Surf Photography

General Discussion
1

I will travel a lot in the next few monthes. Along with me I take my new Canon eos digital Camera. Now my question is: Which are usable lenses for Surfshots. Sur the professional lenses are the best but way to expensive. Will a 17 - 85 mm lens (EF-S 17-85mm 1:4-5,6 IS USM ; multiplied by factor 1,6 ← digital camera) and a 70 - 300mm lens( EF 70-300mm 1:4-5,6 IS USM ;also multiplied by 1,6) do their job?

What would you suggest me? Both of the lenses have a image stabalizer so I hope a tripod is not necessary.

Cheers Clemens

2

Hi Clemens,

The lenses you mention should be all you will need, especially if you shoot at very high resolution and crop the images to a reasonable size. I found that a 400mm fixed length lens ( with a 35mm SLR Olympus ) gave me as much telephoto as I could want, out to about 500M.

You should, I think, shoot at as large an f-stop number as you can, consistent with a 1/500 sec or faster exposure ( and certainly no longer than 1/250 sec) , for good depth of field and no ‘out-of-focus’ problems. But… those slower speed versus small aperture shots can be ruined by camera shake, etc.

I would suggest adding a tripod or monopod to your kit, they can be quite compact and will let you use a small f-stop for good depth of field. I use Davis and Sanford tripods ( http://www.tiffen.com/tripod_page.htm) equivalent to the current Magnum XL line ( or this one here: http://kneed4speed.com/images/Scan570.jpg ) and I have been happy with them while my pro buddies Awe and David use monopods a lot. But I like tripods for those macro shots you find, now and then.

Give yourself every possible advantage, I would say. A small, good tripod or monopod won’t take up much room in your photo kit and nobody ever complained about their images being too sharp.

hope that’s of use - you might want to take a look at http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/index.html as well…

doc…

3

Harold “Wardie” Ward:

http://www.funfotoz.com/

4

My girl who has a rebel xt, and went to art school for photography said your 85 won’t get much done for you in the way of action surf shots, unless you go to pipe or someplace where it breaks right on the beach.

She has a 300mm lens, (no stabilizer) that gets tight to 70 yards and fairly tight shots at 70 to around 90 yards. Much more than that, and you’ll wish you could get closer. Shooting Blacks or Swamis or a good sized day at at a beach break I’m always wishing she had a bigger lens so I could see who is in the photo.

Most of these are 35mm to 80mm with a cannon film camera, cross processed… some are with the XT though.

http://www.biglike.com/maggie/

She did say the image stabalizer lenses would help.

hope this helps!

5

check out the promaster 400-600mm lens. it’s fitted for canon bodies. works with the automatic settings and you can use it manually if you’re good. very reasonable price. i’ve used it in california, new zealand, and costa rica with good results up to 100 yards (?). good shots of surfing are priceless. my advice is to try to use a tripod or bipod because the depth of field is altered dramatically with magnification. but i’m just an amateur.

6

I imagine you’ll be shooting at a fast enough shutter speed(1/500th +) you shouldn’t see camera shake, but a tri/monopod helps. IS is really good for landscape, portraits, and panning shots. Worth it if you can afford it on a nice lens.

Most surf guys say if your going to be the least bit serious about surf shots your going to need to consider picking up a 400mm. There a some pretty extensive threads on this subject on a few sports photog forums. It always seems that wannabe surf shooters(which includes me) don’t realize how much lens it takes to get the quality shots.

Check out this thread on IS…

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/382927

kik

7

thanks for that link , Dale !

THIS is what I find frustrating with digital ( but then , I don’t own a top dollar 35mm digital camera , which may have overcome this problem …)

"

FAQ 4: What about the focus lag most digital cameras suffer from? When shooting sports or action photography, it is essential to learn the “pre-focus” technique which usually entails depressing the shutter button 1/2 way and holding it while aimed at your subject matter. I had no trouble keeping distant surfers in focus using this technique, but it can be frustrating at times when you miss a shot due to out-of-focus condition. Digital camera designer will soon overcome this problem with auto focus equivalent to 35 mm cameras. "

cheers ,

ben

[still a “roll film camera enthusiast” , for now , when it comes to taking surfing photos…

8

It’s not so much the focus lag, which ( if you do that half-touch pre-focus thing) isn’t a major problem, especially at fairly long ranges and small apertures. It’s the shutter lag, which is a whole lot less in the high end cameras, somewhat less in the medium-grade fixed lens deals and quite a lot in the pocket cheapos. If you are used to the immediate shot you get in a film camera when you push the button, you’ll be bummed by the digitals. At least, until you get the hang of anticipating.

With the medium-grades and of course the high end stuff, though, they can do sequences at relatively short intervals. Start a little before that ideal moment, then keep on through - and you also catch some nice sequences.

though these days, my beach time is either in the water or fishing…

doc…

9

…the camera has to ‘download’ [or whatever the jargon is] the image after each

shot ?

