World Cruise - Day 15 - Jan 27 - At Sea

This morning I got up early (5a) to use the Internet to do some work online, since it was quite slow last night.  I needed to go online to Amazon, so I figured that going on very early would be faster.  It was actually the fastest connection I’ve seen since being onboard.

I made the decision to send back my Canon camera.  It is a Canon PowerShot SX230HS.  It takes good pics and is very portable, which I really like.  But it developed two different problems in less than a month of ownership.  The first one is the lens cover, which wasn’t fully opening or fully closing.  I probably could have gotten it fixed, but it seems to be something it may be prone to doing again.  The second problem is that a piece of lint somehow got inside the camera (perhaps related to #1, since I was manually flicking the lens cover closed) and lodged on the sensor.  So in telephoto mode, the lint became visible on the pic.

So I went to Amazon with the intent of simply replacing the camera with a new one.  We have a new friend onboard (Lynn Grant) who lives in San Diego and will be going home on Saturday, so I can do Prime overnight shipping to her address and she said she would bring it with her back to the ship.  So when I went to return the current camera, the replacement option would not allow me to do the overnight Prime shipping, so I just returned the camera and got the mailing label printed, so I can drop it off at a UPS location in San Diego.  Then I went to go purchase the camera to ship to Lynn’s address.  But I found that the pricing on the camera changed from $189 to $249 since I purchased it earlier this month.  So I must have purchased it on some type of special.

Hmmm….

So I logged out of the Internet (sitting thinking with the Internet connection open is not a good thing to be doing) and rethought my camera purchase.  I do like the PowerShot and the ability to put it in my pocket.  Very cool and I take it almost everywhere with me.  But I don’t like the way the camera handles shots with background light and the pics are only slightly better than my old camera.  In some cases, I’m pretty sure my old camera would have taken a better picture due to the way that it handles light.

What had gotten me thinking about getting a new camera in the first place was seeing the photo quality of friends’ camera when we were walking with them in Venice.  They had a Canon Rebel EOS and it took absolutely amazing photos, even in very low light conditions.  And they are doing a photo contest onboard (more on that later) and I can see that my pics really don’t measure up to the other DSLRs onboard.

So…

I bought the new Canon Rebel EOS T3i.  I got the 15-55mm lens that comes standard, I figured I can play around with it between now and Hawaii, then, if needed, can order a telephoto lens to pick up on Honolulu when we are there next week Friday.  It’s not pocketable, so that’s the big downside.  I may miss pics that I would have otherwise gotten with my PowerShot.  I was almost tempted to get a PowerShot Elph (even smaller than my SX230HS) as well, but decided to just stick with one camera.  So as of Sunday, the photos you see on the blog will be from my new DSLR.

Sonia, you commented on the photo competition.  Yes, I am saving my medals from the ping pong to give away for the Cruise Critic photo competition at the end of the cruise.  We are having a “Fantastic Fifty” photo competition with the Cruise Critic members where we all come together to share our best 50 photos of the cruise.  Then we will pick the top 5 photos to give away the medals (my first place medal and the four second place medals).  It will be majority rules judging or maybe we will get a couple of impartial judges from the group.  Anyway, it’s just a way to encourage everyone to share their photos.  We will then redistribute the photos back out to everyone there on flash drives to take home with them, as well as setting up a photo sharing site after the cruise where members can access these photos.  The idea was to limit it to the top 50, since most photographers have hundreds and thousands (and even tens of thousands) of photos from the trip, so getting them all passed around just means that everyone has to sort through to find the best ones.  This way we only submit what we think are our best.  I will post those photos to the blog after I return home in May.  There is also a photo contest taking place onboard with Princess by segment where each passenger can submit one photo per segment.  The winning photos from each segment will be judged at the end of the cruise and the winner will get a digital camera.  But that’s a separate photo contest from the one we are doing for Cruise Critic.

