Tips for Shooting from a Small Moving Boat

Going on my first visit to Ecuador later this year and will be spending 6 days in the Cuyabeno Reserve. The wildlife looks to be fabulous there. Will be spending most of my time on a small boat.

What tips/suggestions do you have for capturing good images from a slow moving boat so they don't all come out blurry? Even when we (my guide and I) are "stopped" on the river there is always going to be motion. Just wondering how to address that. I suspect that for most of my river shots of wildlife I'll be using my Canon 100-400mm which is a bit heavy.

Thx.

Keep your shutter speed as high as possible. 1/2000 or higher if possible

You can PAN the camera, so your target is stationary in the frame, so the dependence on fast shutter speed is reduced. That can also help with conveying a sense of motion in the photo even though the subject is stationary.

And if you are not braced firmly to something on the boat, your body can absorb motion of the boat so the camera is less affected by motion of the boat...think of legs being the 'shock absorbers'. I am a sailer with decades of experience, so doing that would be more natural and easy to do than for a landlubber not having 'sea legs', admittedly. But even a landlubber can do it when the boat motion is not too extreme.

100-400mm is a great boat sized long lens. I've had mine on myriad boats of many sizes. (version 1 and 2, you didn't mention which one?)

Keep your IS on, and allow your body to absorb motion. Look at how a bird keeps it's head stationary while the body moves,. you can't do that, but you can help.

Keep your motions small, don't ever stand up suddenly!

Bring some form of rain cover. Hopefully you'll never need it, but I've been in boats where particularly on the return trip the driver opens up throttle, and even with a slight wind spray can hit the person sitting in the wrong spot.

Taken from the boat on the right;

IMAGE LINK: https://jakehegnauer.z​enfolio.com/p674770367​/eb4defa6c

IMAGE LINK: https://jakehegnauer.z​enfolio.com/p674770367​/eb4defa70

IMAGE LINK: https://jakehegnauer.z​enfolio.com/p674770367​/eb4defa84

You'll be fine. Unless there are going to be rapids or
you are going to be in a canoe or kayak or something, the river should be pretty calm. I was on a similar trip, in Caño Negro in northern CR a few years ago. The boat was big and stable enough that it was no problem. Just use good posture, brace yourself, and use high shutter speeds.

Bogino wrote in post #19174069
Going on my first visit to Ecuador later this year and will be spending 6 days in the Cuyabeno Reserve. The wildlife looks to be fabulous there. Will be spending most of my time on a small boat.

What tips/suggestions do you have for capturing good images from a slow moving boat so they don't all come out blurry? Even when we (my guide and I) are "stopped" on the river there is always going to be motion. Just wondering how to address that. I suspect that for most of my river shots of wildlife I'll be using my Canon 100-400mm which is a bit heavy.

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You shouldn't have any trouble at all with the motion of the boat causing softness or blur due to camera motion. . That is a total non-issue. . Shutter speed is often overrated, and many people have errant ideas when it comes to how much shutter speed one needs in any given situation.

The real issue will be the difficulty in framing your images very precisely when shooting from a boat that bobs around. . You may have the eye of a bird perfectly placed on the upper right "power point", only to have the bobbing of the boat cut the end of the bird's tail off. . Or you may have your lens zoomed in so that a deer is placed tastefully along the right side of the frame, and a dark tree trunk is perfectly lining the left edge of the frame, but the bobbing boat causes you to shoot a little more to the right than you had intended, which results in the tree trunk being excluded from the composition.

The other related problem is that you will really struggle to keep the camera precisely level at all times, which could result in off-kilter horizon lines and out-of-perfect-plumb verticals.

Unfortunately, I think the only way to overcome this challenge is to shoot a little wider than you really want to, and then crop the images a bit later. . This will allow you to rotate the images to restore vertical and horizontal integrity, as well as preventing you from cutting off things that you wanted on the far edges of your compositions. . I love very precise in-camera framing, and hate to waste any pixels, but there are situations in which this cannot be avoided.

Here's a photo I took from my canoe back in June. . A shutter speed of 1/800th of a second was way more than fast enough ..... I am positive that I would have gotten exactly the same sharpness if I had used 1/250th of a second, or possibly even slower.

Leave yourself a little room in case the boat moves unexpectedly. When framing a picture, you'll likely have both hands on the camera. If the boat moves unexpectedly (or stops, maybe it hits an underwater snag), you won't be able to grab something as quickly as you normally would. If you have a sturdy railing, brace against that. If the boat is closer to a canoe or a skiff, stay seated and well inboard. If the boat is like the ones @CyberDyneSystems posted, no problems so long as you stay seated and don't lean out.

I'm doing a private tour (probably 5 days and most of those days will be along the rivers). So in the boat it will be just myself and my guide and maybe a 3rd person that navigates the boat The Cuyabeno reserve are very narrow rivers and very calm (almost like lagoons) so I expect (and hope) the motion will be fairly minimal. The 100-400mm Canon I have is the ver. II. I'll have a Canon EOS R mirrorless and a 6D Mark II as back-up.

Make sure you take your gear in a dry bag.