Chris Franklin - In the Spotlight with the 70-200mm G2 Lens

7/24/2017

Click for more information on the 70-200mm lens

One of the most fun aspects of social media is meeting other artists and making new friends. Meet Chris Franklin, a photographer from Houston. A couple of weeks ago, here in the Tamron Theater I shared a post about action photography with tips from Grady James.

I posted the link in a tweet and Chris responded, "Great tips and advice. I will use them this weekend for a Roller Derby shoot...." Well, that's all it took for a quick phone call to track Chris down and ask him to share some images after the event. A few days later he sent a few of his favorites.

If you've ever photographed anything in an arena and especially a sport with a lot of action, you know there's absolutely no control over much of anything, especially the lighting. When Chris sent me these images he wrote:

"I have been using the Back-Focus button for a while now. Each time I read or hear of a professional photographer using it, it gives me confidence I made the correct choice. Pre-composing and pre-focusing are great tools to use when your subject is known to be in a certain place and time on a regular basis, (i.e. on roller derby track). Base line shutter speeds are essential to photographing high speed sports action. On my last shoot, I had to maintain a shutter speed of 500th/sec or higher. Unfortunately, I had to use a very high ISO to accomplish this. (high ISO images are not my favorite). Capturing expression and emotion are key to telling your story through your photographs. The photographs I took shows the grit, drive and determination the skaters were experiencing."

These image were captured with Tamron's SP 70-200mm F2.8 G2 lens. Chris had two Nikon bodies, a D500 and D800 and did most of his shooting at 6400 ISO.

Remember, I'm sharing low res screen shots here, so the originals obviously show more detail. I also didn't ask Chris to do any clean up of the images for better flesh tone, etc. These are right out of the can, although I took the liberty of a little fun cropping.

Check out Tamron's complete product line with a visit to one of their authorized dealers. They're manufacturing some outstanding glass, but don't take my word for it - have some fun with your own "test drive!"

A big thanks to Chris for sharing his images and to Tamron for making a great lens which gave him images to share! Click on any of the images to visit Chris Franklin's website and see more of his work.