Shooting a ship at a distance

[David_892]

On july 23rd I will be in Anstruther to get a few shots of the QE2 as it stops o ff there. I also will be taking photos (hopefully) from there to Elie mainly of the coastline and ruins/Scottish national trust buildings - Neuark castle and th e salt pans at St Monans. Heres' the thing though I'm sure that the QE2 will bearth about half amile off shore as I think the harbour will be too shallow/small, and the longest lens I h ave for my MPP is a 203 Ektar in a prontor svs shutter, so any advice for shooti ng this, and some other seascapes ( hopefully I'll get some like Gustaf le Grey) . Thanks

[Doug Paramore]

David: Any chance of renting a telephoto lens for a couple of days? It's kind of late to be making any complicated solution plans. You might be able to beg-borrow-rent a long lens. The extra extension rails on the MPP will let you use quite a long lens. I have used a 15" lens on my MPP and I am sure it will focus at infinity a longer lens. Good luck with it.

[Ellis Vener]

I think you'l want one of the Nikkor T lens sets: more to the point you'll want the 600/800/1200 combination. These are all telephotos.

[Charlie Stracl]

You could use the finest grain highest resolution film you can and crop the negative.

If the geography allows it, there might some land or a pier that juts into the harbor to allow a closer camera position.

Then you could hire a boat and go into the harbor. A fast film might be required, depending upon the stability of the water that day.

[John Lehman]

You might try an old series 6 telextender (I think the brand I have is "telek"). These were single-element telephoto versions of the convex "closeup attachments" which used to be popular. There will be some image degradation, but stopped down it should still be OK.