NSW North Coast Perfection on Vimeo

Shot with the 550d, Proaim slider, Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 with MC7 2x teleconverter, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 and Pentax 50mm f/1.7.

i love your surf clips, thanks for sharing. and you are getting heaps better btw

Thanks Chris. The DSLR's work great for this kind of stuff. There's no audio or long record times to worry about, so it really plays to their strengths: Great picture quality.

i've filmed quite a bit of surf myself, used to work for quiksilver and volcom do their webfeeds and podcasts.

I shoot primarily with a 5 and 7d but usually shoot the water footage with an ex1.
I see you are shooting on the gold coast which gives you that perfect point set up with predictable waves, but filming in places like hossegor I find it too difficult to
a) spot my subject and b) set focus correctly unless I am ridiculously stopped down.

What do you stop down to and what are you doing to maintain focus?

I do both of those things the same as I always done them:

a) I zoom out to spot the subject and then back in to frame them. The 70-200 is parfocal so holds its focus when I do this - not all still lenses would.
b) Focus on the point where they'll be surfing furthest away from me (ie where the waves first break) then frame the point where they'll be closest to me (ie the shorebreak) and bring the focus point slightly closer until the shorebreak is also within the acceptable field of focus, then go back and check the original focus point is still acceptable sharp. Usually the entire line-up is in focus because I am shooting at f/11-f/16.