I know this isn’t your normal Swaylocks topic, but I have another back surgery scheduled soon (7th) and will be out of the water and shop for an extended period of time. I want to stay as connected as possible, and was considering getting into surf photography. I’m looking for a resource that could guide me to what a good camera setup would consist of. I’m looking for gear that would be good entry level, but would also get me to the next level without needing to upgrade right away. If someone knows a good website or has any personal knowledge to share, I would appreciate it. Thanks!,
There are basically two options to consider. One is a digital SLR with removable lenses, or an all-in-one rig like the Panasonic Lumix series. A dSLR is more flexible and allows upgrades as you deem necesarry. Do not get distracted by bells and whistles and the pixel count. Rule of thumb is to spend 1/3 of your budget on the camera (body) and 2/3rds on lenses. The most exspensive, high res camera will still take crappy pics you buy cheap lenses. Nikon and Canon are what the pros use, and even within those brand names there’s a wide range of options. I am of the opinion that the more control the user has, with the less futzing needed, is always the best choice.
Get a decent body, then upgrade your lenses as desired. Zoom lenses tend to be less sharp, unless you can afford top of the line glass.
For surf pics, nothing shorter than a 300mm will get you close enough for a decent shot.
This a 250MM kit lens at max zoom, from a good distance away on a Canon Eos t5i
Cropped and post processed.
Could barely tell it was a Wavestorm by naked eye and I got better than 20/20 vision, I’d estimate 200 yards away.
Would love better glass, it is a limiting factor in my eagerness to take surf photos, but one of the pro lenses is way outside my budget, and better than my camera body can really, fully take advantage of.
I Almost never use the other 35 to 80MM kit lens for surf photography. I do sometimes back off the 100 to 250mm as much as possible to get the wider angle, but most pics are at max zoom 250 with a 250th or faster shutter speed.
Taking video with these DSLR’s is somethng I am not even remotely competent at, I can’t use the screen and aim the camera properly. Miss every wave cursing and go back to stills.
Shooting video with a dSLR is a pain in bright sunlight, since you cannot use the viewfinder in video mode and the screen gets washed out from too much light. Trying to do video with a long lens is even more difficult.
I have friends who’ve had great luck buying Canon pro level gear pre-owned from this website. They even stood by their product the one time my friend had a problem with a camera body and took it back. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/browse/Used-Equipment/ci/2870/N/4294247188
I’ve been buying used gear from KEH Camera in Georgia for about three decades. Older models sell for low prices. They are honest in the way they rate condition, and stand by their sales with a guarantee
For instance, they currently have a Nikon D300 body in Excellent condition for $339, with battery and charger. When I bought my D300 brand new, it was about $1700. It does not shoot video, but it’s an all metal body with high frame rate and lots of features. A pro level camera in every sense.
Price and end product will make a big difference on recommendations. I just retired from being an AV specialist with almost 40 years of shooting film and digital, both moving an still images. 2 important parts of the modern camera are imager size and lens quality. The larger imagers will produce better quality, but it comes at a higher price and the larger imagers require bigger more expensive lenses for telephoto work.
I currently have the Nikon D750 with a full frame (old 35mm film size) imager. I spent a lot of time on the DPreview site looking at test images and I felt this camera had the best lowlight quality for the price and it was a Nikon. It allows me to use my old Nikon prime lenses, but I bought it with a nice wide zoom 24-120. I should have bought the 28-300, but it came with the 24-120 as a set. I bought a reconditioned 70-300 for a second lens. To get decent close ups for surfing where I live, I’d need a very expensive telephoto, maybe a 600mm or longer because the waves are far from shore.
I’ve used all sorts of digital cameras over the years, and unless you are planning to be serious about it, a good superzoom point and shoot shuld be a good starting point. You can get cameras with rediculously long zooms now and for surfing that’s what you want. You’ll be shooting outside in daylight, so you don’t need to worry as much about the lowlight. You do need to worry about shutter speed and that may push you to a higher ISO rating. I shoot surfing at a high shutter speed to get the action real crisp.
