Cannon EOS 6.1MP and sports an 400MM Promaster Lens
 

Is this any good for taking Surfing Pictures?

Anything better?

You want to have one of the lenses with Image Stabilisation. I use the Canon 70-200L but you may want at least 300mm.

With a long lens like that it is difficult to get steady and you will have to use a shutter speed reciprical to the lens length (ie 200mm - 1/200 second) to get a sharp shot. With the stabilisation
you can cut that way down, or even shoot from a boat.

I've seen mention before that wider lenses allow slower hand-held shots. Do you have any links to tables or a rough formula for this?

I have a 12-24mm lens but so far I've been trying to shoot at 1/100 or 1/125 as a minimum just to be safe.

Is it the Sigma 12-24?

I don't have any table links, I just use that as a rule of thumb. But with the IS lenses you can do much better, I can shoot handheld at 1/60 during regular daylight and get sharp shots.

:thumbsup

Aaron I am so curious what you shoot after seeing your work. Is it a Canon 10D?

You wouldn't believe me if I told you.

No, it's not a 10D although I keep telling myself that I am gonna buy one of those.

No I know it's skill and not the camera. One of the guys who shoots some of my favourite content only uses a Canon G5.

This guy who posts at Dpreview only uses a 300D and his work is amazing:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...essage=9151324

Yup. Widest non fisheye you can get for a Canon. :) I purchased it because I found the 1.6X crop factor on my 300D limiting, but I've since bought a film body so I get 12mm @full frame.

http://media.sensationcontent.com/rowan/pr08.jpg

BTW those dpreview forum images (and the girl) are stunning.

Most of the pics that I post are shot with a G2.

I have the same lens and it is amazing for landscapes or buildings.

http://www.bukkake.ru/night1.jpg

I've learned a lot from dpreview, hopefully some day I will work up the courage to actually shoot some girls, but I don't have a clue how to go down that road.

I am already a little frustrated at how flat the basic landscape images taken with this lens look. You really need something close to the camera to properly convey the magnitude of the visual data that you're trying to cram into the frame. With a 6MP digital shot it's going to be much harder to pick out detail from a more distant object.

Of course a close object with such a wide lens causes other problems like perspective distortion...

what he said.

and depends on your camera body.

IMO nikon VR lenses are a little better because their VR lenses allow stabilization in 2 directions in active mode.

usually you will have plenty of light for surfing pix, so probably stabilization is not necessary for certain fast action bodies (nikon d1x, d1h, etc.)

a really good lens for this type of work if you have the avail light is sigma 50-500mm zoom. it is a little heavy, so use it with monopod.