The World Cup is in full swing. As a photography enthusiast, you may not only pay attention to football games, but also occasionally pay attention to the photographers next to the stadium. These photographers are shooting the competition with long guns and short guns. Are you curious about what equipment they are using? Same as the cameras and lenses we use?
The equipment used by professional sports photographers on the field is absolutely first-class, which is completely different from what we use for daily photography enthusiasts. We may never buy these top-level equipment in our lives, but these equipment are just daily equipment in their hands. If we don’t use these top-level equipment, it is an unsuccessful task for shooting sports competitions.
Let’s discuss what specifications of sports photographers’ equipment are.
speed camera
shooting sports must ensure speed. This speed includes multiple aspects: the camera's reaction speed, shutter speed, continuous shooting speed, continuous focus speed, picture storage processing speed, etc. These speeds must be the absolute flagship standard. Why? When can I use speed machines when shooting professional events? Shooting sports events is the best scene for flagship speed cameras.
In the era of SLR, general sports event photographers would use 1-digit flagship SLR models, such as Canon's 1DX series, Nikon D6 and other machines. These machines are rarely purchased by photography enthusiasts because they are huge and have touching weight. It is indeed not so convenient to use them yourself, but they are the standard models for sports event photographers. Only their performance can meet the needs of sports event photography.
For example, D6 can achieve a continuous shooting speed of up to 14 pictures per second, and has the best SLR autofocus performance. Such a machine can capture the instantaneous solidification of movement with steady, accurate and ruthless pictures. Moreover, the pixels of this type of machine are not very high, usually about 20 million pixels. Why do we need to design this way? The reason is that low pixels can ensure better high-sensitivity pictures. High sensitivity is often required during sports events to ensure that the shutter speed remains in a faster range. Therefore, one of the characteristics of sports machines is that they are definitely not high-pixel specification cmos.
In the era of microsingle, there are still a large number of sports photographers who are still using flagship SLRs, but many photographers have switched to the latest flagship SLR models. There are photojournalists who use microsingle at this Qatar World Cup. Micro-single can have a greater performance improvement than SLRs, especially for sports events, the camera's continuous shooting speed can be faster than the SLRs, because without the bond of reflector , the micro-single mechanical shutter can release greater continuous shooting potential. In terms of focus, intelligent continuous focus can firmly lock the athletes who want to shoot, and complete the capture very accurately, which is simpler than a SLR. Many photographers were used to using SLRs in previous sports events, but now many people have begun to try the latest micro-mono-flagship speed machines. For example, Sony α1, Nikon z9, Canon R3 and others have appeared in people's field of vision.
The photographer of the arena will definitely not prepare only one camera, usually at least two. The arena is changing rapidly, and there is no time to change the lenses. The combination of the body and different lenses is faster.
In short, what sports event photography requires is absolutely first-class speed flagship models, which is undoubtedly the case. Most of our daily photography enthusiasts use quasi-flagship or high-pixel model series.
ultra- telephoto lens
telephoto lens is another indispensable tool for sports event photographers. A speed camera is not good enough, it must have matching lenses, and the most used by sports photographers is ultra-telephoto lenses. You see the white lenses used by photographers on the side of the field, and think they are 70-200mm we use every day? wrong! wrong! The 70-200mm has a very small effect on football match photography and is almost unusable, so even photographers who use this lens use it as a non-main lens. Generally, photographers on the field use lenses with longer focal lengths, such as lenses such as 400mm or 600mm. Sometimes it is also necessary to use teleconverter to further extend the focal length of the lens.
In addition, wide-angle or standard focal length lenses are also needed. When shooting close-up or large scenes need to be shot, the role of these lenses is very critical.
pod
tripod or monopod is very important for sports photographers. So you said, handheld shooting is so convenient and flexible, why not put on the shelf? You are wrong. We ordinary photography enthusiasts can play with handheld shots, but the work they do has to be watched throughout the competition. Carrying a flagship camera and a super telephoto lens can't stand it simply in terms of physical strength. From the perspective of shooting technology, generally, for larger events, such as this Qatar World Cup, photographers cannot wander around the stadium by themselves. They need to move in a small range within the guidance range, and need to shoot at a fixed point in a position for a long time. This way, using a tripod to shoot is more labor-saving, and also reduces the image taken by shaking.
is more comfortable to switch different cameras at the same time, otherwise you can't care about both hands.
Professional photography is still very different from our daily photography. It requires taking into account the occurrence of various emergencies and matching the equipment to the most reliable level. These are the equipment configurations that professional photography must have. It takes about 100,000 to 200,000 RMB to list all kinds of photography equipment carried by professional sports photographers. As an ordinary photography enthusiast, few people can have the ultimate fever, unless you are a rich man and don’t care, or take photos with photography.
