Watersports

[Lionheart]

Just a couple I'd posted earlier in Viewfinder. Every year we have an annual picnic/barbecue at a local lake for the staff and their families. Everyone who has a water vehicle of some sort brings it, plus we'll rent a few waverunners/seedoos as well.

[Old Timer]

As I said earlier on VF I think 1 and 3 are very good action pictures. Number 1 gives us a real feel for the speed and excitment of the ride and #3 captures the grace and beauty of the sport as well as the excitment of the ride. Thanks for sharing over here on the sports forum.

[livin4lax09]

oh god, jetski's are so much fun. I'm a huge fan. Just out of curiosity, how'd you set up for the first shot? I'm going to be buying a jetski at some point in the future, and I want to know how to pull off a shot like that? What equipment is needed?

[Lionheart]

oh god, jetski's are so much fun. I'm a huge fan. Just out of curiosity, how'd you set up for the first shot? I'm going to be buying a jetski at some point in the future, and I want to know how to pull off a shot like that? What equipment is needed?

I was on a motor boat ahead of Ron, and he was trying to catch up to us. That shot is actually a cropped image. I was zoomed all the way out at 200mm, and having a hard time getting any shots because of the persistent "Err 01" that kept freezing my 1D with the 70-200 IS lens.

[livin4lax09]

do I need any waterproof equipment? I wanted to try and get a shot like that, but was worried about soaking my camera. Also, what f-stop do you shoot at when on the water? I'm always using MF because it's a huge pain to use AF when you're bouncing all over the place, but I've got some lens creep and the focus tends to slide off a bit, so I need an aperture that's good to allow a little bit of error. I tried f/8 as it's the sweet spot for sharpness on my lens, but I still get some out of focus shots. Any tips?

[Lionheart]

do I need any waterproof equipment? I wanted to try and get a shot like that, but was worried about soaking my camera. Also, what f-stop do you shoot at when on the water? I'm always using MF because it's a huge pain to use AF when you're bouncing all over the place, but I've got some lens creep and the focus tends to slide off a bit, so I need an aperture that's good to allow a little bit of error. I tried f/8 as it's the sweet spot for sharpness on my lens, but I still get some out of focus shots. Any tips?

Yes, water is always a hazard. Short of dropping your camera in the water, should be ok for water sports. AF can be a problem in a moving boat, so I usually set mine to center AF point, AI Servo focus. I'm shooting with a 1D mkII however, so action shots are quite a bit easier for me with its 45 AF points. I set the camera to automatically use the adjacent AF points surrounding the selected AF point to aid focus and tracking (set in the custom functions-I think this feature is only available on the 1 series EOS models and the EOS-3). The shot of Ron on the waverunner was shot at f8, 1/1000 sec, and the shot of Jerhet was 1/8000 sec, f3.2.