Camera advice for Alaska Cruise/Tour
 

My wife and I have an Alaska cruise tour scheduled in August and we think that we probably need a better camera than the ones on our phones. We have Samsung A13 5G phones which take fantastic pictures, but when you try to zoom in the shots become pixelated. Our daughter (who is going with us) has a Samsung S21 and the camera is better, but I'm not sure if it is good enough.

Do any of you have suggestions about what type of camera we should buy? Will a point and shoot be good enough or should we get a DSLR? I really hate the idea of paying a lot of money for a camera that will likely go in the box wih my 40 year old Nikon 35mm camera to never be used again, but Amazon has Canon Rebel camera kits for $400 which is cheaper than what I am paying for most of the excursions that we will be taking in Alaska.

I have ordered one of the monoculars which can attach to your phone and used as a zoom lense, so that might solve the problem. I'll test it tomorrow when it arrives from Amazon.

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

I have taken an Alaska cruise with just an iphone and agree with your assessment. One of the other passengers had a camera and lens that probably cost as much as the cruise itself. I wish I had done what you are doing now.

Still, even without the best pictures the trip was fantastic. The memories alone are worth the price.

Not sure your budget but you could buy the latest canon rebel and use the rest of your money on a telephoto lens like the canon 55-250mm. It's versatile and doesn't break the bank. Also, there are 3rd party lenses that work well such as Tamron and Sigma. Now, if money is not an issue, the sky is the limit! lol

I agree that the Rebel is a nice camera as I used one for years. I would look at getting a telephoto that would go from roughly 25 to 200 as that you give you the flexibility to get the wide angle shots as well as zooming up closer. Since you are not an avid photographer (yet), buying a used lens from a reputable place would get more bang for the buck. One lens that I have used for 25 years is a Tamron 18-250. It is light and works very well. I am sure that there are other choices as well.

A quick search on google found

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Amazon.com

Make sure that you have a Canon mount on the lens.

Also, take time to learn some of the features on your new camera. Being able to quickly switch to motor drive will enable you to get the perfect shot of whales coming to the surface. Also, learning how to adjust the light balance will be helpful. Or you just go with AWB (automatic white balance.)

Finally, buy a large memory card or two. I currently use 32 GB cards when I travel. You don't want to be editing pictures on the fly. That can lead to accidently eliminating pictures you really want to keep.

Most importantly, have fun.

You can also copy your photos from the camera or memory card to the cloud. I use my Google drive for storage of important files. Anyone who has a Google account has a Google drive with up to 15 gb of free data storage. Most people don't even know they have it. Go to drive.google.com. FYI, a 32 gb memory card will hold thousands of photos.

What do you plan on doing with your photos once taken? Most of mine are never to been seen again once posted to social media. So I wouldn’t invest too much in a big system, especially if the old one is collecting dust. Besides, do you really want to lug around all kinds of equipment (camera, multiple lenses, cases and chargers)?

Why not break out the old 35mm and see if it brings you new joy?

Another option; if you just want photos and don’t want to be a “Proud Photographer” would be to buddy up with a shipmate and buy a few of their choice photos.

If you’re still wanting a new camera after all that, get a point and shoot. Don’t need lots of equipment, they’re small, lightweight and easy to use. Keep in mind the basics ; big aperture, good zoom (if you want to shoot wildlife vs landscape) and decent amount of megapixels (10-20 max). Your budget will determine the rest.

Best of luck.

I'm not sure what a "point and shoot" camera is exactly, but is it any better than a smart phone?

Unless you plan on enlarging your photos for wall decoration, I should stick with something light and easy to carry - whether that's just your phone or a decent "point and shoot".

Enjoy the views while you are there, rather than lugging around a large camera and taking ages to set up the perfect shot, by which time it may have disappeared.

I have gone both routes but invariably travel "light" these days.

The Rebel with the Tamron lens I described is fairly compact. A 40 year old film camera will never compare to a Rebel in terms of capabiity, ease of use, cost per picture (film and developing is costly on a per picture basis), and you don't have to carry around film cannisters. The digital SLR camera of today has so much more capability than a phone camera. To be clear, I do use my phone camera whenever I don't have my DSLR. I just realize what limitations are there.

While I am not a professional photographer, I am an avid amateur. I started with an Olympus OM1 in the seventies, had a first generation Canon EOS, moved to a Canon Rebel, and now my wife and I have Canon 80D and Canon 5D Mark 3. While we have a variety of lenses, I still use the Tamron 18-250 lens I bought 20+years ago in many situations.

It is true that people have taken some great pictures with a phone camera. However, a Rebel with the appropriate lens will dramatically increase your odds of getting that great picture.

