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Re: [OM] Oly..mpic advice

Subject: Re: [OM] Oly..mpic advice
From: "John A. Lind" <jlind@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 00:46:46 +0000
At 04:37 2/5/02, Andrea wrote:
Hello all -

I will be attending two Olympic events in a couple of weeks and need some advice on what parts of my setup to bring, and hopefully some tips on shooting outside in cold weather. What I own: Bodies: OM-2S, OM1-MD w/ battery conversion; Lenses: 50/1.8; 24/2.8; 70-210/4.5-5.6. I also have a Winder 2, and a T20 flash. I will be outside for one event, the Women's Super-G ski race, and inside for one event, Women's Hockey.

[snipped off rest of message]

Take all of it.

Get to a major camera store and buy a copy of the "Kodak Pocket Photoguide." It's spiral bound, about 4x5 inches in size, and has a white cover with a dark blue lens aperture on the front. Easily fits in a shirt pocket and camera bag pocket. Two invaluable sections in this book cover "DAY" for daylight exposure estimating and/or planning, and "EXISTING LIGHT" for estimating and/or planning available light exposures (indoors or at night). Should cost less than $15. Best photography "technical reference" I have; there's one in each of my camera bags.

Expect to use the telephoto for both the hockey and skiing events. I was there last November when various venues were still under construction; it's beautiful and you might want the other lenses for some landscape shots. See a few of my Kodachromes of it here (2nd - 5th images):
  http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/olympusgallery12.html

Recommend using the OM-1MD outdoors to avoid temperature issues and loading it with the ISO 100 to ISO 200 film you normally use. Your primary issue is weather: the cold and whether it will be clear sky with bright sun, heavy overcast, or something in between. Keep track of weather forecasts and if heavy overcast is predicted for the outdoor event, you might switch to use an ISO 400 film instead. Recommend against using the winder outdoors in severe cold. Just as the cold affects your OM-2S cells, it will also affect the "AA" cells in the winder. Could result in the winder not having enough oomph to get to the next frame.

Recommend using the OM-2S indoors for the hockey and the winder. The challenge here is not the cold, but the significantly lower lighting level. Indoors is problematic with your slower zoom lens. You might want to use the flash for indoor "snapshots," but it won't help photographing the hockey game. The T-20 isn't powerful enough (you would need a GN about 3X of the T-20's GN). You will need nothing less than ISO 1600 to ISO 3200 film to shoot available light with the zoom wide open, and still be able to reasonably stop action. Consider using B&W for this to avoid color balancing issues. Indoor sports arena lighting is definitely *not* daylight. Usually it's high pressure sodium vapor or a similar "high intensity discharge" type lighting that is very difficult for most labs to color balance when printing from daylight film. If this doesn't bother you, then use color film.

-- John


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