quote:

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Originally posted by DEB/COREY:
hi, gavin, the pictures are fabulous!!! we had such a wonderful time! how is your family? say HI to everyone for us!!! hope you had a good christmas. we did-we love the holidays- the grandkids were over, had a wonderful time. kindest regards, corey and deb-"the americans!!!"

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Hi, Deb and Corey. The family is all well. We also had a fab christmas break. Glad you enjoyed some of the pictures. They certainly bring back the memories. It really was a great tour. Kristine also has her pictures online at

http://kfoda.smugmug.com/Holidays/44500

Now if I can only convince her to do some captions for all of them and mine too!

Cheers,
Gavin.....

Gavin,

May I ask how you stored all these photos while on your tour? The reason for my query is that we will be doing this tour in Aug 2005 and I dont want to run out of capacity.

By the way, your after dark pics are every bit as good as I can get with my Nikon F50 35mm SLR and amongst the best digital ones I have seen. Good ole Nikon, keeps on keepin on and doesnt let you down.

Thanks

Peter_2005

quote:

Originally posted by Peter_2005:
May I ask how you stored all these photos while on your tour? The reason for my query is that we will be doing this tour in Aug 2005 and I dont want to run out of capacity.
Peter_2005

I took along a 60GB compactdrive. It is a portable storage device that contains a laptop hard disk and has CompactFlash and other slots for offloading your media cards pictures. It can run on 4 x AA alkaline or NiMH rechargable batteries or 120/240V mains AC via a universal plugpack.

The latest model is PD70X. I have an older model called PD6F.

information at:
http://www.compactdrive.com/

You can buy them in Australia from:
http://www.jaldigital.com.au/catalog/default.php?cPath=27_100

I bought this device because it is extremely fast at dumping the contents of the media cards to it's hard drive, runs on any AA batteries and has exceptional battery life.

Most other similar devices are pretty slow at copying the cards to their hard drives and use proprietary LiON internal batteries that would be impossible to replace if it failed.

Energizer NiMH 2500 mAh rechargables available from any KMart for $20 are the go for the best battery life. They are really rebadged japanese sanyo batteries which are the highest quality batteries you can get.

quote:

Originally posted by Peter_2005:
By the way, your after dark pics are every bit as good as I can get with my Nikon F50 35mm SLR and amongst the best digital ones I have seen. Good ole Nikon, keeps on keepin on and doesnt let you down.
Peter_2005

Yes, I am really happy with the D70 high ISO capability. Considering everything is handheld I was able to still get quite a lot of "keepers".

Also the D70 has an auto ISO capability where you can tell it you don't want a shutter speed less than a certain speed and it will auto adjust the ISO level to a higher value. A lot of D70 users poo poo this idea and assume that any decent photographer should manually assign the ISO setting for whatever conditions you encounter, but when you are on a fast paced tour with lots to see and do, you can't be doing too much fiddling around with your settings all the time. You end up forgetting you have changed something and blow the next series of shots you take. I preferred to just tell the camera I did not want a shutter speed less than 1/60th of a second and then let it adjust the ISO for me. All very simple. But the results are proof that Nikon have it pretty well worked out in the camera itself.

None of the images have had noise reduction applied, although noise is reduced naturally by the scaling of the image to web size. I have used the NeatImage noise reduction application
http://www.neatimage.com/
on full sized images and found it to produce brilliant results on even the noisiest ISO 1600 shots (which are normally ones that are underexposed), allowing A4 inkjet printouts with very low noise levels.

Cheers,
Gavin....

Gavin,

Thanks for all the info you have supplied and the links you have provided. Really appreciated.

Best wishes

Peter

Gavin, I like how you took photos of your hotel rooms. I'm always curious about what rooms look like, so I really enjoyed those.

Gavin:

These photos are great - I'm doing the Romantic European Jul 21 (less than a month woohoo!) and your pics give me a good idea of what sort of volume of film I'll be shooting (I'm old school with an SLR).

Cheers,

Sheri, Calgary, Canada

Have to chime in here...loved the photos ~ especially the night photos. Ditto on the room photos. That is always a curiousity about the trips that the brochure's can't convey. Something about a picture is worth a 1,000 words.

Holly

Hello, Gavin. Thank you for posting your wonderful Romantic European photos. As you went in October and I am taking the tour starting September 3rd this year, I have looked closely at your photos to observe how warm the clothes were, the type of footwear worn as well as the stunning scenery. You have helped me in my decision-making and anticipation. Thank you, thank you! Hariata

Just bumping this up for other RE holiday makers. Excellent photos! I too, am searching for appropriate clothing ideas.