Hi,

Brest 2008 is a recuring festival that happen every 4 years, it one of the biggest old boat meeting in the world.

As Brest happens to be my hometown and my father owns a sail boat, I have the chance to see lots of dramatic seneries.

Shooting at sea was one of the main reasons why I switched from P&S to DLSR, I'm currently still in the learning process, so any advice would be appreciated.

Following is a serie of quick and dirty samples (no post processing apart from cropping and resizing, and jpg) I used 70mm/2.4 DA limited, Vivitar 135 / 2.8 (manual) and 10-17DA Fisheye.

[Jimbo]

All great shots! #2 and #5 jump out at you.. Thanks for posting. JIMBO

[NaClH2O]

I've always wanted to go to that festival. I've heard that it makes the "Tall Ships" festival here in NYC look like amatuers day. Thanks for sharing my favorites are the first and the fourth. Maybe I'll get there next time. Until I do thanks for the views!

NaCl(if a photo has saltwater and sails in it, it absolutely cannot! be a bad photo!)H2O

[timbo13]

as soon as I saw "Brest" and "maritime festival" I was interested, I liked 3 and 4 the best, nice shots of those beautiful square-rigged vessels.

your last shot (the fisheye, how appropriate for a maritime subject) looks tilted to me, which distracts my eye from the interesting sky you've captured.

[ghelary]

I'm glad, you liked it.

As I said there no postprocessing. I just installed a DNG viewer freeware on my parent's PC so can crop and resize, and I missed straightening a few ones.

To NaCLH2O, Brest is a very different meeting as the other "Tall Ship" meeting as it welcomes a lot of boats of any size, with the sole common criteria to be "vintage" enough (definition is flexible) Another difference is that we see the boats at sea which is a great pleasure for the sailman and the photographer.



Brest 2008 claims to have 2000 boats and 15 000 crew members, but that doesn't count the modern sail boats and speed boats that came in for the show.



In the mix, the festival this year welcomed some IMOCA 60ft and 50ft mono and multihull racing boats.



Their speed is quite impressive, in particular for multihulls. Given the crownd on water, it feels sometimes dangerous.



This time it was just an effect of optics.

Today I was on the harbours, walking among the crowd.





However I took much fewer pictures than yesterday. There is no way to take pictures of boats at sea even with some big guns. (I've met a couple of canonists, both holding 2 DSLR with with "white" lens on each of them and staring desesperatly at the boats kilometers from them.)

However, I would like to get you advice when shooting at sea, which preset, which lens do you use ? (For the ones praticing the same sport)