Photographing the Olympics

[DavidT]

I found this video entertaining and sure drives home a few things.
The gear is a tool.
The photojournalist is in a very competitive field and speed matters.
Gear that makes transfer of images faster is more important then other bells and whistles.

Nikon for example saying they are focusing on the pro and pro-am market is brilliant. These are the people who will buy gear that improves speed and likely hood they capture the moment.

These are the people the $6,500 flagship cameras are built for. They aren’t the people who argue if the price is justified. They are the ones who are excited about faster ports, WiFi, GPS, FPS and don’t care about the flippy screen so they can watch themselves doing a video also know as real photographers and not YouTube wannabes.

Sony is making huge strides into the pro market by delivering on the above and that should be applauded. To move that customer out of a legacy brand they are so invested in to a relatively new camera company is pretty impressive.

The camera companies are going to make a crap ton of money as these pros move into mirrorless and replace all of this gear.

What are you thoughts?

 

[fcotterill]

Thanks for this. It's useful to watch such a detailed overview, which also compares the rapid changes even between Olympics!

It's clear why the dominant Japanese photographic companies take the Games so seriously. Although the human factor remains vital, we can expect the trend is going to be for more and more robotics at more of the key nodes for respective events. This is must also be one of the factors why Nikon is investing more and more into robotics.

Hopefully any use of drones over venues doesn't become too invasive and obnoxious!

fyi - an interesting story behind an iconic Olympic photograph https://www.olympic.org/news/snapped-the-extraordinary-story-behind-the-barcelona-1992-diving-images