There was a substantial swell over the weekend. Head high waves with way bigger in some sets. It seemed like every surfer in Southern California was trying to get a piece of it. I knew the tide was high at 1PM, so I headed down a little after, and as I was driving down the coast highway there were absolute rocking monsters throwing spray off of every jetty.
Except, the tide was lower than I expected. Because high tide was two hours before. I looked at the tide tables, saw 11, and my pea brain registered 1. Dammit!
Oh well. Stopped at the first open spot, which was next to the cold water jetty, so I climbed out on the rocks until I was almost getting sprayed by the bigger waves and started playing with the gear.
I first used the time to work out my video tripod with the 300-500 lens. Alas, I took 30-40 minutes getting set up, learning how to make the tripod move properly, then learning how to make the VR1 on the camera work properly for what I was trying to do. By the time I got around to still photos the tide had ebbed too far and the waves were significantly smaller and choppier, losing their grandeur. They had so much power when I first arrived, it was disappointing to not get them a their largest.2 That’s what I get for misreading my tide chart. I still enjoyed the afternoon very much.
The surf, and the linup:
North of the Jetty. Before I sorted it I was using too slow a shutter speed and having focus issues. I later bumped the ISO and changed focus to wide area S and continuous and got much sharper results. Here’s the first burst I tried:
There was a guy on a standup catching some monsters north of the Jetty, and when I was first there a couple of folks were making the right as well as the left. But by the time I was done futzing with gear everything was farther north, left, and running behind the north jetty rocks.
South of the jetty was into the sun, so the light wasn’t as good. And the waves there weren’t as steep and were getting smaller as the tide ebbed. But it was less crowded and there were a few pretty good surfers there trying to avoid the mobs to the north and at Terramar.
Basically, I shoulda got there earlier. Next time I’ll have my camera set up right, and I have the tripod tuned now, so taking video will go more smoothly as well, if I feel the desire. Another swell mid week and over the weekend, with higher tides later in the day, so maybe I’ll get to try again.
I ended the day over the lagoon watching the sunset. Since I had the ginormous lens on, I gave it a go. Nothing extra special here, just playing with exposures.
1. Vibration Reductions. Nikon’s brand of in-lens image stabilization.
Note to self: For video go with Internal Stabilization OFF, lens VR ON, Sport mode. This seems to smooth out the minor jumblies, but doesn’t introduce weird artifacts or cause strange lags when trying to pan the camera.
2. That’s what she said.