One of the cool things about living in SLC is that the infrastructure is in place, thanks to the 2002 Olympics, to host world class sporting events. We try to make it out to the Olympic icesheet once or twice a year, but it's sometimes difficult because I don't read the sports section in the newspaper, watch the local news or watch/follow any type of sport period. Basically, I have to learn seconhand from someone about an event, otherwise I would never know.

The Olympic oval hosted the 2013 Essent World Sprint Speedskating Champsionships here last weekend, so we went over to watch. Not exactly a popular sport in the US, but it is fairly huge in various other countries. One problem is that there really aren't that many venues in the world. We started out sitting in the bleachers and watching from there. The seats were great, but not very good for taking photos.

















I wasn't impressed with the shots I was taking, so I left the bleachers and went down to the side of the track just past the finish line. Much better vantage point.





















Heather Richardson of the US took 1st in the 1000 meters:

As always, great pictures. Thanks for sharing.

defenitely a BMW to win over all those Kia

excellent photos

I don't know, kinda like the white KIA .

great shots

that d600 sure does well at those higher iso's

did you move down/over for the shots on the curve? pretty good angle there if you ask me

i was thinking those bleachers are a good height, otherwise trying to shoot over the barrier would have been difficult.

Very good pictues, you captured the action and emotion of the event. Your D600 did a great job with the indoor lighting.

Just a couple of notes. Yes, the D600 did remarkably well with high ISO considering the fast shutter speeds. I had so many freaking photos to go through that I forgot to set the white balance for all of them in post, so these are pretty much straight out of camera. I also kind of screwed up the photos I posted here because all of my post processing was done on full sized photos, including noise reduction, then I created copies of them and resized for flickr. What I should have done is made copies of them, resize, then apply any processing. Would have been much sharper.

Anyway, I was shooting with the new 70-200 f/4. I originally wanted a 2.8, but it is only 1 stop difference and much, much heavier, meaning I would only use it for situations like this. The f/4, on the other hand, does very well indoors & out, plus it is very small and light (also has a better MTF compared to the 2.8 options). Definitely a lens I can bring with me anywhere. I'm still going to keep an eye on the Tamron 2.8 when it finally gets released in the Nikon mount.

Just FYI if you are contemplating the D600. Not sure if any of you follow camera forums, but one issue with the D600 that is being widely discussed is the dust/oil on the sensor. I can say it is true. In my case, I'm not getting dust, but oil and what looks like debris, and all of it is interally created and visible on my photos all the way down to f/5.6. It is so bad on mine that I've had to resort to wet cleaning the sensor every single time before I take it out and shoot. Seeing as how I take a lot of outdoor shots with blue skies, having a clean sensor is pretty important. I'm receiving a replacement body tomorrow from Crutchfield, so hopefully it is much less riddled with spots than my current camera.

Thanks for the comments.