evie0110

While a multi-thousand dollar camera system will theoretically be able to get you great shots that you can blow up, you're not going to get there without a lot of practice - and if you're just renting for the trip length that's not going to happen. Interchangeable lens cameras at that level need time to learn to be able to use to their best advantage and if you just pick one up then you could just end up frustrated and with heavy expensive kit that you have to lug around. Especially if you're used to the ease and weight of an iphone this will be a shock to the system as kit of that caliber will weigh at least 5lbs, and if a small compact is too much fuss compared to an iphone anything bigger is going to be even more frustrating!

So stepping back for a second - what don't you like about the Elph that you have already? Have you tried printing pictures from it at high resolution? What exactly are you hoping to get shots of on your trip - mostly landscapes or mostly close ups of penguins/whales? Go to flickr.com, search for antarctica and pick out five photos that you'd love to have on your wall and post links here. That'll give a better indication of what exactly you need. Even with that expensive kit you don't say exactly what's in it - is it a body and one lens? two? and if so what are the suggested focal lengths that they'll rent to you? All of that will determine what you'll be able to get shots of, because even with a great camera, if you've only got a 50mm lens and want close ups of whales it's not going to be successful.

If the camera you take is something heavy, complicated and frustrating that you have no need to learn more about as you're only using it once it's going to spend time most of its time in your cabin, or you'll miss out on the actual experience of antarctica because you'll be so busy fighting with advanced tech that isn't giving the results you want.

Looking at the most sensible options that would probably be better for you than renting something- there's the micro 4/3 system which is a step up in image quality from point and shoot - but is still a relatively steep learning curve with lenses that need to change and manual settings to get the best results. To give you the highest chance of getting the shot, you'll want lenses that cover a 35mm equivalent range of at least 24 to at least 400mm. It's lighter and cheaper than an SLR system so you can take the time to buy now and practice lots, but you'll still have to invest time in something you don't want to keep as a hobby. Next up would be a superzoom - Canon sx60 or Nikon p900 are the top two which cover a huge zoom range, do brilliantly in auto modes and are fabulous all in one cameras but at the expense of smaller sensors so image quality at a pixel level will be lower. They also have manual overrides if you do want to learn in the future. The third option is only a rumor at this point and that's the Canon G1X mk111 which should have an SLR sensor in a compact body, but at the expense of a more limited zoom range - this could work for you, but it'll have to be released first and it's unlikely to be under $1000.

First step is still to look at photos on flickr, look at the technical details and see what focal lengths things were shot at and use that to guide choices. Flickr also lets you search by camera - so have a look at shots that come from the various suggested options and I think you'll be really surprised at just how high quality shots you can get from a smaller sensor - ie https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=antarctica&cm=nikon%2Fcoolpix_p900

Unfortunately even with the advances in technology there's never going to be magic solution that will give you everything you want - so you have to decide what to sacrifice - time and money to learn a heavy system or lose something in the quality to have simplicity and lightweight.

I’ve been on MS Expedition and Poseidon Sea Spirit so can speak to those. On both they offered two types on internet, one where you pay for a certain number of megabytes of data transfer and have completely unlimited access to the net via their wifi connection – I have no idea whether VPNs work here as I never tried. These are slow and will totally drop out for large periods due to weather conditions, being inside a deep fjord or surrounded by high mountains. When it does work I don’t think I can express just how slow it will be, think ten minutes to load up the mobile version of gmail slow. The pages can die halfway through loading and so you need to refresh – it’s amazing just how fast you can burn through your mb in cycles like this. (If the ship you’re on offers a time based package rather than an MB based package it’s going to be even more expensive as you can sit there watching time tick away while nothing at all happens). On both ships the advice from the expedition team selling the package was do not buy this, it’s not worth it. However, if money is no object and you’re determined then it should work for you, but you’re going to limit the actual experience by spending a lot of time at a computer rather than watching the world and the wildlife. If you do go this route then look at ways you can limit background app usage by bandwidth blocking software so only your browser is connecting and you’re not accidentally downloading a windows update somewhere in there.

