Mikesa1721

Thank you all for the great information and especially the pictures. It's amazing how a 10" make-up mirror can cause so much frustration, especially for a woman trying to do her hair, so the large mirror in the pictures is a welcoming sight.

We will definitely book a Neptune Suite, now to call Holland and get the different categories explained. Thank You all once again!!!

I can't answer your questions on the kids club (our "kid" is 27!) but I can answer the question about the hair dryer.

 

If you book a Neptune Suite it will have a dressing area outside the bathroom with a separate vanity area. A hair dryer will work here. I take a powerful travel-sized one. I expect the straightener has the same type of plug so will also work out fine.

Thank You Molly. We are looking to book a suite so this information is invaluable to us. I truly appreciate the information.

Hello All! Our family of 4 just returned from a 7 night, Caribbean cruise aboard the Carnival Valor. For the most part we did enjoy ourselves but were left a bit disappointed with the service and accommodations aboard this ship. We are looking at a 10 night Southern Caribbean cruise from Fort Lauderdale next March, aboard the Noordam and since this will be our first time aboard a Holland America ship we do have a couple of questions.

First: How are the kid clubs aboard? Our daughter(13), loved her club on Carnival, I guess that's why we never saw her all cruise long except at dinner time. I want to be sure HAL has a kids club she can be a part of.

Lastly: We would like to book a suite on this particular sailing and would like to know if the outlets in the bathrooms can accommodate using a hair dryer and or a hair straightener. The outlets in the bathrooms aboard the Carnival Valor would only accommodate a razor, so you can imagine the frustration of my girlfriend when she was forced to use a magnified make-up mirror in the bedroom to do her hair because these were the only outlets that had enough of power to run her hair dryer.

Thank You for all of your replies and or suggestions.

We were in cabin 9202 this past week,03/23-30/2014, the Captains Suite, had the same issue with the cabin being very cold. Never thought to call someone to fix it. We had the plumber in our room 3 times though, twice to fix one of the non flushing toilets and once to fix the sewage that came up from the floor drain after we left st maartin. Always smelled sewage in the one bathroom, so I'm wondering if anyone else may have experienced this as well?

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1080/60FPS

 

 

USE YOUR ANTIFOG INSERTS! I had 2 in it on this trip, changed the battery between here and the barrier reef stop, and that brief 30 second exposure was enough to start getting a touch of fog on the back door after the second and third snorkel dives.

Good info Shootr. We're in 5 different ports so I'm glad I bought a bag of them.

Did you use any filters while shooting this video?

I wanted to get a backscatter 3.1 flip combo filter before we left on the 22nd but

they are sold out until the 21st. Not enough of time to get one before we left so I guess that gives me an excuse to book another cruise:D

Between an 18 hour drive home and now packing to move this weekend - I squeezed this out to see how it looked:

 

 

little over 3 hours shot at 720/60fps and sped up 10000%. Used the magnet mount and sprinkler timer for the panning movement hung upside down from the bulkhead. Inverted the video in post (easier than trying to find it in the camera menu). I goofed and upscaled it to 1080 in post, going to re-run it in 720 native and see if there is a difference in quality.

Great Vid Shootr!! After seeing your video I can't wait to try my magnetic mount in a couple of weeks. I have a 64 gig card and the battery pack so I'm going to try 1080/60 and see how that works out. I'm bringing my laptop and my one terabyte passport so I can dump the files every night. BTW,,how was your trip?

Gonna post some pics I hope?

Have you looked into a GoPro Hero3+ Silver Edition? The camera is $299.00 and it will shoot 1080p video, 10 mega pixel pictures, 10 frames per second burst photos, and time lapse photos. It comes with an underwater housing which is rated up to 180 feet. since you plan on taking it hiking and camping, there are great mounts designed for just that as well.

Looking to purchase 3 or 3+. I have read about some accessories don't fit 3+ would I be better off with the 3?

 

 

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Most of the accessories will fit the 3+. I purchased all of my GoPro gear directly from http://www.gopro.com. They have all of the accessories and mounts listed for the different cameras.

I hear ya' on the settings - I've got different "counts" memorized now for changing them in anything less than full sun!

 

Is their packaging great or what? I've seen people hack that box mount into chest mounts, wrist mounts (what I did) - you name it.

