dSLR Dad

I mentioned Rod Mar before in this blog.  Rod is a Sports Photographer and is covering the 2008 Olympics for the Seattle Times.  His blog, the Best Seat in the House, has provided great insights into how one prepares to capture these events.  In his latest post, The Usain Asylum, Rod details capturing Jamaica’s Usain Bolt breaking Michael Johnson’s 12-year-old world record in the Mens 200 meter final (A record that I thought would stand for at least another decade):

Gotta love this guy.

A photographer’s dream.

Poses before he races.

Poses while he races.

Poses after he races.

Heck, in the prelims, I think he did more posing than racing.

Really. Dude is ridiculous fast, and photogenic to boot.

You can read the rest of the article over  at The Seattle Times.

Heinz Kluetmeier has been a sports photographer for over four decades.  You’ve recently seen his work in my previous post about the series of underwater photos detailing Michael Phelps victorious finish for his 7th Gold.  He is also the photographer of Sports Illustrated’s only Olympic Cover without a caption, the Miracle on Ice Issue.

Richard Deitsch at Sports Illustrated.com interview Mr. Kluetmeier during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Sports Illustrated photographer Heinz Kluetmeier has covered every Olympics for SI (with the exception of Innsbruck) since the Munich Games. He and his assistant, Jeff Kavanaugh, landed the signature sequence of the Olympics: Michael Phelps beating Serbia’s Milorad Cavic to the touchpad in the 100 butterfly. Below, Kluetmeier explains how he got the shot and the difference between Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps as photography subjects. Click here to see the photos.

You can read the entire Q&A with SI’s Heinz Kluetmeier over at SI.com.

Sports Illustrated also has a collection of Heinz Kluetmeier’s own favorite shots.

You can read and view more about Heinz Kluetmeier at his own website and at Getty Images.com.

Brian Cazeneuve, of Sports Illustrated, has published a video of frame-by-frame, underwater photo-analysis of Michael Phelps winning his 7th Gold Medal of the 2008 Olympics.  The video, Michael Phelps wins in legendary fashion, can be found at SI.com.  If you just want to see the photos, you can view them here.

Sports Illustrated has published a slideshow of the 2008 Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies in Beijing.  You can view them all at SI.com.

The SportsDesigner has posted a collection of covers from around the world (including Mexico’s Excelsior). You can read them here and here.

Photographer Jamie Squire details how he and Matthew Stockman collaborated to get the killer victory lane shot at this years Daytona 500:

I was on the flagstand for the race and for the finish. Matthew Stockman and I set up the remote before the race. I chose the location. I climbed up the 20-ft ladder and positioned the camera. I came up with the exposure.

It was shot with at Shutter priority -1 stop. (1/30th to be exact.) The camera data shows the aperture at f9. The star effect was a happy accident.
It worked as planned…..

You can read his entire explanation over at the Strobist.

You can see more of Jamie’s Sports Portfolio here.

The Washington Post has begun publishing a weekly slideshow entitled the Eye on Sports.  You can check out the latest images here.

Thanks to Rob Galbraith DPI.

I’ve got a great competition for you dSLR Dads if you’ve actually got an HD signal of the Super Bowl going into that HDTV of yours:

Try to spot the Nikon D3’s amongst the sea of Canon. The D3 came out in the middle of the season, so not many Pro’s were going to switch. However, I have noticed that when there used to be ZERO Black lenses along the sidelines, that is not now the case.

To get a feel for the Sports page coverage across the Nation, head over to Sports Designer.com. They’ve got quite a collection of page spreads that have already hit the press and those that are waiting to go….

Sports Illustrated has launched their 2007 Year in Pictures. You can view them here.

via Imaging Insider

The Canon EOS 1D Mark III has been selling for quite a while now (since February 23, 2007 at Amazon). Unfortunately, the pro community have been quarrelling with Canon over the poor performance of the 1D Mark III’s servo-autofocus engine, especially at high temperatures. Rob Galbraith’s site has been out in front of this issue since the beginning (June 19 was his first update). Now Rob has released an update assessing the 1D Mark III’s sub-mirror fix and v1.1.3 firmware. (more…)