I enjoy shooting Lacrosse, which is known as the ‘fastest sport on two feet.’   Like most high school sports, there are many rabid parents and fans who love to look at the photos.  I used to think I was ‘fast’ by posting photos of a game within a couple hours of that game. But now I’ve moved it to instant gratification by posting photos as I take them.  At least, pretty much. I do this by streaming photos directly from my camera, as I take them, to my iPhone. I then choose which ones to upload directly to my Twitter or Facebook accounts. In this way, even the fans in the stands can see an ‘instant replay’ of a goal that was just scored.

The new crop of DSLR’s all come equipped with built-in WiFi and for those who don’t have that, you can get a WiFi-enabled SD card.  I’m not sure how the built-in WiFi works, but I shoot in RAW and when I’m shooting on my D800, that’s 36megapixels per shot or about 30 megabytes.  So that will fill up my iPhone fast.  But both my Nikons (D7000 and D800) have two card slots, so I direct my RAW pictures to one slot and then I send lower-res jpeg copies to the Wifi SD Card.  That way, the upload time is about 15 seconds per picture. That’s plenty fine unless it’s a high action game, in which case it’s rather  easy to build up a ‘backlog’ of up two several minutes.   This can cause havoc if you are trying to remember to post that shot of Johnny making his first score, while the game has actually moved ahead by another two scores and you have not been able to find a spare moment (time-out or penalty pause) to Tweet that photo.

To manage the backlog, I simply keep a Notepad open on my iPhone. I’m using Siri, so I can just talk into the phone.  After a big score or other important shot, I’ll note the picture number on the camera (instantaneous), then put that onto the Notepad together with any other info (jersey number, etc), and copy that into my iPhone’s clipboard. Then, while I”m running up and down the field to catch the ensuing action, I can browse my iPhone’s photo folder (where the new photos automatically stream in). Let’s say it’s Photo #365.  When I see that #365 has finally streamed into my iPhone, I tap the ‘share’ button, select ‘Twitter’, then PASTE in the text that I already copied. Presto. It goes out to the world…

I had a three-year love affair with my Nikon D700 and had just about reached the point where I’d have to replace the shutter when the D800 came out, I was initially hesitant to ‘upgrade’ because Nikon had always been more about dynamic range and high ISO, versus googa-mega-pixels, but what finally sold me on it was this:  I can use it in DX mode to shoot sporting events, getting 5fps, 15 megapixels, and a 1.6x crop factor – which just happens to be the perfect compliment to the 70-200mm f 2.8 zoom for most field sports.  So I took the leap.  It was a learning curve, for sure – my first impression was that the photos were not as ‘sharp’ as those taken with the D700, but that was because I was looking at the photos at 100% resolution, which is 3x “closer” than with the D700.  Because most of my photography is hand-held, any blur will be magnified, if you magnify the photo to that extent.  So I made a few adjustments. For sharpness-critical photos, I upped the shutter speeds or used a tripod.  The result:  amazing, high res photos that you could make a highway billboard from.  The other impression I had was that the D800 does not suffer cheap lenses well; you really need good glass and even with that, it’s a good idea to stop up if possible. So with my 70-200, I’ll often shoot at f/3 as ‘wide open’ instead of f/2.8.

Note: just after I purchased my D800, I saw the announcement for the less expensive D600, which is the smallest Full Frame digital camera around and which has the second highest pixel count of any FF camera.  I almost traded in the D800 but, by the time I had spent a month with it, I was hooked.  Here are some photos from the first few months with ‘the monster’. The photos shown below are full-res; you can download them to ‘pixel-peep.’ Scroll down a bit more to see a gallery of recent photos.

Night Sports
1/200 at f/4.0, 300mm, hand-held without VR, ISO 6400  (lens: Nikon 300m f/4)
This is a 60% jpg in original size; I had to use 60% to get it to fit into the 8mb limit here on WordPress.
Download full-res version here.

Low-light, Wide-angle Landscape
1/100 sec at f/7.1, 16mm, ISO 250 (lens: Nikon 16-35mm f/4).  Download full-res version here.

Hand-held Telephoto Landscape
1/1000 sec at f/6.3, ISO 400, 200mm  (lens: Nikon 70-200 f/2.8). Download full res version.

Hand-held Portrait with Glass Zoom
1/1600 sec at f/2.8, 190mm, ISO 500 (lens: Nikon 70-200 f/2.8).  Full-res version.

These next three photos – including the stitched panorama – were taken with Nikon’s “full frame kit zoom” which, I believe, is bundled with the D600.  I’ve read some less-than-glowing reports about this lens but I bought it because of the zoom range and the small size of the lens, making it excellent for walking around. I’m pretty happy with it.

Snapshot with Kit Zoom
1/30 sec at f/4.5, 85mm, ISO 1600 (lens: Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5~4.5)  Photo credit: Jon-Erik Jardine. Full-res version.

Snapshot with Kit Zoom
1/30 sec at f/4.2, 42mm, ISO 500 (lens: Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5~4.5). Full-res version.

Panorama
1/500 sec at f/8, 65mm, ISO 320, 13449 x 4811 pixels  (lens: Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5~4.5; stitched using Photoshop Photomerge)
Here’s a zip file of the full-res version: DSC_8406-Edit-5.jpg