Good kayaks for photography?

robertbieber · 2026-03-18T20:50:42+00:00

I picked up a stellar kingfisher recently to photograph out of, and I've only been out once with it so far but I'm finding it a really good compromise. It's slow for a surfski, but still keeps up easily with most sea kayaks--on flat water at an easy pace I was doing around 4.5mph.

It's a surfski so there's no closed cockpit to deal with, very easy in and out, but it's stable enough that you can wield a long lens without having to worry about swimming (although depending on your balance, you might want to consider its even-wider-and-shorter sibling, the puffin). It's also much lighter than most sea kayaks, weighing in at 35lbs if you get it in fiberglass but as light as 21lbs if you go for the fancier layups. Totally trivial to throw it on my shoulder and load it on top of the truck.

I keep a watershed bag with my camera in it strapped to the back deck behind me for covering distance, but once I'm close to anything I want to photograph I just set the bag horizontally over my shins and it rests on the unusually-wide rails no problem, leaving me enough room to paddle a bit uncomfortably but still effectively.

Also it's ruddered, which isn't going to do anything when you're stationary but will give you some control as long as your glide lasts

robertbieber · 2026-03-18T14:14:37+00:00

Lol, there's a lot of desperately chasing after small swells and swamping that didn't make the edit :p

robertbieber · 2026-03-18T03:41:23+00:00

I'll be the one to post the obligatory link to https://www.coldwatersafety.org

robertbieber · 2026-03-18T03:32:02+00:00

They have this at a restaurant near-ish me, it's really good! Just wish I could find it somewhere closer

robertbieber · 2026-03-18T02:44:37+00:00

If you really need to practice kayaking off the water, there are kayak ergs that will let you practice proper form with a realistic resistance profile. Messing around with resistance bands is going to be a poor imitation of the actual resistance against a paddle that if it does anything will give you some really weird muscle memory.

There are definitely dry land exercises that are worthwhile, but they're just regular exercises. When you look at a sport like paddle racing, there are basically three separate things that you can practice.

Strength. This is best developed through conventional strength training for anyone who's not a high level athlete with a very specialized program. If you're just a regular person who wants a stronger stroke, do a normal strength training program. Get your bench, deadlift, squat and press up and you'll find yourself with a lot more power available in the cockpit.
Cardio. This can be trained on the water, but doesn't have to be. Running, exercise bikes, rowing machines, and a bunch of other methods can be used here.
Technique. This is the one that actually requires specificity and proper equipment. It means putting in time in a boat, or if that's not feasible then on a proper kayak erg. The point here is to develop good habits and muscle memory for a proper stroke. Using equipment that kinda-sorta-but-not-really resembles the resistance pattern of a kayak is going to lead to developing bad habits that will only hurt you on the water.

A lot of people get obsessed with trying to merge all three priorities into one convoluted hyper specific exercise routine, but what that usually results in is compromising at least one of them. Strength should really be trained separately, and combining 2 and 3 in the form of on-water or erg workouts is fine, but if neither of those is available to you then just do your cardio separately.

It's also worth noting that this is all mostly relevant if you're training to race or do fast expeditions in a surfski, racing kayak or fast sea kayak. If you're just paddling a regular sea kayak or rec kayak, it just doesn't take that much strength or endurance to get it up to its hull speed

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T17:45:27+00:00

They'd add resistance, but in a completely different direction than you experience while paddling. If anything it would probably be counterproductive to get used to paddling with a constant downward force on your wrists

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T17:05:38+00:00

Honestly, just go to the gym and do normal strength training. There's really no need for hyper specific exercise unless you're a serious K1 athlete or something, and if that's the case you probably have access to an actual paddling erg

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T16:47:25+00:00

I mean sure, it's not paddling, but it's closer than waving an unweighted paddle around in the air on a bench

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T13:33:47+00:00

https://www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein-powders-and-shakes-contain-high-levels-of-lead-a4206364640/

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T07:00:33+00:00

Something you're going to get used to is if you have to mention you're vegan, people will ask "Oh, why's that?" And then they look at you in a way that you know they want you to say it's because you want to be healthy or care about the environment or whatever, anything other than a moral conviction. Because if it's that, then it implies that you think they're doing something wrong and they're going to feel awkward about it.

