crankworx.

This past weekend I was able to spend a day involved in two of my passions: mountain biking and photography.

Saturday was the Crankworx Colorado Slopestyle event at Winter Park, CO. This was my first time shooting any biking event. These were all shot with my medium format Mamiya camera with Phase One digital back. This camera isn’t geared towards sports shooting in the least, but I think I did pretty good. I shot mostly at f/2.8 on the Mamiya 150mm-D lens, which gave me a very tight depth of field. I shot in manual focus, which helped immensely. I would set focus ahead of a shot, wait for the rider, pan, and fire. The Phase back only shoots one frame every 2-seconds, so I only got one shot per run.

A higher speed Nikon or Canon (what everyone else was shooting) would have made AF focus-tracking possible, as well as 5-10fps to really get the right moment. However, that might kind of takes the fun out of things. I suppose if you are working commercially and need a result, you can’t screw around like I was. But all that automation just leaves you to sit, wait, and squish the shutter button when you see a rider. Then again, I lost a few fantastic shots due to focus errors and motion blur.