Mike: > A visit to the Pacific Northwet of the US is not discounted for > this porpoise. Sorry, couldn't resist.
Sure you could... ;-) > On topic part: recommended equipment? 1. Pentax (or, at least, K-mount) gear only. Whales are very discerning. 2. Assuming that you're using 35mm format equipment, I'd recommend most trying to cover at least the focal length range of at least 50mm to 300mm, if possible. 3. Whales may sometimes approach quite closely, and a normal lens can even be useful at those times, but most of the time you're going to be shooting at 100mm to 300mm (and sometimes wishing for something longer). A whale does not have to get very far from the boat to look pretty small in the viewfinder. 4. I'd suggest 400 speed film, to try to keep shutter speeds fairly high and/or to lessen the DOF-gobbling need to keep apertures wide open. 5. I've been on a couple of thousand whale watches here in Massachusetts Bay and Cape Cod Bay over the past 25 years (as a whale watch naturalist), and I've tried a lot of different equipment for the task. This past season I was using mostly a VS1 450/4.5 Aspheric Mirror on one body, a Tokina AT-X 100-300/4 zoom on another, and an A 50/1.4 and an A 20/2.8 in the bag (mostly for interesting skies and weather). However, as conditions change during the season, sometimes other lenses were substituted. 6. Plan on equipment protection. Besides the obvious problem from rain or other precipitation, salt spray is always a possibility (and much more serious than rain). 7. Off Vancouver, I believe that you would have a higher chance of seeing orcas (killer whales, which are really the largest dolphins) than of seeing the larger whales, although this would depend on the exact time you were there - gray whales may sometimes be seen seasonally while migrating north or south up or down the coast, for example. (Here off Massachusetts, humpbacks and finbacks are our "bread and butter" whales (with other large whales less frequently seen), and orcas are quite uncommon close to shore - I've seen orcas only twice.) Fred