I mentioned imager size earlier, these superzooms use a small imager usually a 1/2.3" chip. I’ve included a shot that shows the difference in imager size. That’s the smallest size these days, but it is also how they can make lenses with such long zooms. I have had cameras like this and they were fine for stuff like surfing, and they also shoot video, so you do both.
Before the Nikon I bought and still have a Panasonic GH series 4/3" camera for it’s high quality and long length video ability. I really like the video side of these cameras, but I learned that if you want to be shooting pro-video, there’s a lot to be desired from DSLRs. They don’t have all the standard audio connections, and cinema lenses will end up costing upwards of $20K for a long zoom. DSLR lenses are not the same as pro video lenses, so for someone used to the way those work it wasn’t easy. I did get several days of great surf with the Panasonic camera, and the 4/3 imager doubles the focal length of the lens, so a 300mm lens becomes a 600mm.
At 600mm you need good stabilization, and a solid tripod. My video tripods are made for heavy cameras, so no problem there, but with a standard tripod you can have bad video.
Check these cameras out, then go to DPReview and look at what they have to say. For $500 or so you can get a good superzoom. A good DSLR will be about twice that and a long lens for a DSLR can go into the thousands. The guys shooting on the North Shore have lenses that are in the 4 to 6 thousand range, and they are not zooms.
One thing about B&H… they were sued recently for racial discrimination against employees. If that matters to you.
Sure is.
It’s beatable though; managed to pull it off when I took a turn behind a friend’s dSLR - found if I could rig up some kind of a hood to shade the screen and eliminate the reflections/glare I could see the image on the screen pretty well. That was probably the biggest hurdle. I did it by standing a bit off to the side of the camera so my shadow shaded the screen. Going proper old-school though (i.e. 1920’s photog-style with a cape/hood over the back of the camera and the photog under it) would probably be an even better way of dealing with this - just rig up your towel over your head to provide the necessary shade. What’s more it’ll keep the sun off you too which is probably a good idea if you plan on sticking around for a couple of hours to shoot the entire session.
My friend also had the camera mounted on a tripod with about a 12" long lever poking out of the mount (allowed for high-precision/fine-detail camera guidance), so once you managed to locate the surfer in the frame it wasn’t too hard to keep them there as they rode the wave. Trying to do this without the tripod though, (i.e. with just your hands) would have been a fair bit tougher, especially preventing camera jiggle. Maybe if you could prop the camera on something stable (e.g. a fence railing) you might be able to get away with it.
To get the surfer in the frame in the first place was the hard part; I used “landmarks” out in the water (e.g. the curl of a breaking wave) and used the relative direction and distance from these “reference points” to zero in on the surfer. Didn’t help that these “reference points” were constantly moving, and, as you say, you also need to do a bit of simultaneously keeping one eye on the screen and the other eye on what you’re looking for out in the water. After a bit of practice though I started to get the hang of it.
Hope this helps.
Cheers all 
Thanks sharkcountry, great info, I’ll do several re-reads to digest it all.
And to your later point, yes, discrimination means a lot to me. I’ll research the lawsuit and if founded, no way I’d do business with that company.
Phebus, you can get shades for the LCD screens that allow you to view them in bright daylight, there’s also some expensive ones that convert the screen to a viewer. I use a sheet of black plastic and make a small square box that fits over the screen to make a shade. Very simple and cheap way to do it.
With video, we use a remote trigger/zoom control for the camera that mounts to the tripod handle. You could do the same for a photo camera if you want to hold the handle and fire off shots. I like using my fluid head tripods for surfing because they move smoothly. That was something an old movie maker friend taught me years ago. Also because the distance is typically at the far end of the focus you can set the lens to infinity and not worry about the camera going in and out of focus.
Maybe try to have the lens set about f8 or f11 which is usually the sweet spot for best resolution, then set the shutter speed and ISO to fit that. On the point and shoot cameras, I’d try to stay at ISO 400 or less. Newer cameras may be OK at 800, but the picture starts getting noisy (grainy) on some of them. I can push the D750 to 64,000 no problem. Good luck and I hope you recover well. I also have a bad back, but I’ve been told to try to avoid surgery.
