bob_flood1

You've gotten good info for your question. About the battery - like Steve said, it originally used a mercury battery (constant voltage) that's no longer available in the US (can be had in Canada). The size is still made, but in the US it's an alkaline (declining voltage), and those voltage characteristics are not right for the 'mat. A good substitute - hearing aid batteries. They have the right voltage (1.35) and steady output. They don't last all that long - a month or so each - but a package of five should be easy to find in any drug store and reasonably priced.

Let me add to Dave's info. In addition to Casey's Camera on Tropicana, there's Sahara Camera on Sahara (what else) also east of the strip and a manageable cab fare. Nice folks there, however, the prices won't amuse you. The best prices I've found in Vegas on Nikon/Sigma/Tamron hardware is at the Ritz Camera store in the outlet mall on Las Vegas Blvd a couple of miles south of the strip hotels. Most strip hotels should have shuttle service to this mall. The stores that sell cameras on the strip in amongst the mega-resorts will have the highest prices you'll find anywhere.

 

Be sure to see the Bellagio fountain show and the Conservatory inside (they do remarkable stuff with flowers).

That last 1/2-1 mile can be a tire buster, too. Even if you go slow enough to avoid bottoming, I really, really, really recommend having more than one spare tire.

 

And take a bunch of water. Make that two bunches. You will sweat out a huge amount of body water and not realize it because of the dryness (typical summer afternoon RH <10%).

 

All warnings aside, go and have a great time. You are in for an amazing experience.

James -

 

Going to the Grand Canyon in Dec/Jan is a tough trip - the north rim is closed and the drive around to the south rim isn't a trivial one. It will consume a significant part of your trip, BUT - it might capture the interest of the entire family.

 

If I had 5 days to spend, I'd probably stay at Bryce (the park lodge or Ruby's outside the park). It's pretty centrally located. Naturally you have Bryce at your doorstep, plus Zion is about a 1.5 hour drive south (certainly a day trip), Kodachrome Basin just minutes east of Bryce (state park, aptly named), and it's a few hours drive farther up UT Hwy 12 to Capitol Reef (great red-rock landscape) with stunning high elevation overlooks of Escalante along the way.

 

Zion: the tram only runs in the summer. Smaller inns and restaurants in Springdale do close in winter, but it doesn't cripple the town. If the family needs conventional facilities, St George is 40 minutes west of Zion (mall, Walmart, Outback - all the comforts of Generica).

 

Weather: Zion Canyon is about 4000 ft and snow on the valley floor is not common. Bryce is about 7500 at the entrance at the north end of the park, and 9000+ ft at the south end - clearly colder than Zion. If you run out of places to see, you can go west from Bryce to Cedar Breaks, a smaller scale Bryce-like setting, but the parking lot is at 10,000 ft. Utah can get some pretty strong winds in winter in addition to the cold - bring appropriate clothes!

 

If you have any time in San Diego, the zoo or wild animal park offer terrific photo opps, and the family will enjoy it, too. Winter is the best time to visit Death Valley, and it's about 2.5-3 hours from the Vegas strip to Furnace Creek in the center of DV. In the Provo area, going up to Park City (east) might be fun (see the site of the Winter Olympics), but probably best on a week day - the town fills up with skiers big time on weekends.

 

Make no mistake - it will be a wintertime trip with winter weather, but if you are prepared for it, you and the family can get to see some of the west's best. Have a great trip.

If your subject allows you the time to set up and use panoramic techniques, you can get remarkable results. I have a 20X30 of Multnomah Falls in vertical format that consists of 3 overlapping 6 MP shots (D70) merged in PS (roughly 15 MP). Detail is excellent even up close. But you can't expect anything like that with a single photo, even at 10 MP.

 

I have 16X20s from my D70 and D80, but I don't fill the print with the image - I leave some border space with framing lines and frequently have a title or date along the bottom. The actual image size is closer to 11X17 on the print. The example is a D70 shot.<div></div>

If you can find a company that rents the Honda Element, that might be your answer. The seats in front can be slid all the way forward and the seat backs folded down to horizontal. The back seat folds backward into the cargo space, creating two full length surfaces for sleeping. Good mileage, and it can be had in 4-wheel drive, although rental agencies might not have that feature.

