Photographing Dolphins

[taffy12]

Hello all. I used to post on here quite a bit and you all helped me a great deal when selecting my camera and first set of lenses, but I disappeared for a while. Here's hoping in the new year to be more active both in photography and in sharing, especially on here - this is the best photography board I've found, cruise-related or not!

 

Anyway, my point in posting now: I'm planning a trip to the beach at the end of March and one of the things I plan to do is to take a dolphin-watching boat tour...and of course I'd love to get some great shots of dolphins! The problem is, I'm quite terrible and inexperienced with action shots! Does anyone have any tips, any suggested settings for my Canon t2i, any recommendations for lenses or filters or anything that might be of some help to me? I'd most appreciate it! Thanks!

[NoahtheRed]

Assuming you are close up, the kit lens will be sufficient framing wise. A WA lens like the 10-22mm EF-S f3.5-4.5 is a fairly popular lens for crop-sensors like your T2i. I mean honestly, equipment wise, you should be fine with whatever (other than like a telephoto lens)

 

As far as getting good pictures.....Fast Shutter and Fast Aperture. I'd even set your drive mode to continuous if you are comfortable with that. Do center point focus with AF on and just kind of open up with it whenever you see anything. Put the center of the frame between the dolphin's eyes and have a blast.

[Turtles06]

I agree with the advice above that when photographing moving or swimming wildlife, you should use the continuous shooting mode for your shutter, and shoot away. Take lots of bursts of pictures, it's the best guarantee you'll get a good one of a moving or swimming animal. But I would add that you should also consider setting your autofocus to continuous focus (if that's an option available to you, I'm not a Canon shooter), using the most focus points available to you. But try that out in addition to single focus as well, using the center focus point (as suggested above). Try to keep the animal's eye(s) in focus, as that will improve your images. Depending on where you are in relation to the dolphins, you may also want to pan your camera (moving the camera along with the dolphins as you are shooting, if you are parallel to them).

 

These things can take some practice. You might find this an odd suggestion, but if you have a zoo nearby where you can practice photographing moving or swimming animals (seals perhaps), you can try out the various settings and get comfortable. Or try these things out with slower moving birds (like gulls), as the concepts are pretty much the same.

 

A polarizing filter will cut the reflection on the water; I haven't used one photographing swimming animals, so I hope others chime in on this.

 

Have a great trip!

[markeb]

The T2i has an AI Servo mode accessed through the AF toggle on the 3 o'clock position of the settings cluster. You'll probably want to use that. Burst on a T2i isn't that many shots, unfortunately. You need a 7D for that :( .

 

A CPL would theoretically help, but not so much if you're using the kit lens; with the kit lenses, the front element turns when you focus or zoom, which will throw your CPL out of phase. The Canon USM lenses have non-rotating front elements. Assuming you're going to be relatively close, the 15-85 USM would be a great lens, and you could use the CPL.

 

And, as previously stated, practice, practice, practice...

[NoahtheRed]

The T2i has an AI Servo mode accessed through the AF toggle on the 3 o'clock position of the settings cluster. You'll probably want to use that. Burst on a T2i isn't that many shots, unfortunately. You need a 7D for that :( .

 

A CPL would theoretically help, but not so much if you're using the kit lens; with the kit lenses, the front element turns when you focus or zoom, which will throw your CPL out of phase. The Canon USM lenses have non-rotating front elements. Assuming you're going to be relatively close, the 15-85 USM would be a great lens, and you could use the CPL.

 

And, as previously stated, practice, practice, practice...

 

 

Yeah, I forgot to mention that. For moving targets, you want AI servo mode. And yes, my wife has the T2i and I have a the 7D. She always gives me a baleful gaze when I rattle off a burst of 20+ shots at 8fps:P

[Smilin'Wave]

When shooting wildlife or birds in flight, I use continuous autofocus & burst mode. It's also very important to have the eyes in focus. Also, you want high shutter speeds. Because a polarizer will cut up to 2 stops of light, be very careful in using one unless you have really good lighting and/or a fast lens. If the lighting is just not that great (brightness wise) you will have to bump your ISO up to make up the loss of light that the polarizer will cause in order to get high enough shutter speeds. This will introduce noise. Don't get me wrong, I love my polarizer, I use mine a lot. They are great for cutting reflections in water & are great for skies, but they will slow your shutter down. I would suggest a telephoto lens along with a standard zoom. A wide angle is aways nice to have too & can offer an interesting perspective. You just never know how close or far the dolphins will be. As suggested before, if you have the opportunity to practice before you go you'll be able to play with different settings. If you can't get to a zoo, how about a dog running around at a park? They can be great practice subjects as they love to run around & play. You can practice focus, panning & burst techniques.

[ikirumata]

Also, remember, with the T2i, you only get 6 frames of RAW before the buffer fills up. Nothing like shooting a burst...then something cool happens and your camera stops taking photos for a couple seconds while the buffer clears out a bit. If you shoot in JPEG, you will not have this problem.

