BIG AIR Snowboarding at Night (PHOTOS - Antwerp)

I would not go so far as to call the E-series an optimal system for sports.

I am totally sure that many Canikons are actually better for most sporting tasks.  Olympus has never been the champ of C-AF and that is what is pretty useful for fast sports.

In other words : if sport photography were a kind of job I need to earn my living with, I think I would probably use a Canikon rig.

I have Olympus for other reasons (lenses, sturdiness, a bit of tradition and brand bias too).

But Olympus CAN be used for sports; only it takes a bit more planning, effort and ingenuity from the photographer because you have to pick the right vantage point and settings and options that give you the best chances of getting good shots.  With the Canikon sport beasts, the camera can probably do more of the work to get good shots when there is less flexibility.

OTOH, the same is valid also in reverse.  Those with "the right camera" do not always get the shot.

Right next to me stood a guy with a Canon (don't recall the model) and between jumps he looked at my shots and asked me if I could help him because his were almost always totally overexposed on the rider.  He was clueless on the cause.  He did have enough knowledge to be using S priority, but when I told him he should spot-meter, I actually had to show him in the menus of his camera how to do that.  Quite clearly never heard of the concept.  Probably used only to shooting in even daylight.  Between jumps, I took the time to explain him that matrix metering would overexpose on the rider because the whole black night sky around him was being taking into account to determine the correct average exposure for the whole frame.

Thanks.

--
/Roel Hendrickx/
lots of *images*: www.roelh.zenfolio.com
my E-3 user field *report* from Tunisian Sahara: http://www.biofos.com/ukpsg/roel.html