On my recent trip to Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest wetland, much of our photography took place from small boats that were a bit broader in beam than a canoe. The boats had three or four rows of seats, with two seats per row, and were powered by a small outboard motor. Shooting from them was a bit of a challenge, but even so, we did all right. Although we were after jaguars, and were successful in that endeavor, most of our photography involved birds, and from a boat we were able to get extremely close.
Here's how I met the challenge. First, I raised my ISO as high as needed. With my Canon 1D and 1Ds I felt I could easily shoot at ISO 400 without any worry of image degradation, and that was my default ISO. Nikon shooters, especially those shooting a D3, could probably go with 800 from what I've heard! Next, I usually shot wide-open so that I was obtaining the fastest shutter speed possible. Between ISO and shutter speed I was insuring that I minimized the threat of movement either from current or from the other four people in the boat (my two friends, our guide, and the boatman). I used a tripod for all of my 500mm work, but I did handhold and brace myself for a lot of the shots I did with my 28-300 and 70-200mm lens. For the latter I bought the new f4 version which costs me a stop of light, compared to the f2.8 I have, but the lens is very sharp and so light that it truly is a joy to use.
Most importantly, I had my lens set on AI Servo rather than one-shot mode so that I could continuously fire, even if I was out of focus. I had my focus sensor placed on the subject's eye or head, so I often did not have it on the center spot, which generally acquires focus fastest. But here's the trick ... as our boat approached a subject we'd cut the motor and drift in with our momentum, and while doing so I'd just keep my focusing sensor on the appropriate spot and just fire away in a long motor drive burst. In this way, although I was wasting frames (big deal, it is digital!) I pretty much insured that somewhere during that sequence I'd have some sharp, if indeed not every one was not sharp as they often were.
Shooting a sequence certainly cost me in terms of cards, and I generally went through a couple per day, and it also cost me in terms of downloading time and later in editing, because there were more images to generate previews and to select from. However, when editing, I simply tag a couple representative shots from the sequence, since all are basically the same shot with the only variation perhaps being slightly increasing image sizes. After tagging these representatives, I'll select a few -- generally the closest or ones where there is a definite eye highlight - and I'll check these for sharpness. If they are all sharp I'll tag the best one or two and delete the rest. Those not tagged get deleted as well, immediately, so I'm freeing up disk space and saving myself extra time.
The important thing here is firing as I moved forward, rather than trying to time a shot and take only a few. With a moving boat numbers count, so don't be afraid to use your motor drive and fire off frames!
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