 

Dolphins by ikirumata, on Flickr

Edited December 31, 2013 by ikirumata

[rhkennerly]

don't ask me. I've got an entire photo album of "where animals used to be": whales, dolphins, deer, bears.

[peety3]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that. For moving targets, you want AI servo mode. And yes, my wife has the T2i and I have a the 7D. She always gives me a baleful gaze when I rattle off a burst of 20+ shots at 8fps:P

My wife has a 5D3 and a 7D, and I have a 1Dx and a 1D3. She can rattle off 20+ shots at 8fps, and then gives me the baleful gaze when I UZI off 35+ shots at 12fps. Keep gazing honey, because while this one's reloading (writing to CF), the other one is ready for 30+ shots at 10fps... :P

[NoahtheRed]

My wife has a 5D3 and a 7D, and I have a 1Dx and a 1D3. She can rattle off 20+ shots at 8fps, and then gives me the baleful gaze when I UZI off 35+ shots at 12fps. Keep gazing honey, because while this one's reloading (writing to CF), the other one is ready for 30+ shots at 10fps... :P

 

 

Haha yeah yeah......but both of hers combined cost less than either of yours :P

[peety3]

Anyway, my point in posting now: I'm planning a trip to the beach at the end of March and one of the things I plan to do is to take a dolphin-watching boat tour...and of course I'd love to get some great shots of dolphins! The problem is, I'm quite terrible and inexperienced with action shots! Does anyone have any tips, any suggested settings for my Canon t2i, any recommendations for lenses or filters or anything that might be of some help to me? I'd most appreciate it! Thanks!

 

In the grand scheme of things, there are six variables/settings for you to manage. In some cases, "managing" those settings is as simple as asking the camera to do it for you.

 

1: Aperture

2: Shutter

3: ISO

4: AF "state" (one-shot, continuous, or on some cameras "intelligent" auto select)

5: AF mode/points

6: White balance

 

Anything else is probably cosmetic (saturation, contrast, sharpening, etc.). My standard approach is:

 

Aperture starts at one stop down from wide open, then I open up if I need more light and my subject(s) can tolerate thinner DoF, or stop down towards f/11 if I want to tell a story.

Shutter speed I leave to the camera's discretion by choosing Aperture Priority (which is technically aperture + ISO priority).

ISO starts at 100 (200 for most of you Nikon shooters), and gets raised just barely enough to get my shutter speed fast enough for no shake (which is 1/Effective Focal Length without IS, 4/EFL for the oldest IS lenses, 8/EFL for second-gen IS lenses, or 16/EFL for the newest IS lenses) AND/OR fast enough for action-stopping if that's what I'm after.

AF "state" is almost permanently set to continuous on our cameras, mostly because that's the only way to keep the exposure meter active beyond initial focus acquisition (in other words, with one shot AF, the camera locks exposure when it locks focus - if your scene changes and you don't release/repress the shutter, you'll have a flawed exposure).*

AF mode really depends on the tech inside your camera, but on the lower end cameras with a nine-point diamond, I'd suggest sticking with just the center point.

White balance should match the primary light source hitting your subject.

 

* On all of our cameras, I've gone into the menus and "changed" the AF-ON thumb button to behave as an AF-OFF button. That way, if I want to do a portrait using "rule of thirds" composition (in other words, "focus and recompose"), I leave the camera in continuous AF, achieve focus with the center point, then hold in the AF-OFF button with my thumb while I recompose and shoot. I find that adds a lot of rapid versatility and avoids accidentally leaving the camera in one-shot AF.

 

Also, consider a trip to the zoo, a vantage point by a highway, etc. for some practice. It may not be the same as dolphins, but it's at least moving targets. I'm planning to rent a monster lens on our next Alaska cruise, so I'm planning to rent it next month and shoot some skiers with it, so I can get some experience in a cold climate on dynamic subjects, for similar reasons.

[Ebvette]

Here you go..

 

[Krazy Kruizers]

Here you go..

 

 

 

These are fantastic pictures!!

[chipmaster]

Serious pray and spray hardware :D

 

My wife has a 5D3 and a 7D, and I have a 1Dx and a 1D3. She can rattle off 20+ shots at 8fps, and then gives me the baleful gaze when I UZI off 35+ shots at 12fps. Keep gazing honey, because while this one's reloading (writing to CF), the other one is ready for 30+ shots at 10fps... :P

[donaldsc]

Do not try to wait until you get the best picture. Put your camera in fast remote mode and shoot until they leave. You will end up throwing out hundreds of pictures but w luck you will get 1 or 2 good ones.

 

I was on an eagle shoot recently. When good things started to happen, we shot at 16 frames per second for as long as necessary. I took 4 or 5 thousand pictures over the 5 days. I have reduced the keeper list to ~300 pictures and the possible print list to maybe 40.

 

I am generally not an advocate of the "shoot and pray" technique but that is what you have to do w nature photography.

 

DON