Automagisk blog

Last year I missed the “Kongen på Haugen” (“King of the Hill”) longboard competition at St. Hanshaugen in Oslo, but this year I was in town. The weather was fantastic: 25°C and no clouds, a lot of people turned up – both to race and to watch/tan/etc – and I managed to get some good shots too.

Johan W. Simonsen
D300, ISO 400, Sigma 10-20mm @ 10mm, 1/1600, f/4.

The shot above was taken with the 10mm held out very close tu the racers when they were in the middle of the first turn. I really hope I didn’t stretch out too far, and since nobody said anything, I hope it was ok.

I needed a short shutterspeed, and after a few tries, I decided to just set the focus manually and take a series every time a racer passed. Focus was difficult to get right, because the riders chose different lines through the curve. I’d like a more blurred background, but that’s not easy with 10mm. I tried a slower shutter speed too, but since I had to move my arm quite fast to follow the riders, that also blurred the riders.

The first few shots were taken with the accidentally left on from last use of the lens, and that helped a bit on the shutter speed.. Still 400 ISO seemed to work the best.

This one is from a shady curve near the finish line. I wanted to get some nice light effects from the sunlight passing through the tree, possibly with a blurred and out-of-focus background. I tried using my SB-800 on a tripod on the inside of the curve, triggered by PW, but it was (again) not powerful enough to use in this much light. I also found out that taking a seried worked better than gambling for one shot using the SB-800 at full power (and barely noticing the effect).

Nikon D300, ISO 800, 70-200 f/2.8 @ 102mm, 1/250, f/4.

Here’s one from the same spot as the first one, but taken standing on a guard-rail and with a different perspective. Camera held high, pointing down on the rider passing underneath, and shooting a series of everyone passing. Manual everything.

D300, ISO 400, Sigma 10-20mm @ 10mm, 1/1250, f/5.

Can’t remember the reason for using a different setting than on the first one, but maybe I wanted a tiny bit more depth of field? Maybe just a coincidence.

Below is an atmospheric shot with two small ballerinas in the foreground. The 70-200 focuses quickly, and I used C (continous) focus and one focus point (no 3D or group) on the D300 for all the shots from this position. Most of them were like this.

Nikon D300, ISO 200, 70-200 f/2.8 @ 70mm, 1/1600, f/2.8.

This one is from the same spot as the previous one, but zoomed in on the rider:

Nikon D300, ISO 200, 70-200 f/2.8 @ 140mm, 1/1600, f/2.8.

A third one from the same spot, this time with some grass in the foreground for maaaximum depth.. The focus is a bit off on this one – there is very little of it when using 2.8 on the 70-200mm.

Nikon D300, ISO 200, 70-200 f/2.8 @ 102mm, 1/1600, f/2.8.

Even though I had brought two speedlights, tripod, PWs, etc, I had forgotten to charge the batteries. That meant no flash after the initial tests near the finish line. Then I decided to use the four AA batteries in the PWs and use them in the SB-600 (I have the SD-800 battery holder for the SB-800, so that needs five batteries). Since I had left the SC-29 TTL cable at home, that meant using the SB-600 on camera.

I took some test shots to make sure the flash was pointed in the right direction, adjusted the power to 1/4 (I think), zoomed out and used the built-in diffuser to even out the light a little, even on 10mm. Manual everything, and 1/250s because of the flash.

Here are two shots:

D300, ISO 200, Sigma 10-20mm @ 10mm, 1/250, f/5.6.

D300, ISO 200, Sigma 10-20mm @ 10mm, 1/250, f/5.6.

More

I took about 600 pictures, and about 80 of them are in this gallery: http://automagisk.no/kph09/. Let me know if there are some you like in there :-)

Even more

There were a lot of others taking pictures, and this thread at asfaltsurfer.com contains some of their shots.

Notes

If I there was another “Kongen på Haugen” tomorrow, I would:

• Automatically be reasonably well prepared because I had already done it once!
• Check some websites for inspiration.
• Be there a bit earlier and test out angles, etc before the qualifications and race started
• Try to borrow some nice flash gear (like I did for the dirt jumping at Hafjell), set everything up, and try to get one or two good shots, and not just running all over trying everything.
• Remember to charge all batteries
• Remember the TTL cable
• Remember to remove the polarizing filter, or at least check for it. The Sigma isn’t that slow..

What do you think?

Do you know the names of the riders in the pictures? Which shot do you (dis?)like the most? Do you have links to good longboard photos somewhere? Do you plan to ride your longboard in some spectacular place and need a photographer..? All comments appreciated!

Oh, and watch this longboard video!

You can watch it here, but I recommend watching it in HD at Vimeo.

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

A Film by: Ari Marcopoulos
Director of Photography: Colin Blackshear
Producer: Neville Wakefield

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