Suggestions for Arctic Circle Trip

We're heading off, next Friday, for a 3 week drive to Nordkapp in the Arctic Circle. Our journey will take us through Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. We shall be camping every night and making visits to several museums en route. We are also hoping to do a whale watching boat trip.

Although we are travelling in a Land Rover Discovery, space is limited so I have to consider carefully what camera equipment to carry. I have narrowed it down to:

K5iis + battery grip (would love a spare body and a sorely tempted by the used K5 in Srs's eBay shop!)
DA 12-24
DA* 16-50
DA* 60-250
Full set of hard and soft edge ND grads and full grads up to +10
Polarisers for each lens size
AF 540 flash
2 Cactus V5 triggers
Velbon Ultrek tripod
24 16Gb SD cards

I've tried to cater for landscapes, interior shots, whale and birds as well as I shall be capturing video as well as stills.

Can anyone suggest any 'essential' or 'nice to have' bit of kit that I've forgotten or would really appreciate having along.

My wife has an Olympus compact and we have 2 iphone 5s if thing go totally wrong

Any suggestions welcome.

Cheers

Ralph

Something for the midges.

But they are small, so you might want to consider a macro lens.

I can't help thinking that a picture of a squashed midge, even at macro level, will not make it into our album

Well then I recommend Avon Skin So Soft instead for the midges, and I'm not kidding.

I also recommend this, it works great for Scottish midges

Take more SDCards!!!

And visit Trollstigen on the way.

That is one ambitious trip. 3 weeks there and back?
It is 3335 km from where I live to Nordkapp, so a few hundred more for you.
A
Wouldn't Hoek-Harwich make sense

Sorry on my phone and something went wrw.
Anyway you need stacks of memory, an an even bigger stack of money. Seriously expensive lands. The Netherlands has expensive fuel, only a bit cheaper than Norway. Food is a shocker there too.

Thanks guys.

Avon Skin so soft is already packed

Trollstigen in on the route

It works out at 5500 miles door to same door

As my wife is coeliac we have packed sufficient food for breakfast and evening meal for all 21 days (although Scandinavia is quite good for gluten free food). So food bills will be reduced. We have also packed plenty of wine , ber and spirits to keep the drinks bill down. Now you can see why there isn't much room for camera kit!!

The first 1000 miles will be driven whilst running on free waste vegetable oil (the car has a 190 litre fuel capacity) after that we are at the mercy of Norwegian fuel prices.

Harwich-HoH is an 8 hour crossing. In that time we can be at our first campsite in Belgium with our feet up enjoying a brew. Plus the cost is much higher than the channel crossing.

Maybe you're right about the SD cards. I'll have to see where I can shop locally that does a good deal. WEX is only 25 miles away so it looks like I may have to head there

Or take the facility to transfer your stuff onto hard drive as well for back up and if you run out of space.

btw, when you get to Trollstigen if you fancy getting involved in doing a then and now 1986 to 2013, identical scenes then taht would be amazing. I'll have pics and GPS cords to show by tomorrow.

A battery charger that'll also work in the car? Hahnel do one, the UniPal.

That said, given the distance vs. time, will you actually have time for any photography

I did New Zealand a few years ago, over 5 weeks, and barely scrapped the surface at around 100 miles/day, and you'll need to average 3-4 times that.

Which version of Skin So Soft? There was a "Forest Green " or similar before and that was great but others are currently saying that some of the new range don't work as well.

here ya go Ralph, some Trollstigen pics from Augist 1986


The road that cross this bridge leads up to Trollstigen to the right:




The hairpins up the side of the valley:



At the top:




The troll at the gisft shop: this gift still exists and so does the troll. Although he stands to the left hand side of the Building now:



Huge lump of ice. Yes you can walk under it IIRC, but most amazingly, after 27 years .... it's still there!!!!







Looking away from the valley. this has all been redeveloped now and a weirs and a tourist building has been erected:



Looking down the valley:



and finally the friendly sheep getting their fix of engine oil