The best cameras for surf photography depend on the types of surf photos you want to take, so dive in to this video to find out your best option.
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I’ve outlined three broad types of camera in the video.
1: Action cameras (GoPro)
GoPro is the big name in action cameras, practically creating the market for them with their accessible, tiny Hero range. Over the years I’ve used many of the different generations from the original 35mm film, wrist mounted version, to the Hero 5 black and many in between.
My recommendation for ease of use and a good mix of features and value is the GoPro Hero 5 Black*.
Resources:
Robbie Crawford is a surf photographer who specialises in GoPro shots. He has an excellent guide to the different modes and settings of the Hero 5 Black camera (they are very applicable to the Hero 3-7 cameras too).
KNEKT make excellent accessories for GoPro and other action cameras, I use their board mount, pistol grip and dome port.
Inspiration:
- Shaun Smith, aka Smitherspix
- Robbie Crawford
- GoPro’s official Instagram account
- Surfer’s Journal cover, shot by Mikala Jones
*(If you’re on a tight budget and don’t mind voiding your warranty with an unofficial firmware update, you can buy a cheaper Hero 2018 and update it’s firmware to unlock all the features of the Hero 5 Black).
2: Phone & water housing
If you want to use a relatively modern iPhone for surf photography you are in luck, there are a few options but one stands out as the best for surf photography: AxisGo
It’s a unique phone housing in that it has the option for adding a pistol grip to allow you to easily shoot photos with one hand. It also has interchangeable ports and lenses which expand the types of photos you can take with the camera.
There are also lens ports and conversion lenses for shooting with a dome and getting a wider angle than the standard iPhone lens is capable of on its own.
Resources:
AxisGo are the most surf specific housing manufacturer, but you can also find waterproof housings for various phone models from these brands:
Inspiration:
- Surfer’s journal cover shot on iPhone with AxisGo housing by Zak Noyle
- AxisGo Instagram
- Ryan Pernofski, shooting with iPhone and AxisGo housings
3: Super zoom cameras
A superzoom, or Bridge style camera has many of the features of a DSLR or interchangeable lens camera, but has a fixed lens and is generally less expensive than an equivalent set up with multiple lenses.
The Sony RX10 range has set the standard for a few generations at the high end.
Resources:
Inspiration:
4: Interchangeable lens cameras
The majority of my readers, mostly people who are keen amateur surf photographers, use an interchangeable lens camera. most of the questions I get ask about them, and there’s more techniques, skills and variables involved than other types of camera. I’ll be focusing on how to get surf photos you’re proud of with this type of equipment, but many of the lessons will be useful for you if you’re using one of the other types too.
Resources:
- The Learningsurfphotography.com site, and the rest of ths course focus on surf photography with interchangeable lens cameras
- Beginner photography books – Your local library will have a few books on the basics of photography with this type of camera. I’d get yourself a library card and go and get out a couple of the most recent books they offer, if you get a lot from these books, consider buying one
- Scott Harrison’s ebook “The Guide To Surf & Wave Photography” has some great tips for surf photographers using all types of cameras, but focuses on interchangeable lens cameras.
Inspiration:
- As most well known surf photographers use an interchangeable lens camera, I’d recommend looking through this list of over 200 surf photographers, with links to their websites, Instagram and facebook accounts. Click on the photographer’s name to get more links, here’s Zak Noyle’s page as an example.
Full transcript:
Cameras for Surf Photography – Introduction
A lot of people ask me what type of camera for surf photography they should buy. And it’s probably obvious to you that you need a camera in order to take these photos. But there are a few different broad categories that I want to cover, which will help you understand if you need a different type of camera.
Action Cameras for Surf Photography
Let’s start with action cameras. The big player in this space is GoPro. There are lots of other options, but GoPro has definitely done the best job of popularizing and probably inventing these cameras. I’ve used them since the 35-millimeter GoPro, the wrist mounted one, and I’ve had the AAA battery style GoPro, which was great as well. And all the way up until one of the more recent ones, I think the latest model I had was a Hero 4, before I decided that was probably the best GoPro I’ll ever need.
A GoPro is great for shooting video, obviously. That’s probably why you’ve got one, if you have got one, or why you’re thinking about getting one. But it’s also good for still photos, if there’s a reasonable amount of light. Because you have very limited control of the settings, so if you want to get a crisp, in-focus shot, you need to have quite a high shutter speed. A GoPro will do that for you in 90% of situations when you’re shooting surf photos, because there will be enough light. But in those 10% where it’s quite dark, the shutter speed will slow down and you’ll get some blur in the wave. I’ll be going into this in much more detail in the setting sections of the course.