Finally, the most important part of taking a great picture is the gray matter between your ears.

Good Luck

I like the Sony Alpha Mirrorless camera line but whatever you get, be sure to use it before the cruse so you know how to use it.

Sure, I hope you have a sense of humor because here's my thought and hope it's appreciated.

Take me along to Alaska and I'll take my 35mm and take along the photos you want. :thumbup:

Just kidding!

There is an app for everything!
 

Go to play store and look at apps for professional pictures or cameras. Teenagers I know use these apps to take better selfies. The pictures I have seen using these apps are crystal clear and quite professional looking. Add the app to your phone and practice taking photos before you go on your cruise. Just a suggestion. Hope it works!

Here ya go for under $500. 25-250 mm lens. 20 MP.

Panasonic LUMIX ZS100.:

Small, lightweight and easy to use.

Google best point and shoot cameras for more options if this isn’t what you had in mind.

Photos better than an “Smart Phone”? Probably…but too many phones and too many cameras to make a broad statement. Gotta compare specifics models to specific models….it all has to do with sensor size, aperture and telephoto capabilities.

Thanks to everyone for you suggestions and comments.

The monocular is scheduled to arrive tomorrow and I'll try it out on my phone to see if it can work, but I'm not optimistic that it will.

Since I don't see us using the camera much in the future, my options appear to be either point and shoot along the lines of a Sony cyber-Shot that has a zoom greater than 30x and 16 mp or greater. Or an older used DSLR like the Canon Rebel XSI or the Nikon D3200.

As I said before, I do appreciate everyone's input.

MichaelG: I do appreciate your generous offer, but since the cruise, hotels, and excursions have already been booked I'm afraid it is a little to late. Maybe next trip.

After you've tried it out for awhile, do let us know how the monocular works with the cell phone !

Just an unasked for tip.... if you have not booked all your excursions through the ship yet, keep in mind you are in the USA, no language or money barriers, and the docks at the ports are filled with residents, many of them young couples, who are independent tour operators who live there year round (not employee's of tour companies who move personnel to Alaska for "the season". We've cruised in Alaska five times now on three different lines, (RCCL, Princess, & Holland A.) and all were top notch, HAL maybe a tad above the others, but we've always booked right at the port and have been so impressed with the residents we met, and the difference in touring with people who actually live there, each cruise was fabulous. Favorite places there for us are Sitka and Kodiak, and walking ON the glaciers.

Nikon Z50 with 50-250
 

I have a Nikon Z50 with 50-250 - it is small and takes amazingly sharp photographs. It has a larger sensor than point-and-shoot cameras. This kit has 7x magnification for getting shots of animals and birds. Use your smartphone for wide angle vistas.

Hope you have fun in Alaska!

Amen. Just returned from our second Alaskan cruise. IMHO: use the phone camera unless you can get a small enough camera to fit easily in your jacket. I saw folks lugging around cameras - didn’t look like they enjoyed.

:clap2:

I use an iPhone 13 max, and I bought it specifically for the camera. If I turn on the camera and press 3x, it turns on the sort-of telephoto lens that is the equivalent of a 100mm lens on a 35mm camera. By comparison, your Samsung—a good one!—has the equivalent of a wide angle 35mm lens and a super-wide 28mm lens. Yes, if you zoom on any phone lens, including the iPhone, it will pixilate or at least lose definition. But the iPhone telephoto is the real deal, just as sharp with most lens. If you are at the zoo, your photos will be much closer if you use 3x.

Did you order your telephoto lens for your phone on Facebook? I did that. It was a complete scam. A total piece of junk. It was not at all like what was on the ad, and the photos were so blurry that they were unusable. Getting a refund was a farce. If I wanted a 100% refund, I would have to ship it back to China, with postage costing as much as what I paid for the lens. I just threw it away.

The Canon Rebel is a good camera, but no sharper than my iPhone. Usually it comes with an inexpensive 50mm lens that is considered a “normal” lens. It will bring you a little closer than your phone, but not much. I edit all of the photos I keep on my phone or iPad, and I delete most of them and only save the best. Do you know how to use the advanced photo editing tools your phone has? They are amazing. I generally crop the photo, maybe adjust the exposure or color balance or saturation. I can make my photos look so much better. So can you. Learn how.