 

After the talk of leaks from some folks, I put a little tissue paper in it, strapped mine to the pool brush pole and dunked it for an hour last weekend - swished it around for good measure (sans camera) - perfectly dry so no worries.

 

I really like that magnet mount- compact, no marring - that was a great find.

 

I am done working - just hanging in the office with the internet until 5 then I am GONE! :)

Let me know how the Rain-X works out for you when you get back from your cruise. I was going to try this last weekend but the water temps in the Gulf were to cold, for me at least.

Just received my RigWheels magnetic mount. Ordered it on Thursday and it was in the mailbox today. Awesome company to deal with. I stuck it to the side of the car and drove around the neighborhood shooting some time lapse. The magnet is rubber coated so it didn't leave any marks on the car. I have no worries about sticking this thing to the side of the boat as the magnet is very strong and the lockable ball joint makes aiming the camera a breeze.

Nothing like the last minute, but I leave on Sunday for FLL and am departing for Cozumel and Key West on the Constellation on Monday. I have the center aft Aqua cabin, and plan on doing SeaTrek in Cozumel, and snorkeling in Key West. Which camera, and accessories, would you all recommend?

 

All of your cool videos have inspired me!

I personally went with the Hero3+ Black Edition only to take advantage of the 4K resolutions. You could save yourself a hundred bucks and go with the Hero3+ Silver. You will be able to shoot up to 1080p resolution which is plenty for todays high definition tv's. These cameras are a-la-cart so you will need to purchase sd memory cards (Sandisk extreme 32 or 64 gig). You also may want to invest in either a battery backpack or extra batteries as they don't last that long.

Shootr has been experimenting with different mounts so I would refer you to him for the different mounts you might want to purchase.

Thanks for the update. Will probably get the peak mount, but waiting to see how yours works on your cruise. Interested to see your set up.

 

Played around with my 3+ this weekend. Love the camera! Battery life not so much. Like the free software as well. Now I have storage issues for the large files. May have to get a new computer. :D

Instead of purchasing a new computer, why not buy yourself an external hard drive to load your files to.

Arizona here, not much chance to experience those temps. This will be my first time trying the anti-fog inserts week after next also. Also trying Rain-X on the housing lens to try and keep waterdrops to a minimum in the beach/snorkel/surf shots.

Great idea with the Rain-X. Hopefully I'll get to the beach tomorrow and I'll give it a try. I'll take an extra underwater housing with me and do a comparison.

Great Thread, was considering purchasing a Gopro, have one question has anyone had experience with it in 10, 20, 30 degree weather?

We live in South Florida so we never see those temps here, and hope we never do. I could see the case and or lens fogging up if you were to bring the camera from warm air to cold air though. I bought the anti-fog inserts for mine when I use it underwater just in case, you may want to do the same going from warm air to cold air.

I had no idea about the GoPro software. I used Photoshop to batch resize (1920 x 1080) all of my time lapse stills and then used Quicktime7 Pro to create the video. Is the GoPro software easier to use? I'm going to download it and give it a try.

Hmm I'm in AQ on deck 11. Don't think the magnetic mount would work for me. So it's the jaws or joby. The glass divider could work as a spot for me if I can't mount on railing. Assuming neighbors don't mind.

Tommy,,how about the suction cup mount to the glass and tether the cam to something on the balcony for insurance?

So I was thinking of using the gopro jaws flex clamp on the railing on the Reflection for time lapses. Is this not feasible? Looks like the top railing isn't too wide for the clamp or a gorillapod. Am I wrong???

I wanted to try and use the jaws clamp as well, problem was that the glass meets the bottom of the railing so instead of clamping top to bottom, you'd have to clamp side to side which I wouldn't feel comfortable with. Luckily in my situation I have a metal window structure which I can attach a magnetic mount to and cantilever the camera beyond the window.

http://ts4.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4826758515328864&w=252&h=180&c=7&rs=1&pid=1.7

http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4614647281288582&w=246&h=171&c=7&rs=1&pid=1.7

Oh man, I like that magnet mount - you found a winner there I believe. Just saying, but since it is a 1/4"-20 screw mount, do you have an adapter to go from it to the GoPro style mount on the housing? It's the little things that can get overlooked that ruin the party. And still figure out a security tether, just in case.