So, essentially, if it’s quite well lit, any time during the day, not really early morning or really late evening, but any time during the day, and you want to shoot inside a wave, so you want that really wide angle, which kind of exaggerates everything that’s close to you, especially small waves look quite big, bigger waves tend to be compressed a little bit, and it kind of meets in the middle. But if you’ve got a relatively small wave and you want to make it look great, and it’s well lit, and you want to be inside the barrel and shoot really wide angle, then a GoPro is what you need. It’ll do the job and there are lots of accessories you can get which will help you out.
You can also shoot with a GoPro over/under split style shots, if you get the right accessories too. So if that’s really what you’re after, then do consider a GoPro with the right accessories. I’ll go through that in much more detail later on. So that’s action cameras. That’s the kind of photo you’re gonna be getting. Everything’s in focus, everything’s wide-angle, you see lots of the scene, and you need pretty good light. If those tick your boxes for your surf photos, you’re quids in. Grab yourself a GoPro or something similar and add some accessories.
Mobile Phone Cameras for Surf Photography
The next type of camera for surf photography would be a mobile phone. Believe it or not, with the introduction of things like the AxisGO housings for the iPhone series and various other things, WaterShot do them as well, and other people do different housings for different models of mobile phone, the cameras on mobile phones have been getting much, much better over the last few years. You’re probably aware of the limitations as well, because if it’s very dark, if you’re inside, if it’s late at night inside, then it does struggle quite a lot to come up with a really clean image. But saying that, it’s probably better than a point-and-shoot camera would be a couple of years ago, even. So you could get really good shots with just your mobile and a housing, even just if it’s line-up shots that you’re after, from the beach, or wide-angle shots, as if you’d just walked down to check the beach.
Mobile phone, again, really good option. So don’t dismiss it as an option if those are the type of shots you want to get. There are options to, especially with housings, to adapt that camera lens into a wider lens, so you can have like a screw-on lens that sits in front of your camera lens, which makes it wider and gives you more of a GoPro style shot.
Wide angle in the tube, or even over-under shots, are possible if you get the right accessories with a dome port, for instance. So there are a few different options there for mobile phone shooting. There are a few limitations, but honestly, it’s come on leaps and bounds, even in the last couple of years. So do consider that as an option, if those are the type of shots you want to take.
Bridge or Superzoom Cameras for Surf Photography
The next type of camera for surf photography that’s quite common is a long-range shot from the beach. So often, this will be an action shot, someone doing a turn, or pulling into a barrel, or even just doing a bottom turn. Or someone learning to surf, big smile on their face, arms spread wide, that kind of shot that people are really happy with when you get that. So I see this as being someone who perhaps wants to document someone learning to surf, whether that’s a friend or a loved one, or whether that’s as part of a surf school, for instance. Perhaps if you wanted to sell your photos to people who are at the beach, then this is obviously a really popular type of shot. And anything like that, or training as well, if you’re helping someone train and improve their surfing, then this is the type of photo that you might want to do. I mean, obviously, you’d be shooting video, I think, for the training aspect, but the same rules apply for video and photo in this case.
So the type of camera you’re going to want to go for, you’ve got a few options, as in most of these cases, but the one thing that would do that really well, if you didn’t want to do any of the other stuff, would be something like what used to be called a bridge or a super zoom camera, which is a camera body with a lens built-in. You can’t remove it, it’s physically attached permanently to the camera body, and that has a really big zoom range. So there are quite a few examples, probably the most high-profile, the most popular one for surf photography and action sports, would be the Sony RX10 series. And these can get quite expensive, but the reason is, there’s obviously a lot of technology built into the body and the lens itself. To get an equivalent lens on an interchangeable lens camera system, which is your other option, would cost many times, usually many times, the price of this all-in-one unit that you’re getting.
So the benefits are, you never change the lens, so there’s no chance for getting any dust on your sensor or anything like that. It’s all in one, so you just chuck it in your bag and you know it’s good to go. Often, they have quite a small sensor size, which can adversely affect the quality of your images, because it makes them more noisy. I’ll go into more detail into why that is later in the course. But for now, all you need to know is, if it’s low-light, sunset, dawn, or a really cloudy day, then you might well have less clean images than you would do if you had an interchangeable lens camera with a big lens. But saying that, it’s going to make it easier to get things in focus. Often, with a good bridge camera or super zoom camera, the focusing is pretty good, because they’ve built it with the built-in lens in mind. They don’t have to take account of any other types of lenses, they’ve just got one lens to deal with, they’ve got one sensor, they know exactly what’s going on, so they can really tune the performance to that equipment that’s all built into one piece. And they can really make the most of that.
