TAKING PHOTOS ON A CARIBBEAN CRUISE. MY FOLLOW UP TO THE D-LUX 4 REVIEW WITH MORE REAL WORLD SAMPLES.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Well, this week I returned from an 8 day cruise to the Bahamas, US Virgin Islands and St. Martin Island. What camera did I bring with me on the trip? The Leica D-Lux 4 of course! To me, it has the perfect size, weight, and quality for a vacation. It has been a while since I shot with the Leica D-Lux 4 (see my full review of the camera here) and I wanted to really put it to work. I knew it would not let me down and since I did not yet have a Leica M9, and I already sold my M8.2 to fund my M9, I had no other choice!
When we boarded the Royal Caribbean “Freedom Of The Seas” ship in Orlando, FL the weather was hot, humid and I was miserable! We waited in line for over an hour to get on the ship. When we finally did get to board I was STARVING. Good thing that there is plenty of food on cruise ships! The Freedom Of The Seas is MASSIVE and as of this writing it is the worlds largest cruise ship. It has just about EVERYTHING and the best part is that mostly everything is FREE! All the food you can eat 24/7. FREE. Entertainment, shows, pools, gym, massage, games and much more. It was easy to get in the habit of waking up, getting breakfast. Then walking by the pool, having a drink then a snack. Hey, its time for lunch! Then more drinks, maybe check out the gym or one of the events and then its snack time and then dinner time! Being on a cruise like this is a non stop food and drink fest!
BUT beware! Any alcohol drinks you buy will be billed to your room and they add up fast! We had free coke products the whole cruise so we were good to go. Royal Caribbean really knows how to manage a ship. The service for the entire trip was superb, especially our waiter during our nightly 6pm dinner.
I went on this cruise with my wife, son and Mother and we all had a great time. During the 8 day cruise, the D-Lux 4 never failed me as a superb photographic tool. Through high humidity, rain, sand, and extreme heat the D-Lux 4 did great and even pulled double duty as a video camera. The video on the D-lux 4 is very good but I did find one issue with it that showed up one time and this happened only when shooting in intense sunlight.
After a day at sea on FREEDOM OF THE SEAS, our first stop was “Coco Cay” Bahamas. We had to get on to a smaller boat and take a ride to Coco Cay and even this was fun! This image was shot from above before we went down to get on the boat.
CocoCay is a private island owned by Royal Caribbean. The water incredibly blue and warm. But it is filled with Jelly Fish, Manta Rays, Small Tiger Sharks and even puffer fish. They swim right up and around you. It was a pretty incredible, if not scary experience! This island WAS ABSOLUTE PARADISE and I even picked up and held a few jelly fish. My wife shot a video of this with the D-Lux 4 and here is where I did have one issue with the D-Lux 4 video. Due to the intense sunlight, the sensor showed a few streaks and flaws while recording video. This NEVER happened when shooting images, but when I shot video in the intense sunlight against water, the streaks popped up.
After that video I shot the image above and as you can see, no streaks. Also, this only happened in this one video so it was not a big deal. The Leica D-Lux 4 is not meant to be a dedicated video camera anyway and is just there for convenience and for me, if it did not have the video capability my wife would of never even been able to shoot that video! So I find the video of the D-lux 4 to be wonderful that it is even in the camera.
I took a few more pics on CocoCay as we wrapped up our day on the island...
After a few hours on the island we hopped back on the FREEDOM OF THE SEAS. After some showers we headed down to eat dinner and then we went to the Karaoke bar where I sang a Johnny Cash song. Guess I should not of had that Fosters oil can! The next day we were at sea all day and we lounged by the pool for a while while the reggae band played. I did not have my camera with me but I went back later in the day and the pool was actually pretty dead.
After another food filled day at sea we ended up on St. Thomas Island, which was actually not as great as I had hoped. With the humidity it felt like it was 120 degrees with 100% humidity. I thought I was going to have a heat stroke as we rode around in a truck during a 3 hour island tour. The tour was awful. It was basically 20 minutes of driving with several stops to buy souvenirs.
I did get a few snaps off though during this tour...
So after a long, hot, sweaty and sticky day we boarded the ship and did the usual. We ate. We went to shows, we swam, we ate, we went to the gym, we shopped, we ate and oh yea, we ate. The next day we awoke in St Maarten Island. This island is unique as it has a Dutch side and a French side. The Dutch side is filled with bargain shops full of counterfeit watches, purses, sunglasses and whatever else you can think of. You could pick up a fake Rolex for yourself and a fake COACH purse for your wife for about $60 for the set. We had to take a water taxi to all of the good stuff...
I stumbled into a liquor store selling French made ABSINTHE with 35MG of wormwood and bought a bottle to bring home with me. Having never tried real ABSINTHE I had to try it (and did last night at home. Amazing drink) and after a free taste I bought one.
The Dutch side was not so bad and had a pretty nice beach but we were saving our beach time for the world famous ORIENT BEACH on the French Side of the Island. After shopping around we went back to the ship, freshened up and changed into our bathing suits. We took a van to the French Side and hit the beach. We had reserved lounge chairs and free unlimited RUM PUNCH all day. This was my favorite beach yet. No Jelly Fish, some small waves and still blue and warm waters. Beautiful.
The D-Lux 4 came with once again and I grabbed some shots on the beach, which also happened to have some nude sunbathers. My son got a treat that day :) - Here are a few (non nude) shots from the beach...
After another long day on the Island we wrapped it up. We went back to the ship and got ready for dinner. We had two more days at sea before arriving back in Orlando, FL and then ultimately, HOME! More shows, more food, more events. This was my first cruise ever and I really had fun. The weather was nice and even though it was hurricane season we got lucky and had only a few minutes of rain. I am glad I bought the D-Lux 4 as it served me well! I hope you enjoyed the images! If you want to buy this camera for yourself, I HIGHLY recommend B&H Photo. You can click here to go to their Leica D-Lux 4 page.
You can also click here to read my full review of the camera!
Here are a few more images from the cruise with the Leica D-lux 4! All were shot in “A” mode on the camera with center weighted metering, usually at F2.
