One photographer's Olympic kit

turnthedarncranks

Although this is an article about a Canon shooter, I thought it would be interesting to many folks who hang around here.

http://gizmodo.com/all-the-gear-an-olympic-photographer-is-bringing-to-soc-1513322659

manhattanboy

Although this is an article about a Canon shooter, I thought it would be interesting to many folks who hang around here.

http://gizmodo.com/all-the-gear-an-olympic-photographer-is-bringing-to-soc-1513322659

It was interesting. Jealous he has the dough for 3 1DX bodies and a 5DM3. The lenses were also interesting, as he basically said he's going to use the 70-200 or 200-400 for most things.

I'd be curious to hear what the Nikon pros travel with and use for these events.

Golf007sd

Nice setup of lenses and bodies. Most likely he will "borrow" what he need from Canon once he is on location. The price of the new Canon 200-400 /w built-in teleconverter alone is more than the expense he will endure on this trip.

Msmoto

Agree with Golf…..although I missed out on how many grips he was using….(sherpas)…LOL

Killerbob

I remembered that the following was posted just before the London games in 2012:

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/07/22/inside-an-olymmpic-photographers-gear-bag/

It hasn't changed much... A few cameras and a decent array of lenses, with a focus on the two extremes.

manhattanboy

I remembered that the following was posted just before the London games in 2012:

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/07/22/inside-an-olymmpic-photographers-gear-bag/

It hasn't changed much... A few cameras and a decent array of lenses, with a focus on the two extremes.

What lens is that packed with his computer? Is that the 400 2.8? It looks rather compact for that size tele, but maybe its just the perspective of the picture. That site needs better editors... Not sure what an "olmmpic" is... :-B

Killerbob

Twice as long as his MBA is deep - sounds about right for a 400mm.

TaoTeJared

Planing on taking 100,000 images - that's nuts. I would be more interested in his work flow and how he get's though that many photos.

manhattanboy

Planing on taking 100,000 images - that's nuts. I would be more interested in his work flow and how he get's though that many photos.

One at a time in Photoshop LOL :-))

100K is quite a bit, but I think the games go over a week...which is not that unreasonable for all day events, especially those requiring many shots in CH mode.

Edit: my math was way off. Time for a drink!

Killerbob

100K is 6'250 shoots daily (Sochi is 16 days), which is why he is bringing soo much storage. Even at 99% waste, that's still 1'000 good ones. His second and third set of batteries must be in the chargers constantly...

NSXTypeR

Planing on taking 100,000 images - that's nuts. I would be more interested in his work flow and how he get's though that many photos.

He may also have cameras on remote trigger, so depending on how early he decides to trigger the remote cameras, he'll be throwing a lot out anyway.

Gareth

The Summer Olympics 2012 guy took 88GB worth of card storage and 1.5TB or HDD storage.

The 2014 Winter Olympics guy is taking 1952GB (1.9TB) of card storage and 6 TB of HDD storage.

Seems like the only thing that has changed in the last couple of years is the price, size and speed of storage.

Benji2505

Planing on taking 100,000 images - that's nuts. I would be more interested in his work flow and how he get's though that many photos.

there is a difference between shutter actuations and usable photos. In many cases the editors get a jpg collection and only a few raw shots make the cut based upon these jpg. He should have said that he plans to have 100,000 shutter actuations. If you do the math: 20 days of shooting means 5,000 actuations per day or 500 per hour and that's the average(!, think about the distance between skiers or bobsleds). That is just aiming and firing off. And he has to make multiple events per day.

TaoTeJared

I fully understand why there is 100,000 images - just saying that is a hell of a lot of photos. (realistically I'm betting he is seeing that as his max anyway.) I would like to see their workflow and how they get through them all. If you work out the average that is 6 shots a min. Realistically he is firing off 20+ images in 3 sec bursts for the events he was talking about shooting.

Like Benji said, that average works to 5,000 per day. If you say it take 2 seconds to to look at a photo, that would be about 3 hours just to review them. No way they are actually doing that after shooting 16 hour days. Pushing that many files through any workflow I have seen/used would not handle that much, coming that fast, and every day.

Rifqi

My computer would shoot itself if I told it I wanted to look at 100k photos. I just checked the other day and I have a bit less than 10k photos in total over the last two years...so what I shoot in a year he will shoot in a day.

SquamishPhoto

Who cares what the work flow looks like? You'd be crazy to think that anyone from the shooting team is spending much if any time dealing with sorting and editing. The guy is a career photographer, if he hadn't already starting outsourcing that work he'd probably end up spending his entire life in front of a computer.

A typical portrait session for me runs anywhere from 500 exposures to just over 3000. On the high end it might take me two hours to sort through them and break it down to the best of the best, but Im not examining each and every photo one at a time, that would be crazy. Large monitors have many advantages, the biggest being able to sort through pages of photos at a time.

Golf007sd

i have yet to shoot over 600 images in a single day of shooting. I have a tendency to visualize what I want in a shot and once I get it, I'm off to the next. Being a non-pro photographer has its perks :P

Rifqi

I've never shot more than 300 frames in a day (I'm not even sure I've ever reached 250) and on a typical portrait shoot I get between 10-50 frames. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or something right

tcole1983

From the sounds of it he might also need one of these...

shawnino

@tcole1983: I hope he can find a quiet place to store/use it.

Most memorable pre-Olympic images I've seen so far:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25830617

manhattanboy

@tcole1983: I hope he can find a quiet place to store/use it.

Most memorable pre-Olympic images I've seen so far:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25830617

According to that link, he can probably use it anyway. Those toilets are pretty close together...maybe they need to pass a roll of toilet paper around the room as part of Soviet era rationing :P

i have yet to shoot over 600 images in a single day of shooting.

Shooting events I've shot into the thousands. The Extreme Pro 64 cards aren't cheap but they help prevent from having to switch the SD cards so frequently.

PB_PM

i have yet to shoot over 600 images in a single day of shooting. I have a tendency to visualize what I want in a shot and once I get it, I'm off to the next. Being a non-pro photographer has its perks :P

I haven't very often either. When I shot a tennis tournament a few years back I was in the 700-800 range a night, but that was an oddity. Most days I go out I take 50-100 shots.

Killerbob

With a D800, keeping both the JPG and the NEF files, you'd pound 75MB on your storage for every picture taken. So, 475Gigs a' day. Oouch.

Ade

I do more fashion than sports. For runway shows I might take up to 1500 pictures each evening (around 4 hours). That's around 66 GB on the D800 (NEF only -- no JPEGs).

In the studio I average a lot less, around 500 shots per session. But at one catalog shoot last year I took almost 1400 shots. That was a 5-hour exhausting shoot with the beautiful Moroccan-Canadian actress (and Bollywood rising star) Naura, and she handled it like the consummate professional that she is.

So for sports I think 5000 shots for multiple Olympic events in a day might even be conservative, especially when shooting with remote cameras.

proudgeek

There are Nikon shooters at the Games as well. http://shuttermuse.com/olympic-photographer-leon-neal-camera-bag/

manhattanboy

There are Nikon shooters at the Games as well. http://shuttermuse.com/olympic-photographer-leon-neal-camera-bag/

It's funny. The sister site of nikonrumors, photorumors.com, had this article about superbowl shooters being dominated by Canon. http://photorumors.com/2014/02/06/canon-produced-70-million-eos-cameras-claims-75-of-photographers-on-super-bowl-used-their-equipment/

It would be interesting to see if globally the mix is more balanced...