So if you’re looking to shoot beginners learning to surf, or any of the things I mentioned in this section, then you might want to look at one of these super zoom cameras that is capable of getting really close into the action with a big zoom lens and recording it nice and fast and getting everything you need in that one package.
Interchangeable Lens Cameras for Surf Photography
The number one type of camera for surf photography that I’m asked about, and the number one type of camera that I use to shoot my own surf photography, is an interchangeable lens camera. Now, they come in lots of different sizes and brands and forms, but essentially, there are two main types that you’ll see. There’s DSLR, which stands for digital single lens reflex. Basically, it means it’s got a mirror inside, which helps with the focusing. And when you press the button, the mirror flips up and the image hits the sensor and that’s recorded. And there’s the other type, which is mirrorless, which, as you can imagine, doesn’t have that mirror in place. It essentially uses the sensor itself to focus, so it doesn’t need a mirror. And there are a lot of pros and cons, and you’ll probably know a few people who shoot with each. And I’ve done both myself. I’ve shot with a DSLR for a long time. I’ve used Canon and Nikon. And I’ve also shot with mirrorless cameras. I’ve used Panasonic and Sony. And there are other options out there from both of these. And Canon and Nikon have their own mirrorless systems, as well as DSLRs. So it can all get a bit confusing, but essentially, these two cameras, I’m putting in the same category, because the main thing you can do with them that you can’t with the other cameras I’ve talked about, is change the lens.
So this is a Sony A6500. This is a Sony 35mm lens. And as you can see, I can take it off and put it back on. And what that allows me to do, is have completely different types of photo with one camera. It’s a modular system. So I have, whereas with a GoPro, I could just shoot wide angle, with the A6500, I put a fisheye lens on here, and I can shoot very similar photos to that GoPro. With the super zoom camera, I can shoot, to be fair, it’s quite a good range. I can’t shoot fisheye with it, but I can shoot probably the normal style photos we talked about with the mobile, and long distance from the beach style photos. So with this one, I’d swap the lens out for a big lens. I can shoot from the beach. This is the 35mm lens, which gives me an equivalent focal length of 50mm. I’ve got a whole section on equivalence, so bear in mind, there’s different size sensors and things like that, which you will have to deal with, if you choose to go down this road. But it’s not as complicated as it seems. I’ll explain in a future video. Essentially, this gives me that normal field of view, which roughly recreates our human vision. And that’s one of my favourite ways to shoot in the water.
So I’ve got all of those cameras, essentially, built into one thing. Now, obviously, to do the fisheye shots, I need a water housing. And I’ll go through lots of details on which one to get and what I would recommend, if you did want to shoot in the water. And obviously, from the land, I’m going to need to buy a bigger lens. So I’m going to have maybe two or three lenses, in order to cover all of those same types of photos.
But essentially, you buy the camera once, and then you buy a different lens for each type of photo you want. And a housing, if you want to shoot in the water, for instance. You accessorize this one camera body, and that allows you to do lots of things. And then the big bonus, I guess, is if they release a new one of these, then you just get rid of that one, bring in the new one, and pop this on. Which I’ve done with the A6000, which is an amazing value camera, which is probably the one I recommend to a majority of people who want to shoot surf photos with an interchangeable lens camera. The Sony Alpha 6000, everyone calls it the A6000. And all the same lenses work on this camera that work on that one.
And there’s lots to go into, in terms of lenses. And in fact, lenses was the most popular, most requested topic for a video course. So I will be going into lots of detail on lenses. But I just wanted to cover, really briefly, the pros and cons, or really quickly get you to the right answer, if you only want to do one type of surf photography. So if you want to do all types of surf photography, then an interchangeable lens camera is probably the way to go. But it does come with some drawbacks, such as the cost, the weight, the size, and the complexity of the system. So I’ll be going into much more detail about this type of camera for surf photography in the next section.
If you only want to do one of these types of photos, then you don’t need to worry about this. What you need to do is go along, grab a super zoom camera, grab a GoPro camera, whichever suits your needs, and you’ll be getting photos within the week that you’ll be really happy with.
And obviously, you can go through the other videos and find out the techniques you need to use in order to get those photos and improve them. But there’s going to be lots and lots for people who’ve decided that they want to take on two, three, or every different type of surf photo that you can imagine.
You’re going to be able to take them with one of these interchangeable lens cameras. And that’s it for cameras for now. I’ll go into a bit more detail, as I said, in various different videos in the future. But for now, let’s get moving onto the next video. Feel free to skip around and find a video that’s up your street, so you can start taking surf photos that you’re proud of with the best camera for surf photography.
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