300 by land 180 by sea. You only have a second after you see the whale
to aim, focus and shoot so it needs to be something that you can hand
hold easily and react. It works best to pre focus in the area where next
expected and stop down to f4 or so to increase DOF a bit. The trade off
is that you want the shutter speed to be as fast as possible to freeze
motion and counter act shake. For these reasons I've found the 500/8 to
be next to useless. Adding a 2xa makes it too hard to find the subject
in the viewfinder, frame, focus and shoot as you'll have taken the
camera away from your eye to scan the water unless of course you get
lucky. I've gotten lots of tail shots this way. A 1.4xa might be a
compromise. Don't waste film unless the whales are close enough fill a
good part of the frame, just enjoy the view. It's like with birds, seems
like you git a bunch of great shots but when they come back there is a
few tiny specks in the picture.
These pictures I posted this summer and were taken with the 300 from
land. Distance about 100-150m. see jpg orc1-thru-4
http://www.interisland.net/watershed/mike/At_work/
And these (recently posted) were taken in Nov from a boat with the 180.
One was through a window. distance 50-100m. see jpg orca1-thru-3
http://www.interisland.net/watershed/mike/bctrip/
And did I say don't forget to put the camera down and enjoy.
Mike
--
Latitude 48° 32' North, Longitude 123° 7' West
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