Is sea kayaking dangerous?

Sea kayaking isn't particularly dangerous unless you don't know what you are doing. The thing is, most people don't know what they are doing! So, its very important to get proper instruction. See the list of instruction centers on my sea kayaking page, and remember, there's always more to learn!

What kind of kayak do you paddle?

I have two kayaks that I paddle regularly. Both are made by Nigel Dennis Kayaks (NDK) in Great Britain. One is a Romany 16. The other is an Explorer. I tend to use the Explorer for longer trips and tours and the Romany 16 for day/play trips. Both kayaks are reliable, suitably equipped and have very good handling characteristics. I highly recommend them.

What kind of camera do you use, and how do you keep it dry?

I have recently started to use a Canon Powershot S40 digital camera in a WP-DC300 waterproof casing. The camera has a sport mode which gives you the fastest shutter speed for the current lighting conditions. This is important because it reduces the camera-shake problems that are inherent in shooting from a kayak, especially in conditions. Because of this I seem to get significantly get better results than with my previous set up (discussed below). The downside is that its bigger, more complicated to operate, has a several second time-delay between pressing the button and taking the shot, runs out of batteries quickly, runs out of memory quickly, and is much more expensive. Apart from the improved pictures it has the advantage of saving me a lot of time scanning slides though. So, its a trade-off. On balance, I think its the way to go if you buy a big flash memory card (at least 128MB) and a spare battery. Its expensive, but you have to remember that with an analogue camera you have to buy a scanner too if you want to get decent shots onto your computer (don't waste your money getting shots put on a CD-rom at the camera store. They generally do a crappy job of scanning). If you want to compare end results, the Flattery pictures were shot exclusively with the digital camera. The Tromso pictures where a mix, with the digital used for shots from land and the analogue slide camera used for the shots from the kayak. The first group of Columbia Gorge shots were with the digital, the rest with the slide camera.

As for my previous camera set up, there's nothing fancy about the camera. Its a fixed 32mm lens point and shoot film camera (i.e. not digital). Specifically, its a Canon Sure Shot A1 and it cost me about $140. The important characteristics are it is submersible, and it floats. This second point is quite rare. Because it is submersible it doesn't need a special housing which means it is small-enough to fit in a PFD pocket. Because it floats, it doesn't negatively affect the bouyancy of the PFD, and I don't worry about dropping it in the water. Because it is relatively inexpensive I don't worry about losing it. These features are critical because it means I can always have it handy instead of having to land or fumble in a day hatch. I think they are essential for getting on-the-water action shots.

The big problems I find with photography from a kayak, particularly in rough conditions, are unavoidable water on the lens, lots of camera motion, and difficulty in framing the subject. These problems occur regardless of which camera you use. You can shake or even lick the water off the lens, but its hard to get it clear/dry. A small piece of chamois leather attached to the tether can help, but usually the net result is that you lose many shots. I typically lose 2/3 of the shots I take. The lesson is to take a lot of pictures if you want just a few good ones. To compensate for the motion you need a high shutter speed, which means either lots of light, or a fast film, but see comments later. As for framing the subject, you generally can't get as close as you would like to your subject, and when its rough you don't have the ability to easily operate a zoom either, and in any case my analogue camera doesn't have one.

I compensate for the above problems by: (a) wasting quite a lot of film - I use slide film, (b) scanning in the good pictures using a fairly high resolution slide scanner (Canoscan FS2710), so I can do lots of cropping without losing too much resolution, (c) working hard with the filters in Photoshop to sharpen the shot. Somewhat surprisingly I've found that I seem to get better pictures with finer-grain, and hence slower, film such as Fuji Velvia 50 or Provia 100, than with coarser-grain fast film. This is surprising because of the motion involved. I suspect this may be because (a) the environment is usually quite bright and the wide angle lens on the camera lets a lot of light in, (b) a cheap camera like this probably doesn't have a very fast maximum shutter speed. As for the scanning and photoshop work, I scan in at 2700dpi which gives an initial image of about 4000 by 2500 pixels (28 megabyte TIFF file per image!). Then I use sharpening filters before reducing the size of the image and generating a much smaller jpeg file (say 400 kilobytes). The whole process is fairly time consuming, but it allows me to resurrect some questionable shots. And its fun to re-live my adventures in the comfort of my study. There is probably a better way, but I haven't found it yet.

Despite the above difficulties, probably the most challenging problem getting action shots in rough conditions is simply taking your hands off the paddle to take a picture ... and its surprisingly hard to keep your balance when looking through the view finder. I am getting more daring and maybe even more skilled at this, but I suspect its going to get me into trouble sooner or later. You really need to be comfortable with the idea of tipping over, recovering your paddle or spare under water, and rolling up with your camera wrapped around your neck ... don't say I didn't warn you!