I was just watching the Kuerten x Ferrera ATP tour match in Hamburg, on ESPN, when they quickly showed a guy taking a closeup shot of a player (while he was seated, between matches) with a Pentax 67II and what looked like a 90/2.8 lens. Curious, at least, since most sports photography is done in 35mm. Sure, the player wasn't moving at all, but it still surprises me to see a P67 in a tennis court at all.

Has anybody seen/used the P67 for action shots like this?

-- Marcelo P. Lima (mpl4@cornell.edu), May 18, 2000

Answers

Yes! I work across the street from a pro color lab. The owner of the lab shoots exclusively with P67. He actually has nine (9!) bodies and pretty much all available lenses. He started out shooting Drag Racing many years ago. You should see some of the TACK SHARP poster size prints hanging in the lobby of his business!

It's definitely feasible. The shutter can fire at 1/1000, for heavens sake! You don't need 1\8000 to capture great sports shots if you use the right film, and pretty much any of Pentax's fast lenses!

I think I'll carry my P67II to the next sporting event I attend... Maybe he'll lend me his 400/4 EDIF!

Good Luck, Randy

-- Randy Darst (rdarst@profiles.com), May 18, 2000.

I forgot to mention that I started out in High School shooting sports with a Pentax K1000. It's fastest shutter speed is 1/1000. If I can remember that far back, shooting basketball at 1/1000 about f/5.6 or below with tri-X 400 pushed to 800 produced pretty good results!

Give your P67 a "sporting" try... Randy

-- Randy Darst (rdarst@profiles.com), May 18, 2000.

I'm gonna take a serious shot at shooting drags this summer. The local strip has a rather relaxed attitude about spectator safety: the crowd barriers are only 20-30 feet from the tracks and are just standard freeway dividers. No need for big tele-glass, but be ready to duck thrown rods! Needless to say, it's not an NHRA-certified track. At the nostalgia nights they get some fine looking old rods, though.

More interesting would be a series of candids of the fine folks leaning on the barriers sucking down Buds. There's a certain Darwinian selection going on I'd love to capture. And then there's the yahoos who hang out behind the staging pad when the jet and rocket cars run.

I'd love to shoot surfers with my 67 system but I think I'd be stuck doing it from the beach with a rented big-gun tele. I used to bodysurf in big NorCal rollers but that was years ago, and I can't see myself trying to tread water in a safe spot off the break while trying to get off good shots. I'd be curious to know how sturdy those underwater waterproof bag systems are, though, the EWA-Marine ones. In some spots being able to work waist-deep vs. knee-deep will get you a lot closer to the surfers.

-- Bill Baker (wab@well.com), May 30, 2000.