Crankworx Colorado

The Crankworx Colorado Slopestyle event at Winter Park, CO hosts some of the most accomplished and talented riders in the world. This type of shooting definitely challenges your speed and equipment. These were all shot with a medium format Mamiya camera with Phase One digital back. This camera isn’t geared towards sports shooting in the least, but I think I did pretty good. I shot mostly at f/2.8 on a Mamiya 150mm lens, which gives a very tight depth of field. I shot in manual focus, which helped immensely, as the auto-focus on the Mamiya body was very slow. I would set focus ahead of a shot, wait for the rider, pan, and fire. The Phase One back only shoots one frame every 2-seconds, so I only got one shot per run.

A higher speed Nikon or Canon (what everyone else was shooting) would have made auto-focus tracking possible, as well as 5+ fps to really get the right moment. However, that kind of takes the fun out of things. If I was on assignment to document a specific rider, trick, or run for a magazine and needed a certain shot, I wouldn’t have been able take the chances I did. But all that automation just leaves you to sit, wait, and squish the shutter button when you see a rider. Then again, I lost a few fantastic shots due to focus errors and motion blur.