Whale watching

Good day everyone. My husband and I are planning a trip to California in late May. We will spend a couple of days in Monterrey and hope to go whale watching. I've had the good fortune of whale watching twice before but with limited gear, such that the pictures didn't show much besides the whale's back and one tiny fluke. I hope to have better luck this time -- I will have a D7100 paired with a 70-300 lens.

I would love to hear tips from anyone who has gone out whale watching, including whether I should consider using a polarizing filter when out on the ocean.

Thanks very much,
Gaby

Patience, vigilance, and it looks like you have a sufficiently long lens (with a great dx camera no less) to handle the task at hand. What is the maximum aperture of the lens? You'll lose some light with the polarizer but it can certainly help bring out parts of the image lost to reflection, including reflections of water on the whale itself. I would recommend a tripod because then you can have the camera up all the time with that long lens ready to shoot and you can frame it on the water in a way that you pre-focus close to infinity, and then when you see the whale you just rotate the camera towards it and shoot right away. You could even set the aperture so you have good depth of field going to infinity and set the camera on manual focus. That way the camera won't be hunting for the whale with autofocus, losing precious split seconds to find it in the frame. So you stay with the camera looking down the lens at your field of view and pan using the tripod for whales across the horizon so that when you see one you just shoot because where your eye points will be where the lens is pointing.

I have not been whale watching since leaving the Pacific Northwest back in 1987 but my wife and I went on several trips out of Friday Harbor. The killer whales were very plentiful there, especially in Johnstone Straits. I used to use a 300mm f/4.5 AIS Nikkor on a monopod and either an FE2 or F2S and high speed Ektachrome. Of course all of my lenses were, and still are today, manual focus but I used to "zone focus". Once a whale breaches, it is likely they will breach again so you first focus on the place they first emerged from the water and then use that as a focus point for additional times. I really have no experience with autofocus lenses so honestly I don't know how fast they focus but maintaining a good view through the viewfinder constantly will ensure a higher percentage of good shots.

My wife and I had the opportunity to do some whale-watching off Cape Cod a couple of years ago. I was shooting with a Nikon D70s, Tamron 28-300 lens, no polarizer filter and was able to get a couple of good shots, not dramatic, but not too bad. A polarizer would have helped on some of the shots.

polarizer yes. I think a tripod would be nice BUT it would limit your movement so a Monopod would probably be a better idea.

Thank you all very much! I'll check some other threads here for suggestions on monopods or tripods that aren't too bulky for travel. I think I'll get the polarizing lens as well.