Most photographers use a small range of lenses- sports types use long lenses, landscapers use wide angles and portraitists use mids. Us surf photographer types are that rare beast that use the whole gamut from the 15mm fisheye (seen as a useless novelty lens in most peoples eyes) right through to the exotic, big 600mm telephotos.
This is because to be a good surf photographer you need to be all the above.
We use the wide’s for water work and landscapes, mid’s for line ups, portraits and pulled back gear and the long lenses for your shooting fish in a barrel action shot (just realised that the term ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ has a whole different sense when applied to surf photography!). So you might be sensing that whilst this range is a good thing it’s also expensive… and you’d be right.
Here’s my lens list as it stands at the moment (all Canon unless otherwise stated): 15mm f2.8 fisheye, Tokina 10-17mm fisheye zoom, 17-40mm f4L, 85mm f1.8, 200mm f2.8L, 300mm f2.8L IS and 1.4x and 2x Mk2 convertors. Which at current prices would cost you £7000. I’m shooting on a 40D at the moment (had to lose the full frame 5D and 500mm f4.0 which sucks and I’m not sold on the 1 series til they do a 8fps+ full frame but I am keen on the 7D) hence the non-Canon wide zoom to give me full wide in the water, otherwise I’d be all Canon. This lot has been accumulated over the years through a lot of sweat and a lot of work. I’ve been in this game for ten years now so you’d expect any pro to have similar. A lot of pro’s use zooms, the 70-200mm f2.8 or f4.0 and 100-400mm (otherwise known as the ‘dustpump’), now I’ve nothing against zooms per se I just prefer primes. The way digital is going the newer sensors are pushing the optical limits of lenses so the fastest primes are best equipped to give you the best results from big sensors.
Anyone new to surf photography would be fine with kit lenses (like the 18-200mm) as that gives you a great range and saves your sensor the trauma of dusting from frequent lens changes. As you progress you can add to your arsenal. Splurging heaps of cash before you know you dig it is a real bad move. People always ask me what the best cheap long lens is. That’s an impossible question as with most things you get what you pay for. Long lenses are extremely expensive because they are high tech bits of kit made with fancy technology and sold to a relatively niche market. Canon sells 1000x more compact cameras than they do SLR systems after all. But forced at gunpoint I would say the Sigma ‘Bigma’ the 150-500mm zoom is the best cheap long lens. It’s not perfect but you can get publishable shots with it in good light. Small lenses are cheaper so it’s not such a problem but currently I (and a lot of other guys like Scott Aichner) are loving the Tokina 10-17mm fisheye zoom for water work, it’s cheap, it’s sharp and it’s the best solution for fisheye water shots on cropped sensors. Of course it doesn’t hold an optical bat to the awesome Canon 15mm but until Canon bring out a fast full frame camera that puppy is sat in a box on my shelf gathering dust. The Nikon crew are ahead of us in this respect at the moment with their sweet 10.5mm fisheye for their DX crop sensor cameras (like the D300s) a combo that many lifelong Canon heads have abandoned Canon for. The two-horse race between the companies has seen Canon in the lead for many years but recently Nikon held the edge, that is until Canon dropped the 8fps 7D- the perfect surf shooters camera. Small, light and fast, perfect for waterwork…
