Cross country skiing World cup

Hi guys

It's been a while since my last post here, but it was pretty busy. Winter started for me, and I have been out in snow and cold for quite a while already. Last weekend, I was shooting cross country skiing World cup in Rogla, Slovenia... sport in which I was involved for almost 20 years as racer, but which I don't shoot all that often lately, which is actually pity since it's great sport, and it gives you some more space to be creative.
Weekend was pretty fun, with a bit of drinking with friends who are still on World Cup tour, with snow storm, wind and -15c on first day, and -17c and sun on second day. So on the end, it couldn't get much better then it was.

And here's few photos.

Really dig the first two, Primoz. The comp's and lines coupled with the environs make for strong images.

What a beautiful day to shoot. Where on earth were you standing (flying?) to get the last shot? I'm looking forward to our ski racing season to start in two weeks.

great series. I agree w/ Ronnie, some very strong composition on these. I'm not a fan of the crop on #4 and I think #5 would have benefited greatly from some flash but otherwise, these are wonderful.

Biffbradford wrote in post #9244074
Where on earth were you standing (flying?) to get the last shot?

Yup private helicopter Naah just joking. They were going under the bridge and then straight up the hill (about 300m away). So I was shooting from top of bridge with 500/4 up to next hill. Bridge was in about same level as top of the hill is.

A good set, with the Pietro Piller Cottrer shot being the best for me , a very good action shot

Love the ones with the trees as backdrop, particularly 2 and 6.
So crisp from subject to background... lots of light to work with!

Awesome Photos. The last 2 are my favorites.
Some EXIF data would be educational - for me at least.
Roy

Sorry for missing EXIF. Our software strips exif away for on-line archive. But here are some info nevertheless... First 4 photos (from Saturday's sprint races in snowstorm) are pretty much all shoot with iso 500, f4.5-5 and times between 1/1250sec and 1/1600sec. For lenses it depends, but mostly it was with 70-200/2.8, and some with 500/4.
For next 4 (Sunday's races) things were a bit different. #5 was shot in shadow, so it was iso 250, f6.3 and 1/1250sec, others were shot on sun so it was mainly iso 250, f5-6.3 and 1/2000 to 1/4000sec. All except #8 were shot with 17-40/4, while #8 was with 500/4.

Is it necessary to find ways to insulate the camera or lens when working in these kinds of conditions?

The only time I've attempted to take photos in the snow was with a point and shoot. Eventually I got the pictures, but I remember the camera being very slow to react. I assume this is different with DSLRs?

The pictures are excellent, by the way. The colors are vivid and they look natural at the same time.

I don't know if it's necessary or advisable, but I don't. You can't really work if you would need to care even about this. Only problem are (old) batteries, which go frozen in hour. That's pretty annoying, especially when working with 2 different cameras (old 1dmk2 and 1dsmk3), which have different batteries, so you are lugging spare batteries around like donkey. But other then that, I never had any problems. But then again, I never work in really extreme temperatures, since FIS World cup races have pretty reasonable limits (for xc skiing it's -19c) to which it's allowed to have race. For alpine skiing it's somewhere between -25 and -28c but I was lucky enough that I was on Rogla shooting xc skiing last week and not in Val Gardena or Val d'Isere shooting alpine skiing WC, where temperatures went down to -25c. Not because of camera, but because of me freezing my as** on the hill

That is really an incredible series!! Thanks for posting the settings/lens you used. Do you use any filters or extenders when shooting in the snow??

Nope no filters. I know many think polarizer is must for snow, but in reality it's far from necessary. It just takes 2 stops and sometimes it's just too much. I do use 1.4x converter quite often, but I'm not really keen on 2x one. If I would need longer lens, I go with longer one instead of 2x converter. And 500/4 is long enough for any skiing... including men alpine skiing downhill World Cup or World championships, where you are further away then on local races or other alpine skiing World cup races (like SL or GS).

Awesome shots.

Great series.