Shooting with a long lens from a boat

I was out on the water on the weekend in a family members boat, I had my R6 with 100-400 and sometimes a 2x on top of that. As the boat I was on was bobbing away I was trying to track some racing yachts in the distance, however the movement of the boat was causing havoc with my IS (lens and body combo), it was so bad that at 800mm it was messing with my framing.

Is the only practical way around this short of getting a bigger boat is to disable IS?

I've not done this on the R series or with a 2x, but with bare lens I love the IS on boats. It really helps with the smaller movements anyways. I've had similar good experiences with the older 500mm IS and 1.4X t-Con @ 700mm, which when you consider it was on a 1.3X APS-H 1D series, it's not much different from 800mm.

I'm guessing the biggest difference in experiences may not have to do with hardware or field of view, but instead has to do with the amount/size of the motions we encountered.

Maybe a day with calmer surf?

OP, were you bracing the camera and lens against a part of the boat,
or was the camera and lens mounted on tripod/monopod?

I find that if I simply stand and use my legs and waist as a dynamic base to absorb much of the motion, it reduces the motion of the upper body and camera+lens. Of course, that becomes more difficult if contending with a lot of chop.

duckster wrote in post #19210496
Maybe a day with calmer surf?

Calmer day - no racing, need wind to race yachts, it's all done and dusted now anyway, have to wait a few years until next time but still hope to get out on boat before then.

Wilt wrote in post #19210497
OP, were you bracing the camera and lens against a part of the boat,
or was the camera and lens mounted on tripod/monopod?

I find that if I simply stand and use my legs and waist as a dynamic base to absorb much of the motion, it reduces the motion of the upper body and camera+lens. Of course, that becomes more difficult if contending with a lot of chop.

Handheld only, monopod was useless due to movement, wasn't bracing against boat for same reason so was having to use my body as a dynamic base, although the movement was somewhat unpredictable to the large number of other boats in the water.

Busy out there:

I was out on Wednesday with 1dx and 100-400mm v1 and found easiest was to lean against a waist-high rail and sway about. I don't recall seeing any framing problems but it was a 70' boat... I was keeping shutterspeed quite high though so really the IS might not have doing much. Our skipper didn't get us nearly as close as I'd hoped so apart from shots of NZ being towed past us, all shots were at 400mm and needed cropping.

400mm was workable, it was 800mm that was a real issue, we were not close at all, this photo (uncropped) shot at 800mm, you can see the effect of the heat haze too, not much to see in the end as racing was cancelled due to lack of wind:

I see what you mean, at that amount of haze you're just recording you've been there, with the only fix (getting closer) isn't allowed. I've always thought that a 2x TC isn't as good as cropping but I understand it really depends on the lens. Are you on the VI or VII version of 100-400mm?

Sorry for my ignorance.... but in the shot you posted, the boats in the foreground are tac sharp. Too my uneducated eyes (never shot this sport) it looks like the racing match in the back is simply out of focus. Now it is possible that the camera couldn't lock focus through the haze you were seeing - completely possible.

How was the IS messing with your framing? If you turned IS off... did the issue go away? Remember IS helps a lot with slower shutter speeds... at high shutter speeds is completely unneeded. If you were shooting at 1/1000 or higher...shouldn't need it.

Good luck... tough sport to shoot.

joeseph wrote in post #19210713
I see what you mean, at that amount of haze you're just recording you've been there, with the only fix (getting closer) isn't allowed. I've always thought that a 2x TC isn't as good as cropping but I understand it really depends on the lens. Are you on the VI or VII version of 100-400mm?

I have the newer one, was going to get the RF100-500, but got the EF100-400 at half the cost.

Croasdail wrote in post #19210771
Sorry for my ignorance.... but in the shot you posted, the boats in the foreground are tac sharp. Too my uneducated eyes (never shot this sport) it looks like the racing match in the back is simply out of focus. Now it is possible that the camera couldn't lock focus through the haze you were seeing - completely possible.

How was the IS messing with your framing? If you turned IS off... did the issue go away? Remember IS helps a lot with slower shutter speeds... at high shutter speeds is completely unneeded. If you were shooting at 1/1000 or higher...shouldn't need it.

Good luck... tough sport to shoot.

Turning IS off does resolve the issue and the viewfinder image doesn't suddenly unpredictably move

And yes you are correct on the focus, I just checked in DPP, not sure the DOF at that shooting distance: