From the Bureau of Meteorology: "Hazardous Surf Warning for New South Wales
Issued at 4:06 am EDT on Friday 17 January 2025 for the period until midnight EDT Saturday 18 January 2025.
Surf and swell conditions are expected to be hazardous for coastal activities such as rock fishing, boating, and swimming in the following areas.
Friday 17 January
Hazardous Surf Warning for: Macquarie Coast, Hunter Coast, Sydney Coast, Illawarra Coast and Batemans Coast"
"OK", I thought, "Today's subject can be grey, breaking seas like a scene from the North Atlantic."
Yeah, right. For those who are new to my galleries / albums (depending on where you see this), my cameras have a magical power. They can flatten any ocean storm or waves to something which is not quite a mill pond, but close. So it was today. Yes, the sky was grey, yes, there were breaking waves. Yes, it looked very, VERY anodyne.
There were some surfers out in the traditional surfing spot of Sandon Point. I've been down this route before. "Sigh, do I HAVE to?", I asked myself.
"Well, better than nothing or a flattish ocean with a couple of white streaks on it, I suppose", I replied to myself.
The problem is this. Micro 4/3 (MFT) cameras, with their small sensors, really don't handle higher ISOs very well. Even when you go to a not exceptionally high ISO of 800, the detail, when viewed close up, can become as grainy as a Chinese rice paddy. For a subject like a wave on the ocean and its associated foam, you can get away with that. For a person's face, it becomes rather more noticeable.
But what I have learned from past shoots is that surfers move fast and are damn near impossible to track when you're at 150mm (an effective 300mm). Thus you need every fraction of a second speed that you can get if you don't want a blur. That means going wide open and hoping to hell that you've nailed the focal point, and asking yourself the question "How much ISO can I get away with here?"
Ideally, it's better done on a bright, sunny day but those will be in short supply for the next week or so.
A little bit of Curves adjustment magic lay in my future. Also I decided not to crop partly because it doesn't bring too much attention to his finer details, partly because I prefer to see him in the context of the expanse of the ocean. As an aside, I'm really grateful that this guy chose to buy himself a nice, bright, orange board. Photogenically my camera thanks you for that one, surfer-dude, as do I.
I could probably do with more length to put the surfers across more of the sensor, but in terms of Pro lenses the next step up is the 300mm f/4 pro at a smidge under $AUD4K... and as I said, it's f/4, so what you gain on the swing you lose on the roundabout. After that it's the 150-400 f/4.5 at an eyewatering $AUD11.2K, but that's even slower. Don't even ask the prices of even longer lenses.
No camera system is perfect. I think the larger sensor of a full frame (FF), with its ability to handle finer detail at higher ISO without graining-the-heck-out, is what is needed to do really good surfing photography. At least from this distance, which I would estimate to be 350 to 400 metres. I suspect that the OM-5 can do better results from places where it is physically possible to get closer in. But just as I found with my shoot of the AS Roma match in Perth earlier this year, you do feel the MFT compromise.
Does that mean that I regret my OM purchase? Not a bit of it. The compact size gives me freedoms that I simply wouldn't have with the heft of a full frame kit. This is invaluable when travelling. But were I to be a gentleman of leisure with a Powerball win under my belt, I'm pretty sure I'd have an FF system as well with some excellent long range glass for shots such as these.
As things stand, I do this kind of shot infrequently enough for that not to be a good value proposition.
