David Ashdown's sports picture diary: Beijing Olympics - Rebecca Adlington

(DAVID ASHDOWN)

David Ashdown was in Beijing covering the 2008 Olympic Games

The idea was to try to get some sense of movement into the picture, normal wisdom would say the faster the shutter speed the better, I hand hold the 500mm most photographers use a mono-pod, but I can't stand them it's so much easer when I have to put the lens down and pick up my other camera, mono-pods just get in the way.

The Nikon D3 is able to take nine frames a second but if I was to do that most of the pictures would be a lot of water and not much else, so I try and time the moment the swimmer comes out of the water, and take a couple of pictures each time.

Picture taken on a Nikon D3 at 1/30 second with a 500mm lens and 1.7 tele-converter making the lens 850mm at F9.0