SurfRef.com

Back in 1968, my
dad gave me his old Contax IIIA with 135 mm F4 lens. I was
living in the southern part of the San Francisco Peninsula and
surfing in Santa Cruz every weekend. I remember using the
camera for the first time at Steamers Lane. I thought this was
the perfect surf photo setup. With great anticipation I had
the first roll of film processed but it looked like I would need a
lot more than a 135mm lens to take surf shots. Oh well, back
to surfing in
the cold waters
and photographing sunsets on the San Francisco Peninsula.
In the late 90's I
decided trying to shoot surf images again. Since I had owned a
few Nikon cameras, I decided to stay
with Nikon
telephotos. Big mistake. I did rent Nikon 500 and 600mm
manual focus lenses but these were antiquated compared to the auto
focus lenses Canon was producing. I did purchase a Nikon
manual focus 1,200mm F11 lens manufactured in 1984 for the LA
Olympics. This is a great collectors item since only a
few hundred were ever manufactured. It's quite humiliating
being surrounded by Canon cameras on the beach all whizzing away
while my
Nikons were going
clunk, clunk, clunk.
I
was able to get serious about shooting surfers at ASP contests with
the purchase of a Sigma 300-800mm F5.6 Sigmonster in 2004. Since its
purchase I have used a number of bodies on the lens and am currently
using the Nikon
D300 and power base. With such a perfect lens,
I can only blame myself if I miss a shot. Post processing is
becoming
a much more important part of the process. In fact,
most of the improvement in the appearance on my surf images is
due
to improvements in my post processing technique.
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