Balloon Festival in ABQ

Hi,

 

Will be leaving for the Balloon Festival in Albuquerque in a few days and would

appreciate suggestions on equipment I need to bring to shoot the festival.

 

Will be taking my 20D, 24-70mm, 580EX, and 8 512 CF cards. Do I need to bring

my 70-200mm lens?

 

Thanks in advance.

Definitely bring a 70-200 for photos of the balloons after launch.

You had better leave sooner rather than later, since the last day of the Fiesta is Sunday, October 15th.

 

As for equipment, you may want something wider than the 24-70, especially on the 20D, where it is not really very wide. On Saturday, I was shooting with my 10-22 and my 20-35 on a 30D. I wouldn't have minded something slightly longer, but the balloons didn't go far or high that day, so it was okay. On Thursday and Friday, the Special Shape mass ascensions will reward any lens length at all, but to get the whole of many of those shapes, a wide lens would be really handy.

 

Make sure you can carry all the gear you need with you, because once the balloons start to launch, it's crowded and you won't be able to leave the field for fear of missing something. BTW, 4 GB of storage just might not be enough!

I would advise you bring your longer lens. I regretted bitterly not having a long lens at my

first visit to a local balloon festival: my logic was to go wide-angle as balloons were big

things and I did not want to change too many lenses in close and crowded quarters.

Eventually, there was too much crowd to get nice balloon pictures at launch with the 20mm

on film which I had and I was not able to go close enough at launch to single out details like

the flames or the pilots operating them. In some cases, I ended up cropping away 90% of the

surface of the shots to get the details which I wanted, like

<a href=http://www.photo.net/photo/2457142>here</a>.

No doubt you will want the 70-200 after launch. I shot a recent balloon festival and most of my favorite shots were either w/ a 15mm or my 70-200, though the 24-70 got a work out too. You will get much more use out of the big lens than the flash. I filled 6 2gig cards in two days with the same camera so I would think you need much more storage space!