Cheap Shots

Hi, and welcome to our blog. My job is the best in the world, because I am expected to be in the front row of the most exciting event happening in town every day. Standing, sitting and kneeling there makes us photogs pretty visible, so often times people will approach us with questions. The most common one is “What camera are you using?” followed by “Is it a digital?”

This is the D2H with our 300mm f2.8 lens. We usually attach this lens to a stick, called a monopod. It helps us balance this bad boy because it gets heavy during long sporting events. When using this lens people often ask “How far can you see with that thing?” At baseball games, from behind the plate the pitcher usually fills the frame in a vertical shot. At football, shooting from the end zone the players between the 20 and 30 yard lines fill the frame in a horizontal shot. This lens is used mostly for sporting events and assignments where we are not allowed to get close to the subject.

The D2Hs are now getting a bit long in the tooth so we added a D300 to our arsenal. This camera handles low light better than the D2Hs and creates larger files. It also has a pop-up flash, unlike the D1 or the D2H. The biggest drawback is you can’t shoot photos as quickly as you can with the D2H. As we divvy up assignments for the day we try to determine which camera will work best for that day’s work.

The lens in the photo is a 80-200mm f2.8 zoom lens. This is the telephoto lens that we use. On most assignments we use two cameras, one with a telephoto and one with a wide angle. With this configuration we don’t waste time, we can just grab the camera with the lens we want.

This is the D300 again, with a 17-35mm f2.8 wide angle lens, the other half of our two-lens combo.

Recently we began shooting video for our website. I use my personal point and shoot for these videos. You can see it in the photo of the three of us, I am holding it in front of my mouth. It is light and fits in a pocket or around my neck as I juggle the heavier cameras during assignments. In the future when I shoot video only I will use our Sony video camera. Casey is holding it in our group photo.

When I moved back to the valley my college pal Mark Ylen asked if I was interested in a part-time weekend position at the Democrat-Herald. One of my jokes is that this job is a young man’s game because of the long hours and physical nature of the job. I wasn’t that interested. Then he mentioned “We just went digital”, and that quickly changed my mind. While not on the bleeding edge, the paper was on the cutting edge, and the opportunity to get paid while learning this new technology was huge.

We were shooting with Nikon D1s. With new gear being released about every year or two these cameras are now museum pieces, but in their day they were Cadillacs.

Answering these questions seemed to be the best way to start this blog. If all goes well future posts will cover a wide range of things from shooting tips and shooting philosophy to extra photos from cool assignments. Hope to see you all at the next assignment where you can ask “Are you shooting the D300 or the D2H today?”

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