Here is a photo I took just before dawn of the Mexican coast of Baja California:

Here is my best sunrise photo of this morning:

I took about 60 photos this morning of the sunrise, then narrowed it down to the best 15 for Krissie to review and this is the one that she chose.  It may be awhile before I am able to shoot more sunrise photos, since we are on the starboard side of the ship, so we will only have a sunrise view when we are heading either north (as we have been for the past several days) or east (which doesn’t really happen, since the cruise is heading primarily west).  Although I guess I could go out to one of the decks at sunrise if I really want to get a sunrise photo.  It’s just that it’s easy to do while sitting on the balcony in the morning, having coffee and breakfast.  So it’s interesting that I can’t see the lint on the lens/sensor anymore, so not sure if it moved, went away or if I’m just not seeing it.  Hmmm…now I’m thinking maybe I should just get the lens cover fixed and keep this camera as a pocketable backup?

Krissie went to Zumba this morning. 

She got a great workout.  I took a few pics, then joined in as well.  Collette is the Assistant Cruise Director and the Zumba Instructor:

I don’t think Collette will like that photo, but she was moving so much that this was the only pic that was remotely in focus.

It was Sergio’s 75^th birthday, so all of the girls gave him a big group hug.  I missed that photo op, but Collette gave Sergio a hug at the end of the class:

I won at ping pong today, I beat Dave in the finals (he beat me yesterday).  On any given day, about six different people could win.  So two gold medals and four silver medals so far.  I also ordered a silicon paddle to be delivered to our San Diego friend, so I’ll have a good paddle for the rest of the cruise.  I should have brought mine from home.  Brandon, do you think it’s OK to use a good paddle when everyone else is using a dimple paddle?  I’ll probably only play every other day.

Krissie and I saw a whale today.  Do you see it in the photo below? (hint: look at where the person is pointing)

Do you see it?  Does this help?

I know, difficult to spot.  And very difficult to photograph.  How about this pic?

OK, so that wasn’t my photo, that was actually my screen background on my laptop today.  I have a new Acer laptop and that is the Microsoft Signature background that just happened to rotate thru today.  Maybe one day I will be able to take photos like that as well.

The other thing we saw was dolphins jumping high in the air and doing flips.  They did it four times in a row.  No, I didn’t get photos, but we really enjoyed the show.

They had the photo contest for the first segment of the cruise today.  Here are all of the entries:

The introspective monkey toward the top left won the competition and a bottle of champagne and is entered in the finals at the end of the fourth segment for the digital camera.

We had over 60 people in attendance today for the Cruise Critic luncheon, organized by Sara Geigel.  The Executive Chef (Anthony Cortese) came out to make a special pasta for us and the Maître d’Hôtel (Carlos Da Rosa) helped with serving.

They are all a very serving group here on Princess.  I am very impressed with Princess all around.  I used my gold medal at the Cruise Critic luncheon today.  I gave it to Sergio for “Most Outstanding Male Performance in Zumba” and in honor of his 75^th birthday.  We all sang happy birthday to him.  He doesn’t seem 75 (as evidenced by his participation in Zumba), seems quite a bit younger.  He and his wife Noemi and very helpful to others and wonderful examples onboard.  They helped with our tour in Cartagena and are both great photographers.

We went to the Sabbath Eve Service onboard, which was hosted by fellow Cruise Critic member Ken Isman.  He did a great job of leading the songs and played his guitar for one of the songs as well.

Tonight at dinner was the parade of the baked Alaska.  Here is our assistant waiter:

Stephanie, thanks for your comments on Cassin trivia.  Now I also know the preferred beverage of Hercule Poirot.

Julie, I have three different formal night outfits, so I will rotate them during the 9 formal nights onboard.  And yes, they do settle your shipboard account at the end of each segment.  So the shipboard account is settled four times during the world cruise (in San Diego, Sydney, Singapore and Venice).

Tomorrow is San Diego and we will be able to call our kids for free.  Yay!