Olympics in Milan: The men of USA Hockey have their first game!

After photographing the women for USA hockey over the last week, it was time for me to capture the first men's game. Both are equally amazing to shoot, and there are some key differences in the way that they play and I shoot. I will take you through that in a little bit.

I went over to the entryway area to capture images of the men coming onto the ice for warm-ups. I positioned myself so that I would get the Milan Cortina logo over them, but since I was shooting with the RF 70-200mm lens, it was not wide enough. 

I stood slightly off-center behind the net and took photos of them warming up. I caught this photo of Vincent Trocheck firing a shot, with the puck coming right at me. I took about 100 images and then ran back to my laptop to submit some of those photos.

Before the game started, I went back to the same entry area, this time with the Canon RF 7-14mm fisheye lens to get a wide shot of them entering the ice arena. You can see how different it looks from the first shot, just using a different lens and moving off to the left a little.

Then is was time for some action.

The men move faster than the woman, and I had to adjust the shutter speed up a little more. This time around I was shooting at 1/1600 for many of the photos.

Brady Tkachuk was the first to score a goal and turned right in front of me for this awesome reaction. This was my favorite photo of the evening.

I forgot how hard these guys hit the boards. If you saw some of the big hits right by me on TV, you may have read my lips and seen me say something not politically correct. Something like "Oh $%#$%! They hit hard!"

I try to capture images of every player on the ice, and even better if they have the puck.

In this shot, you see J.T. Miller tipping in a goal...

...and the celebration. But just like the other goal scored previously, this one was called a "no-goal" because of goaltender interference. 

You might be wondering why I would submit this image to the team. I felt that with two goals being overturned, the refs were part of the story and needed to be shown.

I always love capturing the action in front of the net.

Here I captured one of the Latvian skaters mid air in front of Connor Hellebuyck (the goaltender).

A nice poke check from Noah Hanifin...

..and a solid goal (which did count) for the 6 foot six tall, Tage Thompson.

I was glad that he turned and did this fist pump after the goal.

Auston Matthews (team captain) making a play. 

The team had a solid 5 to 1 win against Latvia.

Before leaving the ice, I saw a bunch of the guys waving to family members. I was able to catch some nice images of that. And tonight I will be photographing game number two for them.

Please excuse any typos. Normally I try to proofread everything before I post, but here at the Olympics, time is a commodity. I definitely miss some things. :)

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• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Africa, Iceland and more.

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Olympics in Milan - Having Fun at Short Track Speed Skating

Just like my visit to the Long Track Speed Skating, I made a trip over to photograph the Short Track Speed Skating to push the creativity boundaries once again. As I was shooting, I had a bunch of changes I had to make to my camera and shooting location, which I thought I would share with you all.

I positioned myself about 5 rows up, in a photo position in the stands. This gave me a straight on view of the skaters as they rounded the far turn and my way.

Once again, I started shooting images at a very fast shutter speed to freeze the action.

I took a bunch of photos as they rounded the corner near me.

Cool action with them leaning into the turn but...I wanted more.

I also had a bunch of photographers in the Field of Play (FOP) area in front of me, and I don't want that in the background of my photos.

For that reason I zoomed in tight to keep all the distractions out of my image.

I did get this big wipe out in one of the heats. Unfortunately it was one of the Americans who went down.

Now it was time to start motion panning again. I changed the Canon R1 setting to TV (Shutter Priority) mode and set the shutter speed for 1/30 sec. At least the photographers were not as distracting now.

Normally I tell people that the risk of motion panning is that, if there is a wipe out, you are not likely to get that shot. In this case, because I was panning with the American, he is sharp with the others in a blurry fall. Something different!

As I reviewed my images in the camera, I noticed that the best photos were up against the colorful background directly across from me. At that point,  I started to zoom all the way into the far turn to get the skaters sharp and nice backgrounds.

I tried to shoot most of the images as they past the Olympic Rings or Milano Cortina 2026 logo.

I zoomed out to try and get the group...

...and zoomed in to get shots like this.

For those that might be wondering what my 'take rate" was. I would say that of the 1000 images I took in a two hour time span, I was really happy with about 20 of the photos (most of what you see here). That is how hard it is to get this type of shot. I tried shooting at 1/20 sec, but that was too slow and I was not getting any useable shots.

Not only do I have to pan at the EXACT speed of the skaters, I also have to hope that they do not move their heads too much. I found that moving my focal point the left of my frame helped me get the leaders in focus, while keeping the others skaters in the frame behind.

