The decent surf conditions continued today, so it was time to return to Sandon Point to answer some questions that had arisen for me from yesterday's shoot; specifically, why so sodding noisy?

I left the CP filter off for the entire shoot today and had nothing but the standard protective / UV filter on. I did a range of shots in ISOs 200 (even though I knew better), 320 and 400, with relatively wide open apertures; mostly f/2.8 and f/3.2. That's because I knew that ISO 200 would be a challenge; rarely will a surfing photo work below 1/640th of a second, and given that it was an overcast day as well anything at ISO200 would need a large bucket of light to be thrown at it.

I don't think it was the ISO as such. Part of the graininess would come from sea mist, I suspect. But another part of it is that... this just isn't the right camera for this kind of work. The micro 4/3 sensor is a good all around workhorse, but has its limits and I think this type of photography is one such limit. If I was doing nothing but surf shooting, I think a full frame is where I'd want to be.

There were some decent-if-not-actually-impressive shots from this morning's outing, but they did need a bit of tweaking (especially of the shadows and contrast) in post to get them up to scratch. I finally decided that this one, one of a bracket of three where the surfer's arms follow the arc of spray, was my preferred shot of the day though I'll put some into the Illawarra surfing gallery later.