 

On some of the back doors - I keep the stock one and the heavy bacpac one handy - I don't see a need for the skeleton back door and I don't trust the thin-film back door that comes with the video bacpac - but that's just me.

 

Have fun with that little sucker - I couldn't get over how small they are until it finally arrived but it has been worth every penny so far.

I'm thinking I'll just pick up the tripod mount from GoPro as well as their tethering kit. I'll definitely need to tether the camera to a chair or table on the balcony just in case.

Unfortunately I can't use the underwater case that came with the LCD backpack cause the housing over the lens won't allow my filter to mount to it, so it's either find filters that will mount over the backpack case or use the filter I already have and use the stock case without the LCD backpack unless you can point me to some filters that will mount over the lens housing of the backpack case.

Shootr,,I found this cool magnetic mount which may do the trick for my time lapse shots from the balcony of our cabin. I watched a few videos of our suite and it looks like the glass windows are encased in steel. So I could use a magnetic mount and cantilever the camera just past the edge of the windows to get a clear shot of the port. Here is the link to the mount,,let me know what you think.

http://www.rigwheels.com/product/rigmount-magnetic-mount-with-head/

Camera and all the accessories arrived today. I never realized just how small the camera was until I held it in the palm of my hand. Now to take it to the beach this weekend and see how she holds up in the Gulf of Mexico. I bought a gadget case from Amazon to hold all of the little parts and pieces, but there seems to be a lot of parts and pieces like extra underwater housings and back doors that I'm not sure what to do with. I guess I'll need to purchase a bigger gadget bag for my D40 and put the extra GoPro parts in there.

You have it pretty well covered guys. For a chest mount I am using a Peak Camera mount https://peakdesignltd.com/store/capture (not cheap, I know, but you get the idea) clamped onto my shoulder bag (walking through town, through the ship - those kinds of B roll scenes). It's a 1.25" heavy webbed strap so it's stable - IMO a lanyard like on a passport wallet would allow the camera to flop around quite a bit, and that's hard to watch.

 

Otherwise I plan on diving, water slides, snorkeling with a home-made wrist mount and/or hand holding on a short handle. I have a magnet base mount that will stick to the side of the ship for scenic shots into/out of port, or for time lapse' of deck activity. No filters, I don't go deep enough to need one and I am in the "polarizers don't work with GoPro cameras" camp.

 

Also bringing a 4AH aux. battery and a modified case to power it for 4hr projects, a 3' extension pole that collapses down for storage, and all the normal accessories like video back, extra memory cards, etc. - if you see that video I posted earlier in the thread of all the stuff I'm packing you can bore yourself to death with that :) .

 

Good luck and have fun - these things are a blast even if you're not a daredevil skier!

Thanks Shootr!!! I like the Camera Clip and POV kit. I was looking to get the Jaws Flex Clamp so I can clamp the camera to the balcony railing. We are in the Captains Suite and there is a window on the balcony which blocks the wind so I would need to cantilever the camera around that window to get a time lapse shot of us coming into port. What are your thoughts?

Just broke down and purchased a Hero 3+ Black Edition for our upcoming cruise in March. Along with the camera, I also purchased the LCD Backpack, Battery Backpack, Anti-Fog Inserts, a 32 and 64 gig San Disk Extreme SD cards, Head Strap mount and a Polar Pro underwater color correction filter. For all of you experienced GoPro users, are there any mounts, filters, that you might suggest I might need? I would like to do some time lapse, but the primary use will be for underwater and normal video. I'm not planning on using it for still photography as I have a Canon 40D for that. Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions.

We are arriving in San Juan early around 2pm and using Carnival transportation. Ship leaves at 10pm. Does anyone think that its worth it for this port?

We are sailing on the Valor in March and purchased it just so we can go to our room and drop off our carry on luggage before spending the rest of the day touring San Juan. For us, with 2 kids, it's definitely worth it.

Here's the link to your roll call. I'm sure others who are sailing with you can give you some good ideas

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1728093

Ours are 17 and 13 and we have them booked in their own cabin across the hall from ours. They're far enough away for us to have our alone time :eek:, but close enough to keep an eye on them.