2 shots ?

how many shots , with the “top end” ones ?

[necessary to know , if a guy is going to pull into a few second tube ride , then run up the beach and ask you , “did you get my WHOLE tuberide ?”]

ben

10

Uhmm- this is mostly speculation and reverse engineering, and a specialist in digital camera design ( electronics engineer and/or software expert) could give a far more useful answer -

In a shot you take with a digital camera, well, you have light falling on a photosensitive bit inside the thing, which is divided into a whole lot of segments. Each segment is polled in some sort of order - left-right and top-bottom maybe, and a value for what it saw is recorded and probably pre-processed to some extent, perhaps to make it into a particular file format like a JPG. Then it’s sent to the storage area of the camera.

Now, a video camera can do it a whole lot faster, not least because the image it is shooting is typically only 640x480 ( pixels…dots of color, ya know?) while most any self-respecting recently made digital camera will be doing something around 4 times the width and 4 times the height to make a file 16 times the size. At least.

This is where it gets entertaining… no matter how big a storage chip or card or stick you have stuck on the thing, the speed at which the camera will do another shot ( or finish the first one) will likely depend on how fast the internal processor is in the camera, how much internal memory it has and how fast that is and just how cleverly the internal software in the camera itself was written.

It’s not a matter of how fast it gets sent to the storage chip or card, that’s silicon chip-silicon chip and effectively instantaneous over such a short distance, it’s how fast it was made ready to send.

An analogy - you can have a gigantic hard drive in your computer, but if it doesn’t have a particularly fast processor or much RAM, and if the software you’re running isn’t that small, it’s gonna be slow. Add RAM, a faster processor and maybe clean up the software and it’ll go faster.

Similarly, if I am, say, running an older version of a spreadsheet on an older computer with less speed and memory, it gets done pretty much as fast as it would on my fastest machine with the newest version 'cos the new versions of that spreadsheet are downright huge. Millions of lines of code versus tens of thousands of lines of code.

And this is where the high-end digital camera stuff tends to justify its existence. More expensive camera, they can afford to throw in more and better processors, more internal memory and pay their software people to grind down the code some to be as fast-running as possible.

I do know that my pro photographer friends’ gear will do sequences ( and get a shot taken) faster, with less shutter lag than I can with my relatively inexpensive Fuji. Which can be explained, really, only as I have above.

And it’s also why software and firmware updates for digital cameras are something to pay attention to…they can change the performance of said camera quite a lot.

hope that’s of use

doc…

11

in simple english , I’ll stick to my canon AE-1 35mm roll film camera with a 2 frames per second power winder and manual lens [a 400 mm lens , with a 2x converter option effectively making it an 800 lens .]

Call me “old school” [yawn …labels eh ?] or whatever … but, it’s what I know and have used for the last twenty years , and it seems to take an okay sorta shot for my ‘amateur’ purposes here , anyway.

And for water shots , now my nikonos has carked it , I’ll just buy the occassional kodak disposable [they come with 400iso film …my current BandW avatar shot was taken with one]

ben

12

This should give you an idea of what you might need…

Taken about 100 yards from subject

Exif:

File Name

IMG_1026.CR2

Camera Model

Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

Shooting Date/Time

6/26/2005 12:27:19 AM

Shooting Mode

Aperture-Priority AE

Tv( Shutter Speed )

1/1250

Av( Aperture Value )

5.6

Metering Mode

Partial Metering

Exposure Compensation

0

ISO Speed

100

Lens

70.0 - 300.0mm

Focal Length

300.0mm

Image Size

3456x2304

Image Quality

RAW

Flash

Off

White Balance Mode

Auto

AF Mode

One-Shot AF

Parameters Settings

Contrast  Standard

Sharpness  Standard

Color saturation  Standard

Color tone    0

Color Space

sRGB

Noise Reduction

Off

File Size

6953KB

Custom Function

C.Fn:01-0

C.Fn:02-0

C.Fn:03-0

C.Fn:04-0

C.Fn:05-0

C.Fn:06-0

C.Fn:07-0

C.Fn:08-0

C.Fn:09-0

Drive Mode

Single-frame shooting

Owner’s Name

unknown

Camera Body No.

0420204846

…I shot it with a 300mm but I swear I needed more length…try and pick up some extension tubes they’re cheap but they decrease light but since you’ll be at the beach you should have enough light to play around with. Also, you should keep in mind what purposes you’ll be using those pictures for. If it’s for the web then you can get away with cropping in closer…but if it’s for a magazine or blown up…getting some long range L glass might save you some frustration and give you more keepers. Your IS should definitely come in handy I know some people that swear by them, but having a tripod/monopod should get you better results. Oh BTW when I shot this there was a guy with a 500mm L stacked with a bunch of tubes there. Man, that was a crazy lens, it looked like a barrel from a naval destroyer.