The other option is to sign up to the ship’s text based email accounts which gives you a ship email something like guestbob@seaspirit.com and you can then email freely from there – you have no access to the wider internet so need to know the email addresses of everyone you’ll want to mail. On Expedition this was unlimited, send and receive as many text emails as you like, on Sea Spirit we were limited to 200kb of email a day. Yes, KB. Anything over the 200kb was charged at $2/kb. That makes sending an email with an image attachment more expensive than the cruise itself! Now for my needs this was perfect, I had no need for the internet and I just sent an email every couple of days to husband with updates on what we’d been doing and the occasional question when I wanted them to look something up on Wikipedia and let me know the answer! (And on my latest trip in Feb I solved the Wikipedia issue by downloading an offline version to my phone). To my knowledge this system uses a totally different technology and satellite, hence the reduced bandwidth, and we had no outages at all, it appeared to work consistently throughout the trip no matter conditions. Worth noting that it does take a day or two to set up and you can’t give people your contact details in advance, although I’m sure this could be expedited if you explained your situation, but I didn’t get access until most of the way across the Drake, two days after embarkation.

I'll also add my name to the underwhelmed with the bus tour list. The park itself is pretty, but the tour fairly basic and I wasn't at all a fan of the train at the end of the world. If you're heading back anyway, a private guide should be much better!

If you are going to stay in town and the weather is nice then I'd recommend going up to the Marital Glacier - not for the glacier itself, as you're going to be seeing a lot of ice - but the views back down over the bay are gorgeous if it's a clear day.

It's really easy to pick up a taxi opposite the port to take you to the chair lift station, where depending on time and energy levels you can walk or get the lift up and back down. I took the chair both ways and there's a lovely little cafe opposite the chairlift station for lunch. There are also loads of taxis waiting to take people back into town or the cafe can call one for you if not and the whole round trip can be done in a couple of hours - if you walk will be longer.

Otherwise, while you can walk the main street very quickly without missing much, with the port behind you, follow the road around to the left for lovely views back across the bay and some pretty reflections.

evie0110:

 

That's brilliant--thank you. Specifically, here's what's going on:

 

I just got back from Antarctica/S.Georgia with Lindblad and had a wonderful time. I wrote about it in context of my mobility issues here:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1751600

and more broadly here:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1751022

 

Quite honestly I can't wait to go back, especially to S. Georgia.

 

I had always thought I'd be returning with Lindblad, but friends now want to come and they are looking for something more economical. So G Adventures was found. They happen to be based out of my country (Canada) and their ship crossed paths with the Lindblad ship in my time in Antarctica.

 

I've spoken with two people who have gone with G Adventures. One thought I'd have no problem on their ship; the second flatly said I'd have no chance. Such a stark difference of opinion has left me very much confused, and why I'm trying to suss out more stuff in this thread. OP has been helpful, as have you with your details (57 steps from mudroom to lunch and so forth).

 

Since you've graciously offered to field questions, here we go:

 

1) Did you experience much ocean motion? If so, could you walk around the ship comfortably?

 

2) Was there a lot of queueing?

 

3) Zodiacs: our naturalists were very good/careful; regardless, two of our passengers fell in water in two separate incidents going ashore. (Although perhaps voted "Most Likely to...", it wasn't me wither time.) I'm somewhat skeptical of the company's "never" claim. That said, the trickier bit for me will always be at the ship. How large/stable are the boarding platforms? Are there a lot of stairs?

 

4) More generally, are there a lot of stairs full-stop? Are the stairs steep, shallow, wide, narrow?

 

5) Are there a lot of grab bars in the rooms, and handrals about the ship?

 

Thanks very much evie0110, and to anyone else who chimes in.

Your Lindblad trip sounds wonderful! I've actually only been to the Arctic so far, but Antarctica is all booked up for November and I'm so excited to be back on the Expedition for it! (as an aside, I see you were there in November, does it ever get truly dark? I've got one night camping and am contemplating whether it's worth schlepping the astrophotography kit)

Hope some of the below helps, if you need me to expand or dig around for more photos, just shout.

1) As I was only in the Arctic I can't speak as to the Drake passage, but the calm Spitsbergen waters had some slight barely perceptible motion on a stormy night, but otherwise nothing that I noticed consciously. The ship is a converted car ferry and has stabilisers so theoretically she's one of the less wobbly ones out there.

