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I'm sorry, I have no idea about public transit to Infineon.
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Using Nikon's short telephoto primes for sports can be tricky. They are optimized for size and image rendering, not for the speed of sports. I have used the 135, 105, and 85 for sports, and it does take getting used to them to get good results. First, back button (AF-ON) focusing is a must so that you can keep focusing all the time. Next, play with the tracking settings in the shooting menu. Basketball is tricky because of the players moving between you and the ball, so try each of the 5 settings and figure out which you like the best. Also, I use 51pt non-3D to allow more of the focus points to contribute to the tracking.
Finally, accept a lot of misses. Since these lenses don't focus all that fast, you will miss. But the keepers will be worth it once you get it down. So practice a lot and figure out what settings work best for you. -
probably best to do this via email cohen -dot- mc at gmail -dot- com
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thanks. unfortunately i don't have any pictures of Chris, i haven't been shooting rodeo very long.
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for personal use, sure. but no reproductions, no commercial use, no use that endorses or promotes anything, etc.
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it's not that fisheyes are overused, it's that they are used improperly. fisheyes and wide angle lenses are (in the context of photojournalism) meant to be pushed into tight spaces. in my favorite fisheye picture (http://www.flickr.com/photos/1115/524760038/) you can almost see fingerprints. i get what these guys are going for, but they're mostly making landscapes, not sports action pictures. nothing wrong with it, but it's not for me.
when i go riding and happen to bring a camera, i don't use a bag anymore. I use a think tank hydrophobia which keeps the snow off the camera but allows me to have it ready all the time. no padding, but that's the tradeoff for readiness. if i wanted more protection and to carry more gear, i would carry a think tank sling-o-matic because you can get it from your back to front to get the camera out fairly quickly. depending on what lens/camera combinations you want to use, you could get one of their holsters and put it on their belt system, but i wouldn't want to ride like that. -
First, thank you for the kind words.
Second, to be very clear, I've only shot snowboarding one time. I have taken a camera and shot friends as I was riding, but the Vans Tahoe Cup in 2008 remains the only time I have ever seriously shot snowboarding.
When I shot it, I brought the following lenses 300, 70-200, 24-70, 14-24 and 16mm fisheye. I'm happy with the results (especially considering I hadn't been shooing sports for even a year at that point) and the site I was shooting for was happy, but none of these pictures were ever published in snowboard-specific media.
There is a very specific aesthetic for snowboarding photography, and that can be boiled down to "wider is always better." The majority of the people shooting that weekend had a wide lens and a fisheye and that's it. They went for compositions that were 97% of the pipe or the hill and maybe 3% of the rider. Their justification (and to be fair, they shoot what the snowboard mags run) is that it's more important to show how much air someone caught or how crazy the terrain was than it is to catch the facial expression of the rider. This goes against sports photography norms, so that's something to consider when buying lenses for shooting snowboarding.
As far as filters, the ones that would be helpful shooting snowboarding would be neutral density to give you some flexibility on aperture/shutter speed so that you could do some panning blur or shoot wide open to lose some of the signage that always seems to be in the background. You could also try circular polarizers to make the sky a deeper blue, but this is tricky because it will make the snow whiter and can blowout your exposure.
It's also good to have a powerful speedlite with an off camera cord. You don't get to choose how the pipe is laid out relative to the sun, so being able to deal with hard backlighting can be important.
For bags, I recommend Think Tank because they last forever even if you beat on them, and they are designed to get a ton of gear into the smallest possible space. They have backpacks and shoulder bags that I could see being useful on the hill.
Feel free to follow up if this brings up more questions. -
first i would say that getting the exposure and white balance right (usually a custom WB under the prevailing light be it natural or artificial) is far more important than picture control.
that said, picture control can help cut down or eliminate the need for post processing.
i experimented at a few of the venues where i shoot, just testing out the various default picture control settings, and then playing around with hue/saturation/brightness and sharpness settings within the defaults. my base is "standard" with a bump in sharpness, and i will adjust the other settings based on where i am shooting.
you can also use the picture control utility to alter these settings, and then save back to a card to load onto your camera.
http://imaging.nikon.com/products/imaging/lineup/picturecontrol/application/application.htm
there is no magic setting, just try a few combinations and then refine from there. -
yeah, don't use vivid. vivid will wreck skin tones every time. in film terms, it's like using fuji velvia for portraits.
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this has been my experience as well. i think this is a feature rather than a bug as i prefer constant iso when using flash
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unfortunately i can not. the only pictures i have of him were shot under a media credential that prohibits usage other than media.
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Matt Cohen’s Bio
Professional photographer specializing in sports and live music.