My advice is to concentrate on taking line-up shots rather than action shots. You don’t need a great camera for this and they are generally a lot more satisfying. You just need to be patient and have an eye for compostion. Here’s a fairly random election of snaps I’ve taken with cheap cameras ($100) over the last few years. For me a good line-up shot is worth a 100 shots of some dude doing a move on a wave. I haven’t done anything to these photos. I guess I probably could have straightened one or two out.
There is one spot there that any surfer worth their salt shoud be able to recognise. The others I’d give 99.9% of surfers on this planet no chance of identifying.
sharkcountry makes good points about a tripod. Once you get to the 300mm and longer lenses, a tripod really is a must. I use a monopod for my 300, but if I’m shooting with my 400, 500, 600, or 1000mm, I will employ the tripod necessary. For the 1000mm I have a very heavy duty pod with a good solid head. If I could afford a fluid head, I’d add that
Do any of you guys know where to get an adapter that goes from old SLR to DSLR for lenses? I remember hearing about this a long time ago… But don’t know if it actually got made.
That could be a massive cost saver.
Also, you can get generic waterproof bodies. One works by heavy duty latex and orings. While it is waterproof and reliable in that sense… I can see that it doesn’t offer extra support to the camera body/lens connection like a fully impact plastic body would.
That said, there are many photographers out there using this.
The advantage is that you don’t have to find an exact match for your camera and you can kermit with you.
2 potentially massive cost savers
There are lens mount adaptors for all major brands of cameras. I have a Nikon lens to Canon mount, Nikon lens to micro 4/3" mount, a B4 2/3" lens to micro 4/3" to use video lenses on my GH1. My century has a T-mount and I have both video and Nikon adaptors.
What you need to know if that the electronics are different, so many lenses will only be full manual, no autofocus, no auto exposure. That’s OK for me because my lenses are all old manual primes lenses. Digital cinema has opened a whole world for older prime lenses on DSLR cameras.
This will give you an idea of what’s out there. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Lens-Adapters/ci/3420/N/4077634486?origSearch=lens%20adaptors
Depending on the brand and age of your lenses, you do not need an adapter for a dSLR. I have 25 year old Nikon lenses that work with my D50 and D300. I also have 30 year old lenses that work on my Pentax K-r. I specifically got the K-r last year because I have so many PK mount lenses and it shoots video, which my Nikons don’t do. That pic above is my 1000mm f/8 Pentax lens I bought in 1990. It is all manual, but I use it on my Pentax K-r with no need for an adapter at all.
The age of your lens will determine functionality on a dSLR. Old, manual lenses require using the camera in manual mode. Manual focus, often no auto exposure. Slightly newer lenses that are autofocus may or may not allow auto exposure, depending on the age. Basically speaking, any lens made after 1990 (or so) will work on a digi. But again, it depends on the brand.
Some manual lenses can do auto exposure in aperature priority mode. Depends on the individual camera.
Sammy is right. Old lenses from a manufacturer most likely will work on a newer camera from the same manufacturer. It is possible to use a camera in Aperature Priority mode to get autoexposure, but it will be changing the shutter speed, or the sensitivity. Lots of ways to skin a cat.
If you spent money on good lenses 30 to 40 plus years ago, hang on the them. My old Nikon lenses are from before 1980.
I’ll also thow this out there, today’s super zoom point and shoot cameras do an amazing job. I have a Sony HX300 which was kind of a first of its kind when I got it. Now Canon Nikon and Sony all have super zoom cameras that blow mine away. Even if I had en expensive Dslr rig I think I’d still want one of these around for simplicity. Here are shome shots taken with my Sony:
Agreed, mako. Some people are better off just getting a good quality PnS that has good reach. Simpler to use, no need to change lenses, and generally more compact than any dSLR.
Yup point and shoot superzooms are really worth having if you don’t need “pro” quality images. I’ve used them for years even for “pro” work.