, there were exposure inconsistencies that were not acceptable. So here we are, with lots of single shots, which did not turn out too badly by themselves.

Bahama Cruise 09 - Key West

This one falls into the area of portraiture more than anything. At one time I entertained the notion of becoming a pet photographer.

I really do like birds. If it were not for the fact that we are not home enough to keep one company, I would have bought something like this a long time ago...same reason we don't have a dog for the wife.

Instead we got a cat, when it became absolutely necessary to get something for the kids. She is very low maintenance, and exceeds all expectations and stereotypes of what you have heard or know about cats. She's aloof, lazy, 100% self-absorbed, anti-social, and gluttonous. For all that, we love her as one of our own...would go to the ends of the earth for her comfort.

While on the subject of what's good for the cat, I have often threatened to buy her a parakeet, just so she would get some exercise. The wife and kids just roll their eyes...

Bahama Cruise 08 - Key West

This bird had a personality. The kids and I joke about photoshopping a cigar in place of the carrot...

Bahama Cruise 07 - Key West

This cockatoo was in a mall that had an exhibit with tropical plants and animals. It literally drank from this cup, tipping it back until it was empty. What a sight...

Bahama Cruise 06 - Key West

All of the parachutes around made for some interesting opportunities. With the Big Cahoona it was easy to target them with pinpoint accuracy.

Bahama Cruise 05 - Key West

There is a wooden observation tower in the middle of the tourist district in Key West, and it was from there that this was taken.

It was also from there that I used my new polarizing filter for the first time. I discovered that it does a great job of filtering out surface reflections and making the colors pop out...just like the sunglasses I wear while driving. However, I also learned that it considerably slows the shutter speed, by as much as two thirds. With an already slow lens, now I was having to struggle for sharpness in bright sunlight! The shutter speed for this shot was 1/200 second. The photos taken from this tower turned out OK - including some pretty good panoramas - but it was windy and with all the people around there was no use even trying to use the tripod.

Bahama Cruise 04 - Key West

After our trolley tour we visited the Shipwreck Museum. With a shutter speed of around 1/3 second, had to use the railing post for stability on this interior shot.

Bahama Cruise 03 - Key West

This cropped-in shot was taken while the trolley bus was on the move in the tourist district of Key West...

Bahama Cruise 02 - Key West

Our first stop was Key West, a quaint little town...at least from what we saw as tourists. We purchased a shore excursion that included a "trolley" tour (the kind with rubber tires), tickets to the shipwreck museum, and tickets to an aquarium.

Our trolley tour guide was fantastic. He demonstrated a sincere affection for his home town, delivered with a sense of humor.

The family gave me the option of sitting next to a window for the purpose of taking pictures, but I declined, fearful that it would smack into something while in full zoom mode. Thus, this and the next posting were taken across the lap of my wife while the trolley was in motion.

Bahama Cruise 01

For the Christmas holidays my family went on a cruise, and I decided to bring the Big Cahoona. I did debate about it, though - Would it be safe to haul the thing everywhere? What if I got tired of carrying all that weight around? Would there be a safe place too keep it if I wanted to leave it in our room? What about the stops and excursions...would the salt air or sand place our considerable investment in jeopardy? For all of those nagging doubts, I decided to go ahead and take the plunge. After all, I need to learn to use it sometime, right?

Turns out I made the right decision. Not only that, I was pleased to learn - as my family, and now my friends, have heard ad nauseum - that every single camera issued to the dozen or so professionals on board was the D300. In fact, I got to say that mine was better because it has the little "s" suffixed on the name and theirs didn't!

So that gave me the injection of reassurance needed to go ahead and explore the potential of the Big Cahoona. Well over a thousand shots were captured, and of those we kept a little over 400. Narrowing that down further to the very best shots to include in this blog (which excluded the people and family photos), we now have 28 that I can say are worthy of posting.

Today's posting was taken on the very first night...which, as it turned out, was the only evening on the trip that proved suitable for a decent sunset shot. It was darkened quite a bit to bring out the rays and color, and sadly has more noise than normal because I accidentally left the ISO on 800 instead of 200. That may not have been so bad, though, because the higher setting increased the shutter speed, which was helpful on a swaying ship with gusty winds on deck.

In fact, shutter speed became an issue during the entire trip because, I learned, the lens purchased with the Big Cahoona is a bit slow. Thus, every shot taken was weighted with a decision on how to keep the images sharply focused by manipulating ISO, flash and/or exposure compensation. I tried to remember to use 800 ISO for all interior shots and 200 for exteriors.