Photographing whales etc & birds at sea

[philc]

I am going to the Sea of Cortez next February to see whales, dolphins etc and a lot of sea birds, which I will be largely photographing from a boat. I use a Sony A550 and plan to take 70-300mm and 28-105mm lenses.
Question 1 : Exposures. A trial I did in Florida this summer showed that the reflected bright light of the sea often fooled the camera into too short an exposure for say a flying or floating pelican. The choice seems to be to bracket every shot or opt for an exposure increase on all shots. Any other advice?
Question 2: Camera brace. I saw someone in Florida with an amazing shoulder brace taking brilliant photos of flying birds. It turned out he had made it himself [quite an engineer!]. Does anyone know of a reasonably-priced and effective shoulder brace? Or, a better solution? [I had thought of simply fixing the camera to a short monopod which I could hold in my left hand enabling me to swing with the birds flight with the camera to my eye]

All advice to make the trip a photographic success would be most welcome

[matt wilson]

Re exposure .I would guess it's the overall brightness causing the problem .May be better to go for spot ,or partial metering instead of evealuative .

No 2 .Practice practice practice ...on any moving subject you can find .Which focus mode is going to give you best results ? servo tracking etc.I usually set a single centre focus point in such situations as otherwise you risk camera focussing off the subject.

[AndyStevens]

No 1. Spot metering is a good suggestion - or take a couple of test shots and review on LCD then apply the necessary +/- compensation (this worked for me while shooting Orca - photographically shooting of course).

No 2. Yes, single central focus point would be good. While I was with the Orca, they were literally coming up for 1 or 2 secs and then diving down again. After a short while, I just got in the zone and would hear them blow air out, spin, focus, compose, shoot in about 1 sec. I just held camera and lens fairly tightly, elbows tucked in and held my breath (I didn't think about holding my breath, just a natural occurence!). I also did quite a few with the lens on MF and set to infinity - stopped the lens from 'hunting'.

And BTW, I was using a 70-200mm f/4 L with a 1.4x convertor - wish I could find the video to show how much the boat was rocking - all shots taken handheld with no monopods or braces - and got some decent shots.

Good luck and enjoy!

[philc]

Thanks Matt and Andy for your replies.
To read it back:-Metering:Spot (or perhaps centre-weighted if a group?) Focus: use the centre area of my 9 areas autofocus area option (but I note your comment on using MF and infinity). As a habit I use Aperture Priority, but I imagine Shutter Priority is preferable here? Drive: perhaps continuous for the birds?

I shall be interested to read if anyone can recommend a shoulder brace. I note your comments Andy.

[AndyStevens]

I would probably use continous drive for birds and whales - I know our Orca were only up for a few seconds and I was keeping my finger on the trigger (only had 2.5fps then though). I would stick with Spot metering and Av throughout - if you see as many whales as we did, and I hope you do, you don't want to be switching modes as you could be missing shots.

And remember to spend some of the time NOT looking through a viewfinder. Our Orca day was truly special (have never seen Orca so close I could touch them) and I wanted to enjoy the experience too - got some decent shots in the bag and then sat back and watched. you may never do it again!

And check this - not suite a shoulder brace but...

[Eyeayen]

Re: Shoulder Brace...

Graham from 2Snap who photograph moto sports events uses some sort of home made device. Essentially a belt with a socket in it, I think this can be obtained from fishing shops, then he has the camera mounted on a tripod's ball head which is secured to a pipe that sits in the belt loop. You could make it yourself for not a lot of money I think, the ball head would be most pricey part.

Why do you expect to need that though, is it 'really' necessary ?

http://www.2snap.com/login.aspx I think I saw the article on this in Practical Photography about 5 years ago though, it may have even been longer than that so please excuse me if my description is a touch sketchy.

[philc]

Thanks again Andy, very useful advice. I learned the lesson about enjoying the animals without a camera in hand when I went to Rwanda in the summer to see/photograph the mountain gorillas. An awesome experience with them quite often in touching distance!

Eyeayen, thanks for your advice. I'm just goping away for a few days, but I'll look up the link soonest to see what it looks like. It seems people make their own perhaps because there is nothing really good on the market?!

[Eyeayen]

Er... actually that's just a link to Graham's excellent motorsport photography, no pics of the belt stabalisation device I'm afraid, I could probably make a sketch but it was very simple.

Belt on waist, cup in belt to support pole / tube ( Some where in my twisted mind this sounds like something specialist and very dark.. ) Pole has ball head on end, camera attaches to ball head.

It might be worth looking into rigs that actual camera men ( or the moving image type ) would use and seeing if you can bodoge, er I mean fabricate something of your own together.

Let us know how you do though and what you make / purchase, would be cool to see it and if it's any help.

[matt wilson]

Reading the above .Just thought that maybe the type of sling fishermen use on boat fishing at sea could perhaps be adapted

[6ozDave]

Called a '**** pad'

http://www.seafishingsupplies.co.uk/...***-pad-p-9037



just substitue the asterisks for b u t t