[Stewart Plant]

Ok guys and gals,

Firstly apologies I havent been on for a while but I have been major busy with work and havent had the time to get online or text people back, yes I'm a horrible person.....

Ok now as I have had alot of PM on this subject I thought I'd run a topic on it as I know it is a subject close to alot of photographers hearts. Getting or taking that perfect photograph of a surfer is the ultimate thing for a photographer who likes surfing as without a love of surfing you have no idea what is or isnt a good photograph of a surfer.

How I will run it will be as a Q and A session, please keep with it as it may take me a while to reply

So lets start at the beginning. Why do you want to be a surf photographer?

If the answer is to make lots of money and travel the world, then I would suggest you stop here.

Surf photography doesnt pay well. Standard Editorial work for a piece in a magazine may raise you £230-£300 depending on the size of the publication, many times it is lower than this. Most local newspapers will only pay £15-30 for a photograph so you can see how many you would need to sell to make this your living.

Further staff photographers may only earn £9000-15000 a year for spending all your time on a wet and windy beach in the middle of nowhere waiting for that perfect photograph. Its isnt all Sunshine and Surf.

Now I have killed half of your intrest we move onto equipment

- Beach photography requires at least a 300mm lens on a decent Digital SLR camera. You are looking at a minimum of 6MP Camera. The reason for this is when people surf you want the action not cropping the middle out of the image which makes the final image low quality.

How many of you have images that look great but you enlarge it and it turns into rubbish? Magazines and Newspapers want high quality imagery and they want it fast. Magazines work 1 month in advice so you need to be shooting for the next month and keeping a constant supply going.

Now all is not lost as there are other ways into Surf Photography

How many of you have a surf board?

Almost all of you, for £300 you can buy something like the Fuji Finepix F10 and a proper waterproof casing. This is a 6MP camera with zoom and flash, look it up on Ebay etc as they are now not being made and you can get really good deals on them.

Being in the water gives you a 10 times better angle of view than being on the beach, so long as you go with the wave you will always get the shot of the surfer coming in towards you before you get pushed over the wave and they go passed behind you.

Now there are websites for surf photography that sell direct to the surfer.

One of the best is WPSurf.com, run by the Morgan family of surfers, they know surfing and know surf photography. All you are doing is selling the file to the surfer so that they can print from it themselves or have it on their computer as a screen saver.

As you can see this is just the tip of the wave, if you want to know more ask a question and I will try to answer it below

[ANCIENTWILLIAM]

Superb thread mate which I've made a sticky

[ILee]

I have a Sony DSC-W5 and I enjoy taking pics but one problem I find is that everything is so far away that half the time I don't bother so I was wondering what you think of these add on lenses.

2.5X Tele-Photo Lens For Sony DSC-W17 DSC-W7 DSC-W5 W12 on eBay, also, Other Digital Camera Accs, Digital Camera Accessories, Photography (end time 18-Jul-08 10:14:02 BST)

and also I want to be able to actually get in the water with it. Have seen these hard cases Sony MPK-WA Marine Housing for DSC-W1, W5, W15, W7& W17 on eBay, also Underwater Camera Cases, Bags Cases, Digital Camera Accessories, Photography (end time 12-Jul-08 21:28:09 BST) but what are these soft cases like? Hama WP-500 Outdoor/Underwater Camera Case £20.99 - MyMemory

Thanks.

[Alps]

My wife said she wanted to get into photography but to date she has hardly done much other than a few pics on holiday But I'm hoping that when we finally move over to the SW not only will it mean a change of scenery and lifestyle, but will hopefully spur my wife into using the expensive camera I bought her, and make her open the number of photography books I bought her

Also, does anyone on here do any kinda video work? Be it surf vids or any other kinda film and doc work?

I do some freelance video work and editing and would be good to meet like-minded people when I move over. The last work I did was a promo ad for a satellite navigation system.

[Stewart Plant]

Regards telephoto lens add ons, remember they are reducing the light hat you are getting into your camera and as such changing the depth of focus on the camera as to where the image comes into as of that you find that the images can appear softer in the camera because of this.

The solution is to get closer to the action and in doing that you need a waterproof camera body. Ones described are made for your camera but make sure your insurance covers you and you keep it well maintained nothing worse than lossing your tube shot because of a 50pence ring

Regards video I currently have just finished producing the videos for the search and rescue forces based in Cornwall. I use Avid and film HD and SD

[Chris_Dude]

I use a Finepix S5700 with 10x optical zoom, great cam and cost me £125 from Evilbay 7mp with 2 x 2gbyte sd cards. REALLY nice camera.

[Stewart Plant]

Its a very good camera for the prosumer market but watch theimage quality with it as something to remember due to chip size the camera isnt the same MegaPixels as a SLR camera.

A 5MP Prosumer camera is the same as a 3MP SLR

[jsrsolution]

My husband said he wanted to get into photography similar like photos to canvas but to date he has hardly done much other than a few pics on holiday.
Also, does anyone on here do any kinda video work? Be it surf vids or any other kinda film and doc work?

I do some freelance video work and editing and would be good to meet like-minded people when I move over. The last work I did was a promo ad for a satellite navigation system.