Here’s the big question to ask yourself before your cruise to Alaska: Do you want to take photos of majestic mountains and glaciers and beaches, or do you want closeups of bears and birds? If the former, then your phone and a knowledge of the photo editing tools is all you need. Don’t ever use the zoom function on your phone. Just crop the photo later. Below you can find a couple of my photos taken with an iPhone. (The bird is 3x, but the bird was only twenty feet away. The others were taken with an old phone. The originals are sharper than what you see here.) But if you want relative closeups of eagles and deer, the Canon Rebel will NOT do it unless you buy a very good zoom lens. At least 300mm. 500 mm is better. Think $2,000 for a good one, plus the camera. And then you need a good tripod or monopod, too—another $100 or more if you aren’t buying a toy. And then, when you have that lens on, you miss out on the wide angle shot. Instead, you stand at the deck rail with your expensive telephoto lens waiting for the right photo, then you miss it. Good wildlife photographers may wait for days for a good shot. You can’t do that. If you spend $2,500 on a decent quality camera and telephoto lens to take on this cruise, chances are you won’t get any amazing photos with it from the ship. Thus, I recommend that you stick to just your phone and don’t buy a camera. Just learn to edit your photos and improve them and stick to the big picture. If you see a bear a hundred yards away from the ship, just watch it and enjoy it and don’t waste your time trying to take a photo. Leave the astonishing wildlife photos to the pros.

You can find a book of my photos here. Forty year old slides taken with an Olympus OM1, but digitized, then edited on my iPad: Amazon.com

I would go with the Nikon Coolpix P 900, 950 or 1000. Buy It used if you want to save a little. It has an amazing zoom, takes great photos and videos and is lightweight. Have a great trip!

Would second all of that. On my fourth iteration of the Canon Digital Rebel. Considered them almost disposable as they were used primarily under water (when, not if, kind of thing). If you *really* want that long shot, this deal looks interesting. Amazon.com I have a similar "Bigma" and it is surprisingly "hand-holdable" with its image stabilization feature and a *lot* of fun. :-) About an order of magnitude less expensive than a long Canon lens yet with probably 80% of the result. From "outside the ropes". Flickr

I have no experience with this P1000 job but have seen what friends have pulled off with them and it's hard to believe - something like 3000mm?! Nikon Coolpix P1000 Review: Digital Photography Review

Reminds me of my Alaskan brown bear addiction
 

The bears could be back any day now to Brooks Falls. My summertime addiction.

Brown Bear Cam - Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park | Explore.org

If you're looking for quality wildlife photos the lens you use will be the key factor. A 300mm lens at a minimum. Some high end point & shoot cameras may be satisfactory if they have 'optical' zoom in the 300mm range, but that will cost as much as a DSLR and Lens. Unless you're willing to invest $1500 or more I'd stick with your phone camera and not bother trying any distance shots of wildlife.

There are companies that rent DSLR Cameras and lenses..

We have been to Alaska several times. I would as what are you going to do with all the photos you take? Share on the internet or make large framed prints. That makes a big difference. I do not recommend hauling around a big SLR and Lenses on your trip unless you are a photographer and I am guessing you are not. If you have a recent upper tier cell phone the cameras very good. If not I would look at a small camera with a good zoom lens and a good wide angle lens. I would also recommend a GoPro camera and selfie stick. The GoPro’s do great videos and still photo. One thing is for sure you are going to travel light. If it wouldn’t fit in a Fanny pack don’t take it.

Got a nikon dslr for 2 hundo

2 birds--1stone.
Get a Pixel 6 Pro phone ($565 on Amazon) has 4x optical telephoto and best quality available today.

I did the Alaska cruise three or four years ago and I brought along several large lenses and a decent tripod in its own custom case just for the purposes of having all the options for getting great photos during the trip. I achieved what I wanted but I wished I could do it all over again having had that initial experience.

I would suggest making your equipment choice based on your itinerary and any excursions you plan to take. Are you planning for nature shots? Glaciers? Whale watching? All three can be achieved with a moderate camera investment. Whale watching generally requires a high-quality, high-speed lens. This may be a pain to lug around. However, if you call ahead to the excursion company, you check for ones that will offer their photos as an add-on for the excursion package. This will save you time, money, and the hassle of lugging heavy gear around on a small boat that will be at a safe distance away.

Most of the nature shots can be achieved with an average lens. I would usually keep a 70-200m lens ready for this purpose. Shooting glaciers I would recommend a good tripod to squeeze out maximum detail, especially if stitching together several frames for a panorama. This is my one regret, not getting enough frames in my field of view for the panorama – I was trying to get all of the glacier I could and missed getting shots in the foreground of the glacier and the little ‘burgs in front of me. Did manage to get some of the calving. Another reason why a tripod is helpful.

