Modern Woods Photography
One of the main reasons competitive paintball came out of the woods in the summer of 1996 and stayed out of the woods for so long was because of the difficulty in shooting photos and video in the woods . Poor quality photos and video wasn ’ t going to help grow the game — and growing the game and attracting outside sponsors and money was one of the priorities of the 90s .
Cameras in the 90s and even early 2000s shot actual film and film and developing was expensive . Shooting in the woods required fast ASA ( now called ISO ) settings and often produced grainy images — not good . “ Bracketing ” was a method most professional photographers used in the 90s , meaning you would shoot the same image with three to four different aperture setting to increase the chance of getting a properly lit photo . Again , with film and developing this was expensive . The bottom line was getting good shots in the woods where it was often dark and the subjects were often moving was more a matter of luck than skill . The cameras just couldn ’ t handle what was needed .
Today ’ s cameras open up so many more options to paintball photographers shooting in the woods . In the 90s an ISO setting of 1000 produced garbage grainy photos more often than not , while modern Canon , Nikon , Sony and Panasonic cameras produce crystal clean images at 12,000 ISO and even higher . Shooting in the woods with limited light is no longer a real problem . And with no developing or film costs photographers can shoot as many images , using as many different settings as needed to get the job done .
In the mid-90s when I was shooting for PCRI Magazine and Paintball 2Xtremes , I would shoot ten rolls of film per event , or 240 photos . At this year ’ s ICC I shot 1250 photos before lunch on day one — and more than 4,000 for the event in two days . Much like modern paintball guns , accuracy or quality by volume will produce some amazing results . Enjoy ! - John Amodea www . paintball . media
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