# Red Bull Cliff Diving



## kaihp (Aug 27, 2018)

The Red Bull Cliff Diving competition guested Copenhagen again this past weekend. Each of the 12 divers would make 4 jumps from the top of the Opera house 27 meters down into the harbour.

First image show the harbour & Opera house from my shooting point (24-70/2.8, shot at 70mm).

It takes the divers about 3 seconds from they jump off the platform until they hit the surface of the water at 85kph (almost 53mph for the metrically challenged) - check the second image.

The day was rather cloudy and pretty windy, with the wind playing a bit of havoc on the divers preparations.

Compared to last time in 2016 (link), I used a 1Dx and rented a 600mm Mk II lens (vs 5D3 + 300 Mk II) together with my 2x TC Mk III. I didn't have the opportunity to AFMA the lens+TC to the body, but I from looking at the images, it wasn't far off (and any problems was more on my side that the technical side). The images came out quite 'flat' so I had to massage them a bit and add + 2-3 in saturation and some USM sharpening to make the images look attractive.

I was shooting across the harbour, so from 180-200 meters away (and ~26m below the platform). I'm not sure of the desaturated images are due to the 600+2xTC combo, the distance to the subjects or both.

I hadn't checked what the 1200 f/8 vs 600 f/5.6 would do to the DOF, and this caught me a bit out I think wrt sharpness. With the '16 setup I had a DOF of ~31 meters, whereas the 1200mm setup has just 11 meters of DOF.

For those who have shot with the 600 MkII + 2xTC III combo, what are your experience here? (paging Dr @Neuro)


PS: Gary Hunt (UK) won again this year (he has won all three times RBCD has visiting Copenhagen). Michal Navratil had to cancel as his wife had gone into labor with their first baby.


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