13

I will travel a lot in the next few monthes. Along with me I take my new Canon eos digital Camera. Now my question is: Which are usable lenses for Surfshots. Sur the professional lenses are the best but way to expensive. Will a 17 - 85 mm lens (EF-S 17-85mm 1:4-5,6 IS USM ; multiplied by factor 1,6 ← digital camera) and a 70 - 300mm lens( EF 70-300mm 1:4-5,6 IS USM ;also multiplied by 1,6) do their job?

What would you suggest me? Both of the lenses have a image stabalizer so I hope a tripod is not necessary.

Cheers Clemens

14

Hi Clemens,

The lenses you mention should be all you will need, especially if you shoot at very high resolution and crop the images to a reasonable size. I found that a 400mm fixed length lens ( with a 35mm SLR Olympus ) gave me as much telephoto as I could want, out to about 500M.

You should, I think, shoot at as large an f-stop number as you can, consistent with a 1/500 sec or faster exposure ( and certainly no longer than 1/250 sec) , for good depth of field and no ‘out-of-focus’ problems. But… those slower speed versus small aperture shots can be ruined by camera shake, etc.

I would suggest adding a tripod or monopod to your kit, they can be quite compact and will let you use a small f-stop for good depth of field. I use Davis and Sanford tripods ( http://www.tiffen.com/tripod_page.htm) equivalent to the current Magnum XL line ( or this one here: http://kneed4speed.com/images/Scan570.jpg ) and I have been happy with them while my pro buddies Awe and David use monopods a lot. But I like tripods for those macro shots you find, now and then.

Give yourself every possible advantage, I would say. A small, good tripod or monopod won’t take up much room in your photo kit and nobody ever complained about their images being too sharp.

hope that’s of use - you might want to take a look at http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/index.html as well…

doc…

15

Harold “Wardie” Ward:

http://www.funfotoz.com/

16

My girl who has a rebel xt, and went to art school for photography said your 85 won’t get much done for you in the way of action surf shots, unless you go to pipe or someplace where it breaks right on the beach.

She has a 300mm lens, (no stabilizer) that gets tight to 70 yards and fairly tight shots at 70 to around 90 yards. Much more than that, and you’ll wish you could get closer. Shooting Blacks or Swamis or a good sized day at at a beach break I’m always wishing she had a bigger lens so I could see who is in the photo.

Most of these are 35mm to 80mm with a cannon film camera, cross processed… some are with the XT though.

http://www.biglike.com/maggie/

She did say the image stabalizer lenses would help.

hope this helps!

17

check out the promaster 400-600mm lens. it’s fitted for canon bodies. works with the automatic settings and you can use it manually if you’re good. very reasonable price. i’ve used it in california, new zealand, and costa rica with good results up to 100 yards (?). good shots of surfing are priceless. my advice is to try to use a tripod or bipod because the depth of field is altered dramatically with magnification. but i’m just an amateur.

18

I imagine you’ll be shooting at a fast enough shutter speed(1/500th +) you shouldn’t see camera shake, but a tri/monopod helps. IS is really good for landscape, portraits, and panning shots. Worth it if you can afford it on a nice lens.

Most surf guys say if your going to be the least bit serious about surf shots your going to need to consider picking up a 400mm. There a some pretty extensive threads on this subject on a few sports photog forums. It always seems that wannabe surf shooters(which includes me) don’t realize how much lens it takes to get the quality shots.

Check out this thread on IS…

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/382927

kik

19

thanks for that link , Dale !

THIS is what I find frustrating with digital ( but then , I don’t own a top dollar 35mm digital camera , which may have overcome this problem …)

"

FAQ 4: What about the focus lag most digital cameras suffer from? When shooting sports or action photography, it is essential to learn the “pre-focus” technique which usually entails depressing the shutter button 1/2 way and holding it while aimed at your subject matter. I had no trouble keeping distant surfers in focus using this technique, but it can be frustrating at times when you miss a shot due to out-of-focus condition. Digital camera designer will soon overcome this problem with auto focus equivalent to 35 mm cameras. "

cheers ,

ben

[still a “roll film camera enthusiast” , for now , when it comes to taking surfing photos…

20

It’s not so much the focus lag, which ( if you do that half-touch pre-focus thing) isn’t a major problem, especially at fairly long ranges and small apertures. It’s the shutter lag, which is a whole lot less in the high end cameras, somewhat less in the medium-grade fixed lens deals and quite a lot in the pocket cheapos. If you are used to the immediate shot you get in a film camera when you push the button, you’ll be bummed by the digitals. At least, until you get the hang of anticipating.

With the medium-grades and of course the high end stuff, though, they can do sequences at relatively short intervals. Start a little before that ideal moment, then keep on through - and you also catch some nice sequences.

though these days, my beach time is either in the water or fishing…

doc…