Dptips :. Digital Photography Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

Starting out, people will be either shooting from the shore or from a pier. Shooting from a pier gives you the advantage of being closer to the active part of the wave, but you will be shooting from an angle that is a little awkward, but still can result in intriguing shots. The other issue is that you will be shooting on a downward angle which will compress the size of the wave and the surfer. Typically, wave height is something you want to exploit. So pier shooting requires thinking about different compositions of which shots where the surfer is going "off the lip" or vertical on the top of the wave is a strong composition.

The advantage of shooting from a pier is that you can get pretty tight shots of the surfer filling the viewfinder with 200 to 300mm lenses. These lenses are typically affordable and are easy to carry and handhold which means you don’t have to carry a tripod.

Shooting from the shore provides the most common shooting angle which is both good and bad. It is good because this is what people are used to seeing. It is bad because this is what people are used to seeing. For most shore and point breaks, you will need somewhere around a 400mm or longer lens. This can be achieved with the use of teleconverters, but at the cost of some sharpness. When most people ask what lens they should buy when starting surfing photgraphy, the msot common answer is a 400mm F5.6 or equivalent like a 300mm F4 with a 1.4 teleconverter. Zooms can be used and are used, but in reality, you won’t be having much time to adjust the zoom while you are panning and following a surfer, so why not just go with a sharper prime lens? Obviously, the big gun lenses are the 500mm and 600mm F4s which are great for surfing but cost a pretty penny. They require heavy tripods and it is a lot of equipment to haul around, but the opportunity to get the best shots usually reside in the glass used.

Read more… http://www.photosig.com/articles/1458/article

-mm