Best Aurora Lens - Iceland Trip

[Sheiky]

Okay...I have followed this thread from the start and was anxiously waiting for some time to reply. I think your call on the Sigma lens is a good one.
My girlfriend, a good friend and me were visiting Iceland for 10 days exactly a year ago. We drove around the entire island using the ring road and I have learned a few things that I would take into concideration for a next visit.

First of all, it is an island with a landscape that I've never seen before. It is really amazing.

• Make sure you have a good kit of clothing. Iceland isn't actually that cold I think, but the wind and rain can make it feel like it's freezing a lot harder than the thermometer says it does. Wind and waterproof clothing are a must. I had Goretex shoes, wind and waterresistant pants and I had a jacket that was waterproof till 25K. I even coated the jacket again before going to be sure. Anyways, my shoes(high hiking model) were about 2-3 years old and I found out that they weren't waterproof around the edges of the toe, so basically I got wet feet. The jacket worked great, but not on the places where my backpack pressed onto my shoulders and eventually my jack wasn't as waterproof as I hoped. Luckily this happened a few days before we went back home, otherwise I would have bought some new Icelandic local waterproof stuff.
• The same counts for your camera gear. Even though I used "pro" stuff with weathersealing, my 70-200 F4L IS got some condensation behind the front element and focal display. Also my 5Ds's topdisplay became humid. The humidity was extreme and long periods walking in the rain aren't doing your gear good, the weathersealing will fail at some point if you're unlucky. An extra plastic sleave or something is recommended (and cheap).
• There is not much I can tell about the weather. We had dry weather up North, but snowy. Wet weather on the East. And a mix of wet and sunny days in the South. There's nothing more unpredictable than the Icelandic weather(you'll most probably fail too predict the weather
  using your local(home) experience). Good thing is that Iceland offers really good(and frequently updated) weather and road information. Use them! As said, the road information is really good. It warns for ice patches on the road, road closures, and even for closed hiking routes and Ice cave information. In our situation the amount of rain caused a few very popular hiking routes to be closed down because of the mud and als the ice caves were getting unstable at some point.
• We rented a 2 wheel drive car. Pretty much everyone else drives 4x4's. We got stuck twice in the north. Once when we drove onto a parking lot near the side of the road. The road was made free of snow, the parkinglot wasn't. Took about 10 minutes of digging with our hands. And one time when we had to park our car next to our cabin which we had to reach by going of a steap snowy ramp. Driving backwards with 1 person on the hood of the car did the trick eventually.
• Every car I've seen had spiked tires. The rental companies try to sell you some sort of all risk insurance for sandstorms when you get to the airport. If you watch the weather-forecast carefully I highly doubt that you'll get into such situation. Especially since the wintertime is also quite wet. In our case the car rental would become twice as expensive as is was, so we decided to take the risk. Anyway take some good photos of the car when you rent it. Decide for yourself what you want, I'm just telling this so the car renting company can't take you by surprise. Which they will absolutely do.

I'll see if I can come up with some more tips and location...hopefully I'll have some time tomorrow. This is also a good motivator to finally start to sort out the photos of the trip

As for lenses. I took the 16-35 F4 L IS and 70-200 F4L IS
I took 988 photos total.
660 with the 16-35, 299 photos at 16mm, 208 photos at 35mm, the remaining part somewhere in between
228 with the 70-200, 111 photos at 70mm, 78 at 200mm, the remaining part somewhere in between
I do have to admit that I take quite some multi exposure shots, so interpret this information in whatever way you want

Enjoy your trip in Iceland!

[Busted Knuckles]

I just want to thank everyone for sharing their images, hear their stories, suggestions, and tips.

And if any or all of you are in Orlando please don't hesitate to let me know I would feel truly honored to have an opportunity to host you and our home and provide you with at least one meal.