Those TSA workers are between a rock and a hard place. The current crop of inspectors aren't knowledgable about specialzized hardware like modern lighting hardware and lots of other technical stuff people need to travel with these days, and they're never going to be. But you can bet that every news agency, civic group, politician, and average citizen will want the ones at the airport that let a bomb on board crucified in public. There job is to be careful in defense of all the people who get onto airplanes at their airport.

 

And the staffer at the check-in x-ray machine absolutely can never tell you why they are really taking so long with your bag - others with earshot, on hearing a truthful "there's someone thing in there that's suspicious" will initiate what could become wholesale panic by a large crowd.

 

TSA hurts their credibility with their inconsistencies, where they tell you that this thing they're doing and that you've never seen before is not standard procedure, but you didn't see it for yesterday's flight and won't tomorrow. I have to be hand-frisked every time I fly because my artificial joints always set off the metal detectors, and the variety of "standard" procedures I encounter can't help but make me wonder why they've not been able to get a handle on this.

 

Nevertheless, not one of those TSA agents is doing those inpections or keeping things safe for themselves - they are protecting the travelers and no one else. They may be a headache, but there's no one more on your side.

 

A contract service tech who is also a friend flies 125-150k miles a year and always tells the people at check-in what's in the equipment case, and says that goes a long way to smooth things.

My cruise was a few years ago and I shot film (I know, how quaint!), but my lens experience translates fairly well here. I took a 28-200 plus some primes as backups. I was under-equipped.

 

My preference doesn't include a lens as wide as your 12-24 (the 28 mm limit wasn't a problem for me), but if you like the field of view, take it - you'll use it, no question about it.

 

The 18-70 will get a lot of use - it's a decent lens with a handy zoom range. The 50 will have its uses. Trying to shoot around sunset from a moving ship gets problemmatic with slow lenses. A tripod isn't the answer - it'll be in the way of other passengers, standing on a moving surface, and transmitting engine virbations to the camera. I fould a monopod worked better, with the base of the monopod placed on my toes to isolate it from engine vibrations. Use the 50/1.8 and reasonable ISO, monopod mounted, and you'll be able to shoot thru isolated showers at sunset, rainbows from those small showers, etc.

 

Everyone has pointed out correctly that you have a significant gap between 70 and 400. The 200 limit I had for film use was a major handicap - clearly not long enough. Your 400 is the right kind of focal length. But if you buy a "fill-in" lens like a 70-300 or 70-200, you need to decide if you really want to be carting around all those lenses. Buying an 80-400VR is an easy recommendation for me to make when I'm not the one who will get the bill, but whichever avenue you choose, I can't recommend enough that you have a 400 mm capability. I am planning an Alaska trip next year, too (not a cruise) and I will have an 80-400 because my 70-300 isn't long enough.

 

One more (different) idea: the whale watching cruises out of Juneau are remarkably good at finding whales and getting as close as the law allows, and you also find seals, eagles, among others, and terrific scenary among the islands. I highly recommend it. My 200mm with film didn't let me get the whale shots I wanted - 400 mm on a D200 (or my D80) most certainly would.

Carl makes a good point. But if the Oak Creek Canyon route isn't servicable, the Interstate south out of Flagstaff would be, and you can take the local road from the Interstate over to Sedona.

 

Even so, this itinerary still leaves you a particularly long drive back to Vegas, a significant downside for someone who has to be up early the next morning for the marathon.

I believe you meant to say you'll return to LV Sat evening for the race on SUNDAY morning. That means you have from midday Thursday til late Saturday.

 

Have you been to the Grand Canyon? You might make it to the south rim in time to get sunset shots on Thursday, and can spend the day there Friday (stay in the park or in Tusayan, right outside the south gate). However, trying to get from the Grand Canyon to another location like Zion is a lot of driving, probably using more of the day than you'd like. You might find snow in the Flagstaff area and the San Francisco peaks (if shooting in snow is not usually available to you), but that's dicey in early Dec. You could go south to Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon just north of Sedona. Very good western red rock country there (popular place for Hollywood to film westerns back in the heyday of westerns). You get to see much more if you take one of the Pink Jeep tours into the countryside. But that leaves a fairly long drive back to LV Saturday night.