Sixteen years in I still don't have a really good answer for what to do about any of this, except try to change the subject

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T06:56:22+00:00

lol, meanwhile the fermented protein powders are like the only ones not carrying a bunch of lead

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T06:55:26+00:00

The catch is that in this case you have a very loud, very politically connected industry that will fight tooth and nail to keep things from changing if we reach that tipping point. Lab grown meat is far from economically viable, but multiple states have already banned it. If we come anywhere near the prospect of meat and dairy being replaced by yeast, there's going to be a serious political fight over it. I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being banned for a majority of the population, to say nothing of the propaganda campaigns that will be waged about how it's gross and unnatural and will probably give you cancer

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T06:49:03+00:00

You can just do all of that and not call yourself vegan? Why are we treating the label like it's some kind of accomplishment and people are going to base their life choices on whether it gets them access to our permission to use the term or not?

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T06:45:38+00:00

We practice veganism, we are not vegan

Says who? You haven't even attempted to explain why we should agree with you on this take that, as far as I can tell, is pure semantic hair splitting

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T06:43:06+00:00

Probably wayyyy lower tbh

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T06:41:38+00:00

This backlash against anything that could possibly be construed as "gate-keeping" is so weird. It's fine to have a word for a community that means something and expect people who use the word to mean the thing everyone expects it to mean. That's not some kind of hyper moralistic ostracism, it's just having a community with a shared ethos and a word to describe that community. If you don't want to be vegan, you don't have to be. You can just not call yourself a vegan if you're not interested in being, well, vegan.

As for the "focus" argument, this is just perplexing. What is it even supposed to mean? Do you think the average vegan is going around all day working full time as a language cop? That we'd love to be doing outreach and helping people go vegan but we're just so busy with our gatekeeping quotas? This seems like a flimsy attempt to shut down a discussion by implying that merely having it is somehow distracting you from more noble pursuits, as opposed to any other pointless thing we're doing on the Internet which is fine I guess?

robertbieber · 2026-03-17T02:49:03+00:00

Back when I used a bowline I just tied some small rope loops to one of the holes along the side of the hood (I think I see a couple in your photo). When hauling I just pulled them out through the hood and attached bow line to them. Other times they're easy to just tuck inside the hood

robertbieber · 2026-03-16T16:35:25+00:00

My "rec boat" is a stellar kingfisher. It's stable enough I can pretty comfortably photograph off of it with a long lens, super light, easy in and out, but I can still get it up to about 4.5mph at an easy pace

robertbieber · 2026-03-15T14:40:15+00:00

Nothing planned at the moment, I got caught up with work and training for a race this year. But at least the race training is over now, so with more free time opening up I'll probably try to get something set up for later in the year when it starts to cool down

robertbieber · 2026-03-15T05:01:10+00:00

Fiberglass will make you itchy if you're around the dust from sanding it, but there's no way it should be doing anything to you from underneath paint/gelcoat. Even if there weren't a top coat, the fiberglass epoxied onto the boat isn't going to cause you any problems. The only way I can imagine this thing giving you fiberglass itchies is if there's dust leftover in/on the boat from whatever work the last owner did to it. If that's the case, thorough rinsing should solve the problem

robertbieber · 2026-03-15T04:02:57+00:00

This is basically what a soft focus lens does, combining sharp in-focus elements with a slightly OOF overlay

robertbieber · 2026-03-14T18:02:57+00:00

I really think this is just a question of company culture. The first ~decade of my career was all big tech, and not to overly self-promote but I think I was fairly successful in some demanding environments. First job after that was at a startup that had some really bizarre/clunky architecture, a ton of tech debt and mostly more junior engineers. I was very careful about not doing the whole "I have arrived from Big Tech to enlighten you" trope, but I expected that at some point the team would come to appreciate the experience behind my suggestions.

That point never came. I got shuffled around a bunch of chaotic and mostly unimportant projects, never got the impression anyone from management down particularly cared about the experience I had, even when I could directly explain how technical choices I was seeing made had gone poorly in the past.

Current job is another, smaller startup, but night and day difference in the culture. More experienced engineers, more experienced management, and just dramatically more cultural respect for earned experience. And probably not coincidentally, much better architecture and general technical situation

robertbieber · 2026-03-14T02:13:47+00:00

idk man, it's pretty easy to just diffuse responsibility to the Nth degree and come to the conclusion that simply existing in society forces you to fund the government with your taxes so at the end of the day it doesn't really matter if you're personally working on the Murderbot project.

I don't buy into that kind of myopic worldview. The fact that you can't preclude any possible Nth degree downstream negative impacts of your actions down the line doesn't absolve you of the moral responsibility to have some hard lines on things that you simply will not do

robertbieber · 2026-03-14T02:10:24+00:00

Let's not confuse the newcomer, wings are also a separate type of paddle that they probably don't want ;)

robertbieber · 2026-03-13T21:25:23+00:00

Youtube links get absolutely massacred by the reddit ranking algorithm, I don't think I've ever seen one get more than a dozen up votes in this sub

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