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| The Canon EOS-1D Mark III and 400mm f/2.8L IS (image-stabilized) Canon lens. |
The most common rig among pros covering the Super Bowl XLII in Phoenix this year? It'll probably be the Canon EOS-1D Mark III and 400mm f/2.8L IS (image-stabilized) Canon lens. Peter Reed Miller, staff photographer for Sports Illustrated, explains why: "The Canon 1D Mark III makes beautiful files. They're the best I've seen from a non-full-frame camera. I like the larger screen, and the fact that you can access every feature from the menus -- including the personal functions, which before you could only set with a computer."
Miller also likes the ease with which he can change crucial settings without missing a moment of action on the field. "There's a single button for setting the ISO, and you can see the ISO in the viewfinder. This means you can change it without removing your eye from the finder," he says. "With film, you were locked into an ISO for an entire roll, and you had two ways of controlling exposure: changing aperture and/or shutter speed. With digital, though, you can switch ISO, too. To be able to change all three -- aperture, shutter speed, and ISO -- with equal ease is a major step forward for this camera."
The logistics of shooting a game haven't changed much for Miller, with one important exception: "Because of the 1.3X lens-conversion factor with the 1D cameras, I no longer need my 600mm lens as often. Being able to shoot with a 500mm and get the same angle of view as with a 600mm lens, has made it much easier for me to shoot long."
As photographers discovered in the rain-soaked Super Bowl XLI in Miami last year, the 1D Mark III and 400mm f/2.8L combo performs well in bad weather. "The amazing thing was that of the hundreds of photographers covering the game, only two came to us with damaged cameras," says David Carlson, East Coast manager for Canon's Professional Product Marketing division. "Both froze up for the same reason: As the photographers opened the memory card doors to switch out CompactFlash cards, water poured into the cameras from their raincoats!"
Future Tech
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| OQO mini palmtop computer. |
What technology will be big in 2009 for Super Bowl XLIII? Wireless, certainly, but not Wi-Fi, whose limited frequency and interference from other radio transmitters is likely to cause a "data traffic jam," in the words of Sports Illustrated's Greg Choat.
Instead, Gary Hershorn of Reuters is excited about hard-wired connections between DSLRs and miniature PCs, as well as not-yet-available Wireless USB connectivity (it now works only between computers and printers).
Reuters is already making extensive use of the OQO Model 02 Windows palmtop. This tiny machine runs full versions of Microsoft's Vista or XP operating system, yet is small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. With a USB cable connecting a DSLR to the OQO, the photographer shoots directly to the device's hard drive, where files can be automatically resized and transmitted to a network (preferably using a Wireless USB transmitter). The OQO Model 2 has a battery life of up to 6 hours of continuous use and a hard drive of up to 120GB. It also sports 1GB of internal RAM and a 1.6GHz processor. It measures 5.6x3.3 inches and weighs only a pound.
Wireless USB is similar to Bluetooth, but transmission speeds can be up to 500 times faster. Although it requires more power than Bluetooth, when not in use, it enters a sleep mode that requires minimal power.
In the future, Wireless USB will use an Ultra-WideBand (UWB) platform to transmit data at speeds of up to 480 Mbit/sec at a range of up to almost 10 feet. At first, dongles will plug into a camera and nearby computer for a slower image transmission rate. Later, transmitters are expected to be built into cameras -- these embedded systems will permit super-high-speed image flow.
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