 

Plan B: it's about 2 hours from the airport to Valley of Fire for an afternoon and sunset session, and then on to St George, UT. Friday in Zion (are you up for the climb to Angel's Landing - it's not easy but what a view!). After sunset, you could make some progress back toward LV, and then on to Death Valley for Saturday. There will be snow on the Panamint range on the west side of the valley, none on the east side. Artist's Point is amazing, but I'm not objective about that - it's one of my favorite places.

 

Plan C: you could use Thursday to get up to Bryce Canyon (if you don't want to stay in the park, check out Ruby's). After Friday at Bryce, Saturday could be in Zion, then an easy 3 hour drive to LV. Snow is a possibility for Bryce and the high elevations of Zion that time of year, and consider yourself lucky if you find it. The hoodoos in Bryce are unlike anything elsewhere in the country, and Zion is completely different from Bryce, even though they are only about an hour or so apart.

 

I suspect others with more imagination than me will have other combinations to recommend, too. Have a good time - and good luck in the race. You should be accompanied by about 15,000 fellow runners.

I posted a question about this lens at the end of August just as the site went

down for revising the software (yes, I am pretty much always that lucky). I

got one answer back then, and I'm hoping that limited response was due to the

outage.

 

A local shop has a couple of these Sigma 500/5.6 lenses in Nikon mount. I

don't know anything about the lens, and searches have told me nothing (which

makes me suspicious right away). Can anyone enlighten me? I suspect it's

manual focus, which is not a problem. But can anyone speak from experience

about the image quality? If it's out of print (undoubtedly), any idea what

would be a reasonable price for a new-in-the-box discontinued manual focus lens?

I think you have a lot of googling ahead of you. Two weeks may seem like a lot of time, but if you try to see too much, you won't see very deep. The advice about seeing all those places from the car is accurate. I really recommend that you pare down the list and spend more time at each location. If you reach Calgary around the time of the Stampede, plan on the town being full up.

 

Seattle area: Mt Baker is OK, but IMHO the Olympic peninsula is a better use of your time - unique environment, mountains, amazing forest, widlife, flowers, and a coast. I also recommend getting out among the San Juan Islands - the ferry is a great way to go. You can find out lots about it online - routes, schedules, costs, and info about the islands.

 

If you get as far south as Oregon, the coast is great (but can take a lot of time - you'll need to plan well), and so is the Columbia Gorge - tremendous waterfalls - google this to find maps and hiking distances, photos of what to expect, etc. Look for the wind surfers out around Hood River. Mt hood without snow cover is a large gray cinder cone with some dirty snow on its glaciers.

 

In between Seattle and Oregon, you have Mt St Helens - interesting in itself.

 

My weather experience with that area in summer has been nothing but excellent - it kind of sucks the rest of the year, but you can plan on Chamber of Commerce weather in late summer/early fall.

 

Have a great time.

Every casino has a free parking deck. Take the casino entrance drive and follow the signs to "self park." The older, smaller casinos' parking can get pretty full at times (Golden Nugget, Riviera, Sahara, etc), but the mega-resorts have more parking than a medium size city.

 

If you've seen other Cirque shows and liked them, you will thoroughly enjoy Ka. Have a great time.

A local shop here in Las Vegas has a couple of Sigma 500 mm f5.6 lenses in

Nikon mount. They want over $700 for one, which seems unreasonable to me.

 

I have been able for find absolutely nothing on this lens - I know Sigma

doesn't make it any more, and I didn't ask when I was in the shop if it's a

manual focus lens, which I suspect it is.

 

I don't mind a manual focus lens, and one that's out of print might be

negotiated to a pretty reasonable price. But I can't find any talk about

whether this lens is any good.

 

So how 'bout it, folks? Anyone ever own one? Use one for a while? Inquiring

minds want to know.

I live in Las Vegas - the casinos have no problem with guests carrying cameras thru the gaming areas, just don't take pictures there. They regard people taking pictures of the gaming as 1) up to something, and 2) an annoyance to the players they want to keep losing their money. A flash on the gaming floor will get you noticed in an amazing hurry.

