Winter always serves more interesting conditions for taking pictures from the cockpit of a sea kayak than the more settled weather of summer. It also has been a while since there was a post of sea kayak flavour, so here’s a quick one of those. Another reason for general lack of posts around this topic is that I frequently can’t be bothered taking a camera along. For years I’ve been using my old X100s fixed lens camera in a Meikon housing, carried in a deck bag; not because it is particularly well-suited to kayak photography (it isn’t) but rather that I simply have it.
For a long time afterwards the local fishermen told of the sound of clinking crystal and laughter rising from the depths, and that when the sea was clear, the guests could be seen far below, seated around the silver table, in their watery grave.
The X100s has been around a long time now, relatively speaking, so the second hand value is trivial, and while operationally it feels a bit clunky, the image quality is still very good. It is a bulky thing however once in the housing, I don’t always want that on my deck, and being a wide-angle fixed lens photographing with it can be hard work; trying to position my kayak, particularly when there is a lot of water moving around, and without ending up in a dangerous situation can be challenging. I frequently look at cameras that, once in housing, would be a similar size or smaller, but add some zoom functionality – there are a number of 1″ sensor compacts for example, but again and again I can’t quite bring myself to commit the ££, so it seems likely my X100s will be doing service for a while longer. Despite the limitations, the wide angle results can be super so, as there isn’t one presently online, I will sling up a gallery of favourites soon. In the meantime however, I caught up with a paddling buddy yesterday for a socially distanced spin up the coast in the permadrizzle for a spot of swelly rockhopping around Cudden Point and Prussia Cove. For a change I could be bothered taking the camera.
I would really welcome the ideas and experiences of others with respect to camera set up afloat, so if you’re a kayaker and using something more than a pocket ‘tough compact’ I’d love to hear your thoughts.
“Permadrizzle”… sounds very much like our local “sirimiri”
I like the sound of that word. I looked it up.. yes, exactly like that!