Photographing roller derby with the X100T
The Fujifilm X100T is an amazing camera. I’ve raved about this camera for over a year. Great image quality. Small and lightweight. Quiet. I carry it every day and use it to photograph everything from landscapes to food to street to portraits. If I was left with only one camera in my kit, I would choose the X100T over my other gear.
The only thing it doesn’t handle as well as fast-moving action. The autofocus system is very good, but it can’t even come close to tracking moving objects like a DSLR with a pro lens. Naturally, I decided to try shooting some roller derby with it.
Roller derby is probably one of the hardest sports to photograph. The action is usually pretty fast and chaotic. Uniforms aren’t necessarily designed to photograph well — lack of contrast making it difficult for cameras to lock focus). Lighting at venues tend to be on the dark side; I regularly shoot at ISO 6400 so I can maintain shutter speeds around 1/500th at f/2.8.
For a mid- to high-end DSLR and a fast lens (like my Nikon D600 and Nikkor 70–200/2.8), this isn’t a problem at all. However, I haven’t been as confident in my X100T about maintaining good image quality at those specs. I normally shoot my X100T outside where there’s plenty of light or convert to black and white when I need to combat high-ISO noise.
I decided to give my X100T another shot at derby knowing its limitations and adjusting accordingly. At NW Junior Derby Championships, I had plenty of opportunities to experiment with shooting styles and settings without compromising my image delivery obligations. I also needed some breaks during the weekend from hoisting my heavy DSLR gear.
For the tournament, I attached the TCL-X100 tele-converter to my X100T to get myself a 50mm-equivalent field-of-view. 35mm is too wide for most of the action. 50mm would get me a lot of full-body action shots from my regular shooting locations.
Most of the time I had the aperture at f/2.8 and the shutter speed at 1/500. This was to keep it consistent with my DSLR settings in terms of depth of field and action-stopping shutter speeds. I technically could’ve gone to f/2 to give me more light, but the depth of field would’ve been too narrow for most shots.
ISO was at 5000 for most of the weekend. Why 5000 and not just go all the way to 6400? Honestly, I was tweaking settings all weekend and ended up leaving it there, because I forgot about it. My thought was that if the image was slightly too dark, I could always boost exposure in post. X100T raw files have quite a bit of exposure latitude, so I wasn’t worried about it.
Knowing that the X100T’s continuous focus system couldn’t keep up with the action, I decided to pre-focus much of the time and wait for the action to move into the focus area. I also used back-button focus, so I could keep shooting through the action and re-focus only when needed (I do this with my DSLRs). This strategy worked most of the time but only because I’m very familiar with the sport and could anticipate most of the action.
In the end I shot maybe 10% of my images with the X100T, and I was very happy with the results. I’m pretty confident that, if I had shot the tournament with a faster Fujifilm camera like the X-T1 or the X-Pro2 and a fast lens like the 50–150/2.8, I would’ve been happy with the results as well. In fact, if I had a second X100T with the WCL-X100 wide-angle converter attached, I would only need to adjust my shooting style a bit to capture most of the shots I normally get.
The X100T might not be the ideal camera for photographing sports (limited focal length options, slow continuous autofocus). However, given the right lighting conditions, an understanding of the sport, and some patience, it can yield some great images. I obviously can’t expect it to compete with a full-frame DSLR and the top-of-the-line 70–200 lens. It’s a completely different camera and needs adjustments to shooting style to make it work.
Would I use the X100T again for roller derby? Of course I would. Would I use it for my primary camera at a bout? Not likely. For the type of coverage I like to get, the X100T isn’t the right tool. It’s still an awesome camera though, and I will bring it to every bout in the future.
You can view all of my photos from NW Junior Derby Championships 2016 at my site: http://photography.dannyngan.com/rollerderby/nwjdc2016.
