Can’t you film a f’ing dolphin?

NO! NO I CANNOT! We get on the river this morning and have absolutely no trouble locating some dolphins. Piece of cake. Locating them…..that is….filming them…nada. They are simply……aholes. Yes!….I said it! And I would bet money that anyone else who has tried to film them will agree. Aholes. 1) They don’t travel in groups, so you can’t use one surface to gage where another is about to do the same 2) They never just travel…and there is NO pattern to their travel. Bottlenose dolphins for example usually surface to breath about three times and then are down for a while. Not these guys. And 3) They are simply stupidly ridiculously fast at surfacing. Ridiculously! We are talking seconds. Like two seconds! Literally! So not only can you barely focus your eyes in time but…a film camera? I try using autofocus….but they are just too fast. You have absolutely no idea where they will surface…NONE…so you just gotta be lucky enough to have em surface where you are pointing and then….maybe…. just maybe you can manually twist as fast as you can to get….the end moment of the surface. 

I spent about 6 hours…with this giant heavy as shit 400mm lens…..in the sun….hoping against hope. Eventually I realized…I cannot get film. When filming…in this camera….you have to judge focus using the screen on the back. You cannot do it through the eyepiece. Well…in sunlight….even with my glasses….to be sure and fast while filming this way….I quickly figured out….would be a miracle. My only other option was to set the camera to shoot multiple frames at fast speed. This way I could be shooting while trying to focus….and maybe get some frames that were on. It worked! This also gave me some sequences of movement because of the multiple shots taken. Fine. Fuck it. Done.

No these are not the best I got! They are just to demo. I still worried bc am not sure how to keep stuff from getting stolen…and maybe who cares…but… (Photos: JLewis)