Review of the June 21 Jewel of the Seas - British Isles/Norwegian Fjords cruise

[lizstas]

So much time was put into this review. I felt as if we were on vacation with you. Thanks for such beautifully breath-taking photos.

[CAPinBoynton]

Thanks for the kind words from everybody.

 

Laurie, Mike will answer your question about the camera. Mine is a Cannon S-230 and is very light weight and will fit in my pocket. This is the first time that we both had digitals, so the number of pictures we took was ridiculous -- 2,400 between us. Unfortunately, that's my job, going through all of them after we get home. Did you also look at the Ofoto album? It was so hard to narrow them down to the final ones that we chose.

 

I'm scared to think of how many we will have when we return from Tahiti in Feb.! :eek:

[MVPinBoynton]

Chloe Girl,

I am glad you enjoyed the review. You will love the Jewel, she is a wonderful ship.

 

Laurie,

Thank you so much for your very nice comments. The ports we went to are quite photogenic. Both Carol and I use Canon digital cameras. Mine is a S45 and Carol's is the S230. Both of them are small and easy to carry around, but Carol's is the digital elph model that is really small.

 

Lizstas,

Thank you for your kind comments also. I am glad you enjoyed the pictures. We sure enjoyed making them.

[MyCousinRachel]

Thank you Mike and Carol for your responses. After looking at your posted pictures, I took out my camera and instruction booklet and handed them to my husband to figure out. I am terrible at reading and comprehending directions. I still can't figure out what all those little symbols on the camera relate to, lol. I don't want to bother you too much with my camera questions, but I recently took some photos in the Catskills and when I try to zoom in, the pictures get grainy.

 

Mike -- did you use super high-quality (SHQ)to take the pictures... or just the normal or automatic setting?

 

And Carol -- I haven't looked at the rest of the pictures on Ofoto yet. I intend to, just didn't have the time to register, in order to view them. I was in Europe once, as a teen. I stayed for the summer and visited with my grandmother's family in Belgium and France. It so impressed me, that over 20 years later, I still long to get back there again. And your photos really captured the timeless beauty of Europe.

 

p.s. My parents names are Mike and Carol!

 

Thanks again, Laurie

[MVPinBoynton]

Laurie,

To prevent the grainy image when you zoom, you need to turn off the digital zoom. All it does is reduce the image quality. If you take your picture on the maximum optical zoom, you can always blow it up and crop it on your computer to a size that looks OK.

 

As far as the settings, I use the 1600X1200 resolution and the M1 compression. The M1 is just next to the highest quality compression on a Canon. These settings allows me to get over 400 pictures on a 256 meg card, plus I can blow the pictures up quite a bit before the quality is seriously affected. I don't remember what that combination equated to with my Olympus, but if you play with it the number of pictures that you can get on the card, should get you close to the same thing.

 

For outdoor pictures on this cruise I used the "mountain mode" which sets the focus on infinite and turns off the flash. This allows for faster picture taking through the window, since it doesn't have to go through the focus routine. This is the first time I have tried that mode and I was very pleased with the results.

 

Good luck.

[CAPinBoynton]

Laurie,

 

If you are interested in Europe, you can check out our Baltic cruise review and Ofoto album for northern Europe (inc. Russia) or our Mediterranean cruise for southern Europe. Also on our website are reviews of our land tours to Italy and Greece. BTW, if you ever get to Greece, try to go see Meteora. Amazing.

 

Mike and I have really enjoyed our travels in Europe, but there are so many more places there that we want to see! One thing that is on my hot list is a river cruise. We have never done one of those, and I would like to do one involving Austria and Germany. I want to visit Switzerland, and of course I want to go back to Italy. I can't wait until Mike retires so we can spend more than a couple of weeks at a time exploring. So much to see.