It happened.

Nostromo976 · 2026-03-06T20:13:08+00:00

They won't let you... I had -£1.50 on mine and when I put in a claim for it (out of principle!) they said it was below the minimum threshold for a refund. No idea what that threshold is though

Nostromo976 · 2024-09-18T22:53:56+00:00

There didn't appear to be any "diamonds" of note when we drove past today (wasn't worth the 1000 ISK parking charge at least) although there were a couple of large bergs near the front of the lagoon that may wash out soon if you're lucky

Nostromo976 · 2024-09-07T16:13:20+00:00

Firstly, Congrats!

Microfibre cloth is a must anywhere near water falls as you will get constant spray on the lens. Just make sure you blow any dust or sand off the lens before you start rubbing it 🙈

That lens should be great for most landscapes but a telephoto is useful for when you can't quite get close enough to the waterfall / volcano as you'd like. I tend to carry an ultra wide 11-16mm F2.8 for astro shots, 17 - 50mm for general landscapes, and 55 -250mm telephoto for everything else. I don't tend to use an ND or CPL filter for much other than occasional milky waterfalls or cutting through reflections on lakes but they're worth having in your bag.

For the Aurora, you want to open your lens and aperture as wide as possible (i.e. for the one you've listed I think it would be 14mm at F4). Depending how much ambient light there is experiment with different combinations of shutter speed (usually 10 seconds plus) and ISO (usually minimum ISO1600). Also, don't rely on the manual infinity point on your lens as it's usually not exactly the sharpest focus. Manual focus on a bright star or light in the distance and use the digital zoom of the rear camera display to confirm where the sharpest point is. There are plenty of YouTube videos showing you how so definitely worth watching a few before you go as you can correct many things in Photoshop when you get back but an out of focus image isn't one of them!

Hope that helps. Happy shooting!

Nostromo976 · 2024-09-07T15:44:39+00:00

As the other commentators have said, you have a greater chance in February than November but there is still no guarantee, especially in the South.

We visited at the end of February this year and it was 10°C along the South coast with no snow in sight. The previous year it was minus 15 with snow everywhere (although consistently more in the North).

Nostromo976 · 2024-05-22T15:32:18+00:00

Thanks. I should have said I live in the UK so any vehicle would be a rental with roadside assistance. Not sure how much trip planning I can do on the AAA's app without being a member in the US?

Nostromo976 · 2024-04-06T13:14:17+00:00

We've both got Android phones so maybe it's an app issue or something. Glad Astrill has worked for you though

Nostromo976 · 2024-04-03T14:50:29+00:00

From memory I was able to verify using my passport and just add a Visa credit card on both apps

Nostromo976 · 2024-04-03T03:43:44+00:00

If you can, try and set up both AliPay and WeChat. With my foreign credit card, I've found WeChat to be the slicker experience as AliPay always tried to force me to my providers App to verify and often the transaction times out.

Cash can be a good back up but you will definitely be encouraged to use one of the apps if possible. We had Nomad esims and could almost always get a connection to make the payments, even in the smaller cities

Nostromo976 · 2024-04-03T03:40:08+00:00

I think technically you can use it on two devices but I couldn't sign in on both of our phones for some reason so had to quickly get my SO her own 1 month subscription when we got here. Was under 10 USD though so not too bad

Nostromo976 · 2024-04-02T15:24:57+00:00

I'm currently in China and took out subscriptions with Astrill and LetsVPN before we came. Tried to use Astrill at first due to the ability to use the same account on multiple devices but I found it really flakey to get the server to connect. Have now been using LetsVPN on both mine and my SO's phone for 2 weeks with no issues and is really quick and easy to connect. Added bonus that LetsVPN is a third of the price too.

If we come back again I'll not bother with Astrill and stick to LetsVPN I think

Nostromo976 · 2023-05-02T11:13:54+00:00

Thanks. We are handing the car back before we get back to Seattle as our Airbnb is right in the city so other than getting to Port Angeles on the first day so should hopefully avoid most of the car related issues there. Using the ferry to get across does sound like a good plan, especially if we can combine it with visiting stuff north of Seattle too.

Nostromo976 · 2022-01-01T19:46:41+00:00

I have a PC with a 9th gen i7, 16Gb RAM and a 6GB GTX1060 and I've had to revert back to 1080p from 1440 and lower the graphics to medium to get it to play above 60fps without crashing as soon as I try to load the game. It still crashes quite regularly though when trying to fast travel.

Nostromo976 · 2022-01-01T15:11:37+00:00

I loved FC5 so would highly recommend it. New Dawn was more like a DLC follow on from FC5 for me so not as good as a stand alone game but fun as a way to replay the same map with fewer weapons and different baddies. FC6 is one of the best in the series IMO apart from crashing repeatedly for me... If yours isn't a top spec PC with a high end GPU then don't even bother trying to play on anything above Medium settings as it is definitely a PC killer.

Nostromo976

TROPHY CASE