Sea Life

We went whale watching recently from San Francisco (through the Oceanic Society). I had recently bought the Nikon 70-300mm VR lens, so this was the perfect opportunity to put it to the test. They take you out near the Fallaron islands for an 8 hour boat ride, and you get to see a bunch of marine life. If you are lucky, you get to see whales. The waters were calm, the weather was gorgeous, and we got to see lots of whales. And we got to see dolphins.

I am going to violate the usual posting rules, and post two pictures this time. The first is the tail fluke of a diving humpback whale. We were close enough that I did not need to go to the full tele end of the lens.

shutter: 1/1000
aperture: f8.0
focal length 230 mm
exposure: shutter
ISO: 200

On our way back, we spotted dolphins at one point, and the captain slowed the boat down. This allowed the dolphins to approach the boat, and then for the next few minutes, they swam with the boat, repeatedly jumping out of the water, and generally appeared to have fun. Here is a shot of one such jump - you can see even see a distorted reflection of our boat on the dolphin. The picture also shows you how calm the waters were.


shutter: 1/640
aperture: f6.3
focal length 70 mm
exposure: shutter
ISO: 200