Photographing whales

[freedy50]

I am going to Australia in June and will be going whale watching in Sydney. I understand the boat you go on to see them has to stay 100 metres away from them.

I have a Canon 70D with a Tamron SP AF 70-300 F/4-5.6 Di VC USD Lens. Is there also a different lens I should have? Could somebody possibly suggest what camera settings I should use either for sunny or cloudy weather and the probability that the boat would be rocking on the water.

Obviously this may be a one off occasion and I wouldn't like to muck it up.

[Black Pearl]

Stick with what you have and just make sure that you use a fast enough shutter speed to counter the boats/whales movement. Use Auto ISO is you have to, setting a minimum shutter speed so you can forget about it and enjoy the experience.

[Donald]

I think Robin has pretty much nailed it.

Shutter speed setting? Probably a minumum of 1/1000. Aperture? Give yourself enough 'wriggle room' with depth of field so that you don't come home with with lots of blurred whales. f8 - f11? And let Auto ISO take care of the rest.

[John 2]

You might want to set some exposure compensation as well if the conditions are very contrasty. At that distance you may well find yourself metering mostly sea and sky.

[freedy50]

Thanks for your help. I'll keep a note of it to use when I'm there.

[Nancy Moran G]

May not be the advice you wanted, but here is a thought. I have only been on 2? Whale watch boats and I am a newb here, so be wary of my 1/2 cent advice...
1 trip was very rough with big swells and the other fairly calm and I had a point/ shoot with zoom.


The whales were soooo unpredictable, I sure didn't get many great 'forum' type shots, just snapshots. I switched to video, and filmed 20-30-40 seconds to wait on the whale, so I got memories and whales that way.
On 1 trip, a whale did a full breach not far from the boat!! NO ONE got it!! My son ran around the boat asking so he could give our email address, but nada! The Captain should (?) have seen the whale under water on radar(?) as it was surging to the surface (?) but I am not a boat person.

Is this a family trip or are you going for 'forum' type photos of whales?
Have fun, sometimes you just have to put down the camera and enjoy
Nancy

[skilsaw]

Whales scare the dickens out of me, but it is probably because I paddle a 17 ft canoe.
Once saw a humpback breach. Awesome. No picture.
Orcas in pods are cool. If nothing else, you get to see their dorsal fins.

What species will you be looking for?

[freedy50]

Its a special whale watching cruise they do regularly out of Sydney Harbour during the whale migration season. Its nearly 3 hours. I understand there should be Humpback & the occasional Southern Right whale

As well as my DSLR I'll also be using a camcorder.

[Saorsa]

Well, you are shooting with a crop sensor so that 70-300 may be a bit too long for your purpose particularly since the subject is large.

I don't know how close the boats get to the whales though so you might ask the tour operator.

This is a much smaller subject at 85mm on a Nikon D90.



and here's one I missed because the 55-200 was too long.

[freedy50]

As far as I have read they cant go within 100 metres of them.

[Nomadr]

depending on the conditions it might also be worth spot metering on the whale, comes in mostly medium grey (i guess ),spot meter works really well on a long telephoto.personally i would set my camera to continous autofocus too.cheers martyn

[Saorsa]

As far as I have read they cant go within 100 metres of them.

Sounds like the 70-300 should be good then. The lighting will be relatively uniform in the open spaces like that so shoot a few on the boat until the water looks good and the folks on the boat with you look OK at the shutter speed you want to use.