This is typically what I am looking for, with good motion in the extremities, but the face being sharp.

You can tell which athlete I am panning with, as they are the one that is sharpest.

After the individual heats, they did the team competition, which meant that there were even more skaters on the ice. Oh...and you see the person in the front, that is a judge. I had to try and avoid them as well. 

Lots of bodies in one shot, but only a select few in focus.

I had fun trying to isolate the American skaters.

I looked around and saw that all the other photographers were using really long lenses on monopods. I was using my Canon R1 with the RF 70-200mm lens and RF 1.4x extender. I was also taking all my photos handheld.

This is a classic motion pan, with some good blur everywhere but the Italian skater's face, which is really sharp.

All in all, I was really happy with the photos, especially knowing how tough it was to get them. 

Please excuse any typos. Normally I try to proofread everything before I post, but here at the Olympics, time is a commodity. I definitely miss some things. :)

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Africa, Iceland and more.

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Olympics in Milan: The RARE LOOK inside Canon's room full of loaner equipment!

Every two years, when I am lucky enough to find myself at the Olympic Games, people beg me to get myself behind the walls of Canon to see ALL the goodies that they have brought to the Games as loaners. Once again, after enough pleading, Canon was nice enough to bring me behind the closed doors to see all the amazing loaner gear that they have here. 

Remember, unlike the Summer Olympics and previous Winter Games, there is not one big media center for the whole event. For this reason, there is one main center in Milan and 3 medium sized centers spread out in Italy. What you are about to see in this "tour" is not all the gear since Canon Professional Services (CPS) has 4 different locations (Milan, Cortina, Levigno, and Tesero) at these Olympics. Since I am based in Milan, I got to visit the CPS area within the Main Press Center (MPC) here in the city. It must have been a logistical nightmare for them (and the other camera companies), trying to figure out what gear to provide and determining the proper staff levels at each location.

Even with that in mind, and the fact that a lot of equipment is currently loaned out to photographers, Canon had more equipment back there than I expected.

Let's get on with the tour...

The first thing I noticed was all the big lenses that they had with them. You can see all these RF 800mm lenses lined up. At $19,000 per lens, that is a lot of money sitting there! Heck, this is like looking at a fleet of cars lined up here.

I was told that the container below had even more of these big boys. 

They had a whole bunch of the newer RF 100-300mm lenses ready to loan. I wish I had known that they would have this many, as I wouldn't have brought my personal one with me. :)

They had a plethora of RF 400mm f/2.8 lenses at the ready.

Needless to say, they had plenty of camera batteries for the Canon R1 and R3 cameras...

...and plenty more for the Canon R5 and R6 models.

I saw all these batteries charging on a wall and thought "I need a wall like this at my place!"

I took out the new Canon RF 7-14mm fisheye lens and took a wide shot of this dream wall.

There is so much amazing gear here! I wanted to get a wide shot of this equipment rack without the fisheye distortion and saw that they had one of the new RF 14mm lenses in the room. I asked if I could use that lens for some photos. All the following photos were taken with that lens.

I have been using two of the Canon R1 cameras here at the Games and feel lucky to have them. Then I saw ALL these R1 cameras in one place and was blown away. This would be my ultimate candy store!

They had Canon R1, R3, R5 MKII, R6 MKII, R6 MKIII and even older 1DX MKIII cameras there. I asked why they had the old stuff, and they said they want to be prepared to loan that equipment to anyone who is using this gear and familiar with it. That makes sense, although I don't think I have seen anyone here not using the new mirrorless camera bodies. You will also see a whole bunch of other L Series lenses. Everything from the RF 24-70mm, RF 24-105mm, RF 70-200mm, RF 100-500mm and more. I looked to see if there were any unannounced goodies back there but did not see anything.

I saw these older EF lenses and was told that they had them for the same reason they had the older camera models.

Here are more of the wider L Series lenses.

Can you imagine how much money is sitting in this room? It must be millions of dollars of cameras and lenses, with most of the value in the endless expensive lenses.

They did have a repair team working on cameras and lenses behind this area, but I was not allowed to photograph that area. That was fine with me, because I was able to capture all the mouthwatering camera gear to show all of you.

Please excuse any typos. Normally I try to proofread everything before I post, but here at the Olympics, time is a commodity. I definitely miss some things. :)

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Africa, Iceland and more.

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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