It’s hard to believe, but until a few weeks ago we hadn’t been on a cruise in over 2 years. It’s especially hard to believe when we had previously averaged almost 2 per year for a number of years before that. Our son Kevin recently sailed on a Norwegian Cruise Line ship and liked it so much he did another one late last year and has several more on the calendar. On his advice we decided to give it a try and booked a week on Norwegian Epic out of Port Canaveral, with stops in St. Thomas, Tortola and Great Stirrup Cay, Norwegian’s private island in the Bahamas. This isn’t intended to be a cruise review, so I don’t plan to go into a lot of detail about the cruise other than to say that it was good to be back on a ship, the food was good and we had excellent weather.
While we have friends that live and have lived in Florida, we generally think of Florida as a place to go to get on a cruise ship. But we decided to do this vacation a little differently and check out some towns that we have heard about but hadn’t previously visited. That led us to New Smyrna Beach and to St. Augustine. I’ll have more about those places in another post, but wanted to get something written about the cruise itself and share a few photos.
A couple of our ports involved the possibility of wading in salt water, which of course is not friendly to cameras or other electronics. So I convinced myself that I needed to have a compact waterproof camera in the event we got wet, and purchased an Olympus “Tough TG-4” point & shoot. It got good reviews and had a reasonable pricetag, so I bought one. In fact, these photos are all from that camera. I also took the Fuji, and it managed to make its share of photos too.
Unfortunately, I never had a chance to test the waterproofness of the Olympus. Our catamaran sail to Jost Van Dyke took us practically onto the beach and I barely got my shorts wet getting ashore. And we ended up not going to the private island, preferring instead to enjoy the relative peace and quiet on the ship while most of the other 4,000+ passengers stood in line for drinks and a buffet lunch. It also gave me a chance to take a few photos on board the ship without having to worry about the paranoid and camera shy. I did say it wasn’t our first cruise!
Excellent shots, Tom. I hope you never have to find out how “tough” the TG4 is.
Thanks, Ken. Me too! Funny thing is that one of the reviews I read was comparing it to a similar camera from Panasonic. While they were doing side by side testing they accidentally dropped the Panasonic and it went off a 40 foot cliff onto rock. So what did they do? They dropped the Olympus too, and both survived, scratched but functional! At least that’s their story…. 😉
Love this series of images with its primary focus on shadows, one of my check subjects. i may have to favorite out this camera, not to purchase, but to know more about it. I am a photographer who prefers the camera rather than the phone camera to bring home images of the times I’m out and about.
Good food, you say?
There is no shortage of shadows on cruise ships since there is often plenty of sun! I’m often pleasantly surprised by the quality of a good point & shoot camera. The images get a little noisy if I adjust the exposure too much, but the lens is excellent and overall quality is very good for an investment under $400. As good as our phones are, there are times when I really don’t want my phone, especially when I’m around salt water. And I got the red model, so I look like a real amateur instead of the (not so) stealthy pro. 😉
And yes, the food on NCL was easily as good as most of the food on other lines we’ve been on. If I had any complaints at all it would be the sheer number of people. 4000+ passengers is more like a small city than a cruise ship, in my opinion.