 

The casinos here have many photo ops built in and have no issues with customers with cameras. Be sure to see the Conservatory at Bellagio - the most amazing flower display you'll find anywhere. The fountains at Bellagio shoot very well from the front of Bellagio with Paris in the background, especially at twilight as the Eifel Tower and the balloon lights begin to show. The fountains are lighted and show very well at that time, too.

 

Walking is a great way to get exercise - LOTS of exercise. Those casinos are much larger than you think they are and are a lot farther apart than they look. Don't be surprised if you find the walk a lot more than you expected.

 

Tripods don't cause problems outdoors. Indoors, like anywhere else, it depends on whether you are in the way. I use a monopod for that reason. The Stratosphere has an observation deck where you can shoot overlooking the strip - twilight is a great time. The restaurant up there has a great view, of course, although I find the the food is only average.

 

Red Rock Canyon is a national conservation area on the west side of town, a 20-30 minute drive from the strip (admission charge, don't know what it is). Excellent western red rock geology, hard rock climbers if the weather is suitable, etc. Valley of Fire (state park) is an hour or so northeast in I-15. More red rock than Red Rock Canyon. The Grand Canyon is about 4.5 hours driving to either rim - I recommend the north rim - far fewer people. Zion is about 3.5 hours, Death Valley about 3 hours.

 

Cirque - avoid La Reve (not up to the others), Love is excellent in general, even better if you like Beatles music (but it's the newest, therefore most expensive - $125 each). Mystere is the original and the best for my money, and O is 2nd best (these 2 have the biggest "wow" factor). My wife likes Ka as much as O, some like it better. Only La Reve was disappointing. Apart from Cirque, Phantom is very good, too.

 

Every casino has a high end steak house - about $100/person total - with food and service as good as you'll find anywhere. Each also has a cafe, open 24 hours with late night specials not on the menu. If you go in after 11 PM, ask what specials they have. You can find some serious bargains that way, but you have to ask. Not all casinos have the legendary buffet, and prices vary radically - cheap ones off the strip run as low as $10, Bellagio is $30! Venetian doesn't have one - it's beneath them.

 

If you have time for hanging out, I recommend the piano bar at NY NY - Billy Joel likes to drop in and play impromptu sets with the house piano players. And if he doesn't show, those 2 guys are a great show by themselves. And if you like roller coasters, NY NY's is great.

 

Have a great time.

Both my D70 and D80 do this the same way, so I'm guessing the D40 will, too. Find the button that has the symbol that looks like a set of rectangles.

 

Press it once and it puts the same symbol (rectangles) on the LCD display on top of the camera. Press it again and the rectangle symbol goes away and a circle with hands (clock, as in timer) appears. Press it again and the clock is still there, but you now get a larger, dark image under the clock, with a hole in it - that's the remote, and you are now in the remote timer mode. The remote should activate the timer and then shutter, using whatever delay you have set for the timer.

 

If you press that button one more time, the clock disappears but the remote stays. That's the mode for using the remote like a shutter release cable - hands off shooting.

I find my D80 does reasonably well at autofocus, but I can do better in a critical situation.

 

I recommend you conduct a simple test (won't take long). Set up the D80 on a tripod aimed at a subject reasonably close by, something with detail to it (I used a couple of bottles of my wife's suntan lotion on a table about 15 ft away - the lettering on the label is a good test of sharpness)). Do this in open sun so adequate light for focusing isn't a question.

 

Set the camera to manual exposure and shoot all of these shots at one setting.

 

Use autofocus and take a shot of the subject at 18, 35, 50, and 70 mm. Then turn off the autofocus and repeat each of those shots, refocusing the lens each time (turn it out of focus and refocus each time). Then upload and examine the images in detail.

 

If your autofocus is limiting what you get, you should see the difference at all 4 focal lengths. If a couple seem better on auto and a couple on manual, the differences are random, not systematic - it isn't your autofocus.

Image quality, whether onscreen or printed, begins with lens quality. No amount of pixels can make up for a low quality lens, but a lower number of pixels can still produce greats prints from a high quality image from a high quality lens.

