Capturing photos of the men from USA Gymnastics - Wow, this Canon R1 is AMAZING!

Yesterday morning, after a really long night of being soaked and not much sleep, I woke up early and headed to the Gymnastics venue to capture images of the men from USA Gymnastics. It was great to "fill my cup" capturing nice images after getting mostly skunked the night before at the Opening Ceremony.

I got to the venue via the trains and got myself a temporary locker to store my camera bag. It is a requirement at this venue, as we are not allowed to bring our bags inside. I had to make a choice on which cameras and lenses to bring in. I decided to stay with my "go to" setup, the Canon R1 with the Canon RF 100-300mm lens and a Canon R5 MKII with a RF 24-70mm lens.  It turned out to be a good choice, but I probably could have gotten away with the much smaller and lighter RF70-200mm lens on the Canon R1. I am heading to Berce Arena now to photograph Simone Biles and team and will choose the smaller lens.

 

Paul Juda did an awesome performance and you know he was happy by the big smile on his face.

And how about these celebration shots? We call these "money shots" (even though I don't sell them).

I took all of the photos at f/2.8 to give me a faster shutter speed (at lower ISO) and to blur the background.

And then Frederick Richard had his turn and put in an equally good performance. 

Bam! Another great reaction. I love the expression and the chalk dust in the air.

Brody Malone taking his turn. Not as strong as the others, but awesome to watch and to photograph.

Stephen Nedoroscik contributed to the team points with an excellent performance.

When I am shooting, I am looking for different looks. I like this one since it is off-center and unique from most of the others.

After Stephen's routine, he came over (about 3 feet from me) and looked up into the stands and waved. I quickly turned and grabbed this shot. I am assuming that this is his family. Love the Stephen heads!

I caught this photo of Paul on the rings. I am always amazed at the strength of these athletes.

Asher Hong on the parallel bars.

I saw these lights high in the arena and wasn't sure if it would look good in photos, but I decided that it could create a cool backlit shot. Brody caught some serious air here and I fired off a bunch of photos. I was shooting the Canon R1 at 30 frames per second. That was a lot of photos!

I zoomed in to shoot some tight shots as well as the wide.

Big celebrations again.

Every Olympics, I laugh when reviewing my images, because many of the athletes make some really funny faces when they are performing.

This one is a favorite of mine from the day. I really like the fact that Frederick is completely in the air and in front of the Olympic rings. 

Now, for those of you who are into photography and cameras, let me tell you about the Canon R1. The focus on this camera is absolutely AMAZING! In past Olympics, my take rate when photographing gymnastics was maybe 40% in perfect focus. With the Canon R1 I have a 95% take rate. This is crazy! And at 30 fps I ended up with more than 5,000 images to choose from. Trying to select my favorites was daunting!! When this camera locks in, it holds. And it locks in so fast that when I hit the focus button with the gymnast in mid air, it still locks on their face perfectly. This is a game changer. Even I am blown away. With that said, I am not using the pre-capture mode because I am already blasting off too many photos as it is. But I am excited to use that feature for birds in Africa and Costa Rica. 

They say that the focus speed of the Canon R5 MKII is 95% as good as the Canon R1. I have not tried it yet, because I don’t want to risk it for key shots here at the gymnastics. But I will at some point. 

Till then…

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