Going to see the Olympics? You don’t need a DSLR to take great shots

I spent much of last week wrestling with a dilemma. I was going to watch the athletics at the Olympic Stadium and some swimming at the Aquatics Centre, and couldn't decide what camera to take. I had toyed with a DSLR but knew I'd need a long telephoto lens to get any frame-filling action shots, which would not only be heavy to carry but risk breaking the 30cm maximum camera/lens length permitted into the Olympic venues.

A smaller format camera, with a smaller sensor, seemed the best answer, because a big telephoto lens would be smaller and lighter. Looking at the options we had in the WDC office I decided that the Panasonic Lumix G5 would be ideal paired with the Lumix 100-300mm f/4-5.6. This would give me a 600mm equivalent focal length (in 35mm film terms) within an overall camera/lens length of just 19cm. Well within the limit. 

 
The G5 and LUMIX G VARIO 100-300mm F4.0-5.6 MEGA O.I.S lens used for all the Olympic images on this page.

As a back up I also took the Panasonic TZ30. As the winner of our recent travel compact group test, and sporting not only a 20x zoom but a 10 frames per second burst mode it fitted the bill, not to mention my shirt pocket, perfectly.

I wanted to enjoy the sport rather than spend my time fiddling with settings, so I set the G5 to shutter priority mode at around 1/1000sec, and left the ISO on auto. Focus tracking and continuous drive mode were selected, and the file format set to jpeg only so the raw files didn't slow down the burst shooting. The TZ30 was just left in full Auto mode with the burst mode on.

The following images were taken using these two cameras at these settings. A few have been cropped slightly, and only minor levels adjustments have been made.

In conclusion, if you're going to the Olympics don't worry if you haven't got a DSLR, but you will ideally at least need a compact with a decent zoom lens - ideally 20x or more. A bridge camera would be good choice as they're small and their zooms can exceed 30x.

If you have a DSLR the chances are your maximum focal length will be 200-300m, which probably won't be long enough to get shots like these, but you will on the other hand have sufficient image quality to be able to crop quite heavily into the images. The best option though, based on my experience, is a compact system camera, such as the G5, with a long tele-zoom such as the 100-300mm. This offers a great compromise between size, range and image quality.

 The following images were shot on the Lumix G5. Go to the next page for a selection taken on the TZ30.

 
Jessica Ennis

Katarina Johnson Thompson (nearest) in the Heptahlon 100m Hurdles

Katarina Johnson Thompson (nearest) in the Heptahlon 100m Hurdles

 
Louise Hazel (left) in the Heptahlon 100m Hurdles

Qualifying heat for 3000m Steeplechase

Katarina Johnson Thompson inthe Heptathlon High Jump

 
Gemma Spofforth in the 100m backstroke final

Michael Phelps (4th from front) on his way to Gold in the 200m Butterfly final