 

I have a friend who had a 16X20 printed by mpix (metallic paper, amazing stuff) from an image he shot using his older D100 6 mp body and a very high quality Nikon macro lens (and tripod). He used 300 ppi and scaled up from the original image size only 10% at a time until he reached the final image size for printing. The print is magnificent - no evidence of pixeling when viewed from 12 inches away! The sharpness of the flowers and the dew drops on them have shown me that I have all the megapixels I'll ever need in my D70 and D80. A terrific example what can be done with digital.

Growing up in southern Vermont (never mind how many years ago), the rule of thumb was to plan for the peak in the Manchester area around Columbus Day weekend. The timing is a function of the amount of daylight (very predictable), temperature, and rainfall. Warmer weather delays the foliage, and dry weather shortens the foliage season. That temparature and rainfall stuff is a bit harder to predict than the amount of daylight.

 

Of course, things peak earlier farther north (shorter days and cooler) and at higher elevations (cooler). But you should be confident that the window you have chosen will give you high quality foliage somewhere in the northern New England states. Even if it's not in the immediate area of where you are staying, going north or south doesn't require much traveling in those states.

 

Have a great time - I'm jealous - it's been far too long since I last saw Vermont foliage.

In your Seattle Metro General Locations list, you left out the Union St bridge troll. How could you?????:^)<div></div>

The summer months get more fog over the city because the temperature difference between the cold water off the coast and the central valley sets up an onshore flow that carries the fog onshore. In October, that effect is much weaker, so less fog (but not none at all). October is typically earlier than the fall rains, which get under way in November most years, so October is good. Also a good time to get into wine country - Napa and Sonoma - for the wine harvest and fall color in the vinyards.

I was still shooting film when we cruised to AK. My all-purpose lens was a 28-200. I DID want to get whales and eagles - not enough lens for that. But 28 was wide enough for my tastes. YMMV.

 

Tripod - a tripod can make you enemies on a cruise. I saw folks trying to stake out enough space on deck for a tripod in Glacier Bay and were not popular for it. (EVERYONE on board will want to be on deck on the same side of the ship at the same time - it gets crowded at the railing.) I took just my monpod and and found that resting the end of the monopod on my foot succesfully isolated it from engine vibrations. Long shutter speeds are not practical from a moving ship, so I didn't miss the tripod at all. Would be dead weight on most excursions.

 

The 18-70 is an excellent lens - it will do you fine. I have no experience with the 55-200. Peter's suggestion of a second body has my vote, too. In addition to having a spare (so you won't come home empty-handed), you can put one lens on each body - changing lenses as the shooting opportunities arise makes things that much more difficult. A used D50 (eBay if you like, but there are other options) shouldn't be expensive, is the one you're familar with, same memory cards, etc.

 

I used a shoulder bag on our trip, instead of one of my backpacks. I'd do it that way again. Too much bulk in those backpacks, a significant issue on the excursions.

 

Check the web site for your cruise - they ubdoubtedly offer film processing and probably CD burning on board. This would allow you to dispense with trying to carry enough memory for the entire cruise or your own method of writing the files to something else (CD burner, laptop). It wasn't expensive on our cruise.

 

Have a great time.

Tom - Jim's car idea is a good one, and his recommendation of Red Rock early and VoF late is spot-on. Jim - I really like the first shot at Hoover - it's not easy to get good water shots these days with the lake level so low. Your stuff also shows the variety of shooting opportunities on the strip after dark.

 

If you do decide to rent, Red Rock is easy to get to - go west (toward the mountains) from Las Vegas Blvd (the strip) on any of the major cross streets (Tropicana, Flamingo, Spring Mountain, or Sahara) and get on I-15 southbound. South of Tropicana, keep right and exit onto 215 westbound. That will cruise you around to the west side of the city (20 minutes) where you get off at Charleston and go west, right to the entrance to Red Rock. Easy drive, easy return. For Valley of Fire, start out the same way but take I-15 north. Less than an hour out, you'll hit an exit not quite in the middle of nowhere that says VoF - take it and follow the 2-lane blacktop to the park. Neither park has food or beverages - take what you want to eat and drink, especially water if you will be out hiking much in our heat. Both charge an admission.

 

A good map of Las Vegas will help - AAA has a good one of the greater Las Vegas/southern Nevada area, your hotel or the car rental will undoubtedly have a good city map, but probably so-so for the VoF area.