One last funny thing to share. On the nature hike/whale watching excursion we had the joy of this annoying, young Instagram California couple on our boat. They brought along this tiny plastic Polaroid Instamatic camera hoping to get their Instagram selfies with the whales. After repeated failures, they attempted to “hire” those of us who planned ahead with the right gear and proper clothing. No one agreed to offer our photos to them. By the end of the excursion the rest of us in the group were ready to feed this annoying couple to the bears so they could have all the close up selfies they wanted.

I recently took a trip to Israel. I bought a new camera for the trip. On the first day the battery ran down half way through our adventure. I started using my iPhone. The iPhone pictures are just as good as the Minolta. I’d pass on getting a new camera.

Get an iPhone, it’s the 1st pro camera that you can also use as a phone and computer. We have a very nice point and shoot but the iPhone is much better.

For the best pictures, I use a new Nikon 35mm with 3 different lenses. The camera body cost $1000, the 3 lenses cost more than the camera.
If you get in this hobby, make sure you decide what brand you want to go with because levees are not interchangeable, a Nikon won’t work with canon or Sony, and lenses will probably cost you more than the camera itself.
When buying new lenses, make sure that they have VR capability for a blur free picture. You would hate to take 1 off pics and after reviewing the picture, you found out it was blurry.
Get multiple batteries, charger, and multiple SD cards. Get a couple 128G or a bunch of 64G cards, they are pretty cheap. Once you fill them up, put them in your bag, and put in a new card. When you get home, you can load these pictures into your computer from these cards.

It’s not so much the camera that you need as it is the power of the magnification of the lens in Alaska. The best photography investment we ever made was a Tamron “vacation lens” for our Canon EOS Rebel. It is the Tamron 18-300mm lens and handles what the stock lens that comes with the camera body does plus significant telephoto range. It is the only lens we bring when traveling. I highly recommend this lens (Father’s Day is coming). My best advice is also to bring extra batteries and memory cards for whatever camera you do choose to bring, and change the memory card out every couple of days. This way if something should happen to the camera or the card you only lose part not all of your vacation memories. We leave tomorrow for another Alaskan adventure- this time to our two remaining Alaska National Parks Kobuk Valley and Gates of the Arctic. Enjoy every second of your Alaskan adventure! It truly is the trip of a lifetime!

I can’t opine on Android phones, but iPhone 14’s have cameras with resolutions equal to or better than “regular” cameras costing $200-300.

You used a key word—zoom. When you zoom the camera in a phone or even a real camera, you are actually discarding pixels, making enlargements look more “pixelated”.

I’d recommend getting the most current version of an Android or iPhone. Then when you take pictures, don’t use the zoom feature. If you think you’ll need to photograoh a subject a long ways away, buy a small accessory telephoto lens. There are several manufacturers—Moment is a good one. You’ll need the accessory lens plus a phone case to mount it on. Then use the accessory lens, NOT the zoom feature on either the phone or camera.

Unless you don’t print your photographs larger than 8x10 or maybe 11x14, and if you avoid zooming, you’ll produce prints that aren’t the least bit pixelated.

Save your money as well as the space needed to lug a full-sized camera on vacation. Get a current version of a phone camera.

Alaska trip
 

Take two sets of binoculars! You will wish you did. When you are up very early in the mornings and outside with the park nature guide, you will only be able to see things with them. If not, it’s a waste of time to get up early.

I have taken many trips globally where I wanted a serious zoom lens, particularly for animals. I used to drag along all kinds of camera equipment including big cameras and big lenses. The problem is that a significant amount of my time and effort was lugging this stuff around.

Today, I have a Canon PowerShot SX620 Digital Camera w/25x Optical Zoom. It's so small it can go in my pocket. My last big camera had a 50X zoom lens, but 25X ain't bad for an optical zoom, plus this camera also does a pretty good wide angle shot for landscape pictures.

If you are anything like me, I would take a serious look at the new, really small pocket cameras with a high zoom lens. The convenience is wonderful.

We use our iPad for pictures. They really look great.

A few years ago we took a May cruise and I took this picture with an iPhone 6. Having an iPhone means never looking for a camera.
You do need to move up close. I have a Nikon digital camera with a 300mm lens but I left it back in TV since I had a lot to carry. I don't think I would have dragged it onto the foredeck in the rain.

Keep it simple I don’t think one needs a digital SLR camera there are many quality digital pocket cameras with high pixel count

I think it is more important to know how to take pictures than the camera itself. A class might help. Not that the camera is unimportant but just think Lewis Hamilton in a Honda Civic would still beat me in a race even if I was driving a Lamborghini Huracan.

Alaska
 

When we went we used Smart Phone and a GoPro. GoPro was handy for more active things. Both came out well. Enjoy your trip.

I used my I pad that took some fabulous pictures.. if you choose to buy a camera I have a tri pod for sale .