2) Queuing was fairly minimal - there was some at the buffet at lunch but easily avoided if you waited 2mins and then went up after the main OMG FOOD rush. Also in the mudroom to board zodiacs, but again the whole area is full of benches, so you can easily sit and have a companion hold your place and join them when it comes to the swiping of cards to leave the boat bit, or wait for the last zodiac and get straight onto it. I was always of the 'must get off the boat NOW' lack of patience camp, so did stand more than I could have if I'd just chilled out a bit.

3) I asked the EL that question because it looked so hazardous to me too. He said that they've only ever had one fall when he's been aboard ship, and that was someone tipping backwards into the Zodiac, never into the water. They're very clear about how you disembark so that any risk of slipping is into the craft and not freezing sea. We had eight days of landings and half a ship of very uncooperative guests, if none of them fell in (despite wishing it) then I think that's as good as it gets! The zodiac boarding at the ship sounds very similar to how you described on Lindblad. I did actually take a couple of shots so hope these help to illustrate - http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8095/8539515191_803b063313_c.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8510/8540618936_782d145fa8_c.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8232/8540678042_6586567b6c_c.jpg

4) There are no lifts on the ship. There are stairs from deck four (mudrooms and most basic cabins - at water level) to deck three (more cabins) to deck two (public areas, observation lounge, bar, outside deck access) and up again to deck one (restaurant and pub). Here's a photo of stairs from deck four up to three http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8102/8540618562_5b775798fe_c.jpg. Stairs from three to two are just as steep but much wider so you could only hold a handrail at one side at a time.

5) Lots of grab rails in corridors http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8088/8539604895_16c42b8cd6_c.jpg but none that I remember in the room or in public lounges - my room was a triple http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8009/7636374262_960ca13825_c.jpg. One thing I will say about the room, possibly only that class so might be worth confirming - the bathroom is tiny. Good news is that there isn't really enough room to fall, bad news, getting any kind of bench/chair into the shower would be pretty difficult.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8095/8540707354_983cf4828b_c.jpg

The lounge is filled with lots of closely packed tables and chairs. Getting around the outside would be fine, but weaving in the middle might be more problematic http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8090/8540690968_4bb4327da9_c.jpg

and why yes, I did photograph everything :D

I have a mobility disability (use walking sticks and am not what anyone would optimistically describe as great shape) and have traveled with G on the MS Expedition to the Arctic, but procedure is the same down south - if you have any particular questions, shout and I'd be happy to answer!

As a couple of general points:

1) At no time did anyone offer any extra assistance or make any allowances for my disability, I was treated exactly the same as any other passenger. This wasn't an issue in most places, I manage perfectly fine on my own, but if you think you need extra help or assistance, then make this clear to booking company and then the expedition leader as soon as you get on board. Do not assume that they will see you with walking sticks and move you to the front of a queue so there is less standing for example. It also may be the case that this trip is not suited to you. There is a lot of standing and walking and many many very steep stairs (57 from the mud room up to the top deck) which you will take multiple times a day to get from shore to lunch. Be sensible and decide if this is in your ability limits, if not then sadly, this is not the trip for you. The expedition leaders are hectic all the time and do not have the time (or the training/liability insurance) to be focusing that much attention on one passenger if their abilities are so far away from the rest of the group.

2) Boarding zodiacs - this is the easy bit where help is given to everyone, and if you need more it's freely available. You still need to be able to get down several stairs unaided, hand your bags/sticks/anything else in your hands to the guide in the zodiac. The ship guide will then hold one arm while the zodiac guide takes the other, and you are shuffled from the big ship to the little boat. Easy!

3) getting ashore - also easy and with lots of help. You sit on the side of the zodiac, hand all your gear to a guide on shore who also takes your arm, shuffle your bum to towards the land and swing your legs over the side of the boat, where you gracefully stand in ankle deep water and walk up the beach! So far, the Expedition has never had anyone fall in the water.

4) On shore - it's up to you here really, there are always options on walks, if you want to take the longer one then that's great and if not there's always something to be amused by on the beach or scenery to admire. Keep in mind these are beaches, and sometimes the loose gravelly sort can be very hard going.