 

If you can't have fun here.... Hope your trip is a huge success.

Have you been inside Bellagio to the Conservatory? If you like flower close-ups, bring all of your memory cards (or film).

 

Although I haven't done this yet myself, knowledgeable friends tell me there's an observation deck with no chain link fencing at the top of the Stratosphere - shooting down the strip at twilight should be excellent.

 

Ask at the Concierge Desk in your hotel about a tour of Red Rock Canyon. It's on the city's western edge and and has great western red rock geology on display everywhere. It's popular with hard rock climbers, but it may be past their season - it'll be hot. Expect 100+ in the canyon (108+ on the strip). I've seen motor tours in there, so I know they exist. I really like Red Rock - I'd offer to meet you and take you out there myself, but I'll be in Santa Barbara this weekend.

 

I like shooting the Bellagio fountains from a variety of angles to get different sun angles and backgrounds. My favorite has the balloon from the Paris casino behind a large scale fountain blast.

 

Photographing animals is tough along the strip - the lions at MGM and white tigers at the Mirage are behind glass walls. The "Secret Garden" at the Mirage is outdoors, but the mesh of the cage wiring is very problematic.

 

Fremont Street is the bargain basement of Las Vegas. Older casinos, some remodeled, most not. Kiosks selling all sorts of stuff all along the street. The overhead light show every hour during the evening is cool, but won't photograph well. Fun to see, but not a photo trip. If you stay down the strip and decide to go to Fremont Street, take a cab or a bus (known as the duece - a London-type double decker), and don't walk. Too far and the neighborhood gets er, um, ah, perhaps more interesting that you'd want a youngster to see.

 

The Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay allows cameras, but it's not well lit - if you have some experience with aquarium photography, you might enjoy this. It's smaller than the aquariums (aquaria?) in Monterey, Chattanooga, and Atlanta, but has good stuff.

 

I haven't pursued a sunrise/sunset shot of the strip. A sunrise shot may be possible from either side of the strip, but if enhancement by nicley illuminated clouds is your goal, we haven't seen much in weeks (there's a reason they call this a desert). Shooting toward the east won't offer much interesting background (mostly city-scape, low hills) - the better angle would be toward the west and the Spring Mountains. Early light on the mountains would make a nice background for the sunrise shot, but finding a shooting location is the key. Perhaps someone else can offer specific advice.

What a trip!!!

 

The north rim of the Grand Canyon is the only place on your list that will offer significant fall color, so I'd make it last on your trip. The only other place that has meaningful fall color is Zion, but you'll be done before the canyon has any color and, there'll only be sporadic color in the high country (Kolob Canyon). The road from Bryce southward toward the Grand Canyon travels thru a nice valley that might offer some color late in your trip, too.

 

Once school starts, the crowds in the parks fall off substantially, but expect Zion, Bryce, and the Grand Canyon to still draw a lot of people on weekends. The others, GSENM - Moab area - Canyonlands - Page Area, won't show as large a weekend crowd.

 

At either end of your trip, in the Las Vegas area, if you have the time, look at Red Rock Canyon on the western edge of the city. It's a small park with very good western red rock geology, and on weekends you'll find hard rock climbers that are great to photograph. While they get into the canyons and climb the 3-6000 ft mountains, they have an area along the loop road they like to practice, and you can easily climb adjacent areas to shoot from an equal elevation and be reasonably close.

 

If you are willing to undertake some strenuous hikes, then Angel's Landing in Zion will offer photos of a lifetime, and going down into the Grand Canyon on the Bright Angel trail will distinguish you from 99+% of everyone else who visits the canyon, which means photo opportunities others never get.

 

A small siggestion: north of Zion, there's an east-west road that goes from Cedar City eastward over Cedar Mountain toward Bryce. Off that road, nearer the Cedar City end, if Cedar breaks Nat'l Monument. It's a smaller scale Bryce with the same hoodoo rock formations, but it gets much smaller crowds. Besides the ease in shooting that comes from not having so many people around, you'll find a bit more wildlife, too (small animals and birds in my experience, but I've not seen much of anything at Bryce). The parking lot is at 10,000 ft, so it'll be cooler than most places, too.

 

Have a great time.