Uppers Zoomed In

As mentioned in my most recent post, I've been hanging at Kanaha while everyone else is playing on the water.  I'm trying to make myself a bit more useful to society so I brought my latest fairly cheap super zoom point & shoot camera to the beach.  In this case it's a Panasonic DMC-FZ40, available on Amazon for a mere $280.  The thing about this camera is it offers a really long zoom for an inexpensive price.  To get the equivalent on a DSLR would probably cost a few grand just for the lens.  Of course you are giving up some important features with the cheaper camera, especially lens speed and low light performance.  But if your main goal is to sit on the beach and take hand held pictures of your buddies way way out on the waves while sitting in your Tommy Bahama beach chair, it's not a bad trade off.

Those of you who windsurf and do so at Kanaha and occasionally are in the upper / windward reef (cleverly known as "Uppers") know that the break up there is a long distance - maybe a mile or so - from the beach.  Unfortunately this distance rules out easy viewing or getting good photos of the action up there, unlike Hookipa where everything is right in front of the spectators looking down from a perfect viewing bluff.  Yes Hookipa is awesome for action photos - yet another reason for pros and photographers to be there (besides the awesome conditions of course). Uppers is the quiet place to do your own thing out of public sight.  Which can be a bummer on the bigger days when Uppers has very nice conditions along with some very skilled riders.  One such rider often up there ripping it up in all conditions is Nick Warmuth, who I've pointed out in some prior posts.  Anyhoo, this new camera does a very decent job of bringing the far away action in close.  It's not perfect, but for now it seems a whole lot better then anything I used before. So without further ado, below are today's shots from Uppers.

The first photo shows Nick cutting back and throwing some big spray off a wave.  Riley Coon is the second shot throwing a sweet goiter (if there can be such a thing).  The third is my buddy Sven Zedlick making a nice top turn.  Garth Pond is doing the same in photo five.  Larry (?) is in number nine. I'm looking for names on the others (so if anyone knows send me a comment),