Covering a Winter Olympic Games is a unique challenge for Athletes and Photographers alike. Unlike the Summer Olympics, the weather brings on its own special challenges, from heat and rain to snow and ice.
I covered my first Olympic Games in 1984 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now Bosnia and Herzegovina), a mere 42 years ago.
A lot has changed in the business and sport of large-scale world sporting events in the last forty-two years, and photography has evolved light-years since then. In Sarajevo, we covered the games with mostly Black-and-White film sent back to the Main Press Center for processing, printing, and transmission to the world over a dedicated PTT circuit. The cameras were all manual exposure and manual focus.
Until the 1994 Commonwealth Games, it was film cameras, long lenses, and film; when I used a Digital Camera (NC2000) and a MacBook to cover the Games, only ten years after the Sarajevo 84’ Olympic Games. I worked with digital cameras to cover all sorts of world sporting events until the advent of Mirrorless Digital cameras with faster Autofocus, high-frame-rate captures, and built-in camera networking, enabling instant transmission at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games.
Here in Italy, at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, the camera and lens development has been stunning. Today’s modern cameras can autofocus on an athlete’s eye while shooting RAW+JPEG at 120 frames per second. And with Pre-capture of more than a second, you never miss a moment.
So, what am I carrying with me here in Milan for the Winter Olympics?
Three Sony a 1 II camera bodies will be my main cameras because of their higher-resolution sensors (50 megapixels) and 30 frames per second capture rate, which makes them perfect for almost any sports photography. I will also have three Sony Alpha 9 III camera bodies with their Full-Frame Global Shutter and the ability to capture up to 120 frames per second. I know I will see moments in the sequences I capture that I have never seen before.
As for lenses, I plan to cover Ice Hockey and Figure Skating, mostly, so I will bring the Sony FE 400mm F2.8 GM OSS, the standard workhorse of a sports photographer; FE 300mm F2.8 GM OSS with the SEL20TC, a 2x teleconverter; and the SEL14TC, a 1.4x teleconverter.
I am excited to work with Sony’s new FE 28–70mm F2 GM and new FE 50–150mm F2 GM at these Olympics, which were released after the Paris Olympics. I will be carrying two of each, one for handheld camera work and one for remotes, with clamps and the European (CE) versions of Pocket Wizard Radio Remote triggers. The other lenses I may use are the TTartisan 50mm F1.4 Tilt Lens and the 7artisans 6mm F2.0 Fisheye Camera Lens, looking for different views of sport.
The other essential piece of gear I will be carrying is Sony’s portable data transmitter, the PDT-FP1. Since the Paris Olympics, I have used the PDT-FP1 worldwide, giving me instant wireless internet access to send photos directly from my camera or to edit and send from my laptop. I can do this in Wireless Mode or connected via Ethernet or USB-C. (Most major events will not allow Mobile devices in hotspot mode). It’s been one of the hottest items to add to my kit because it lets me get on any mobile carrier from anywhere in the world, and it’s essential for working on deadlines and filing directly from the camera.
The Olympics are always an exciting time for athletes and spectators, but it will be one of the most exciting Olympics for me to see what I can do with these modern mirrorless digital cameras. As the famous phrase goes, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby.” It’s true when it comes to 42 years of covering the Olympic Games.
– 30 –