Shooting whales/dolphins advice plus a few wildlife randoms

[KJRPhotos]

Hello everyone,
I'm going out on a boat to look for whales/dolphins/seals etc this week and was wondering if anyone here has any hints for shooting them? Like good camera settings and do you use a lens hood when shooting at sea? I've seen people use them at the beach so was wondering if I need one.

In the meantime, some of my birds and two deer shots I managed to get. They are unfortunatly not very sharp, which seems to be a recurring problem of mine. Any hints on how to get better would be welcome =)

goldfinch

silly female phesant trying to break my bird table

male phesant

angry goose

some red deer, they were pretty far away

and a muntjac I was able to get fairly close to in the woods, although he wouldn't come out from behind the tree....

enjoy and any help on the whales would be appreciated!

 

[Cobra]

You Pretty much nailed the cock peasant
Though the focus does seem to be on the body rather than the eye, are you using single point focus?

The Muntjac seems to be out of focus slightly
and the goldie the focus seems to be on the feeder

 

[lammie]

Hello everyone,
I'm going out on a boat to look for whales/dolphins/seals etc this week and was wondering if anyone here has any hints for shooting them? Like good camera settings and do you use a lens hood when shooting at sea? I've seen people use them at the beach so was wondering if I need one.
any help on the whales would be appreciated!

I went on one of these trips last year, I didn't take my camera just my scope and bins. I did notice that at the end of each day both had a covering of salt from the spray, and that was on the top deck of the Pride of Bilbao. So watch out for this. If you can, get some form of cover to protect your equipment while you are taking photographs.