This past weekend fellow Tribune photojournalist Jose Osorio and I flew to Atlanta to document the Bears game against the Falcons.
If you’re just here for the pictures, skip this next part. But for the gear head photo people here, some thoughts about equipment:
Packing for trips like this I’ve always tried to go relatively light. Ever since Canon introduced the 200-400mm f/4 lens, that’s been my primary long glass for most sports events. It has incredible versatility with the zoom, not to mention the integrated teleconverter, which almost magically flips into place on the fly. It’s also very, very sharp.
Before that lens, I’d always used a 400mm f/2.8, with or without a separate teleconverter. So with the new 200-400mm you lose one stop of light, but you gain a ton of flexibility. Plus with cameras like the 1DX and its incredible ISO range, it’s possible to just dial that sensitivity up and I’m good to go. It’s rare to come across a place where this doesn’t work — happens only 2% of the time, maybe.
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Enter the 2%: the football dome.
As Jose and I drove among the heaps of fans (nearly half of which were cheering for the Bears), we passed construction for the new stadium, expected to open in 2017. Hopefully the new stadium has better lighting than the Georgia Dome. Once inside we realized that we were going to need to shoot at ISO 8,000 or 10,000 just to get a fast enough shutter speed to stop the action with our f/4 lenses. The light falloff in the end zones made matters even more complicated.
Granted, the great photographers of film days will chuckle and recall stories of pushing 3200 TMAX two stops with only 36 frames to get it right. But with modern cameras, it’s almost strange to see anything but perfection anymore. In the end it turned out alright. We still ran an image, shot at ISO 12,800, down the entire length of the sports page the next day. That said, lesson learned – despite the added travel bulk, it’s best to keep some of the faster lenses around.
Incidentally, I apologize for my recent lack of activity here. For the past few months I’ve been working almost solely on a long-term project. The story hasn’t yet published and so I can’t show any work until it does. However, I promise a full explanation of my whereabouts and activities once it goes to print. As ever, thanks for reading.