Atlanta Dragon Boat Festival Practice
Lake Lanier Olympic Park | Gainesville, GA | Aug 24, 2025
🌊🐉🚣🚣🚣☀️🚣🚣🚣🐉🌊
Hello everyone, finally made it out to watch the practice of the various teams for the upcoming annual HK Atlanta Dragon Boat that’s in a few weeks. It’s definitely a fun experience that we’ve been participating and contributing to for so many years now. It’s almost become a generational thing for our extended Asian community here in Metro Atl. While everyone else was paddling and building up their strength and endurance points I brought some random gear to test what loadout I could possibly use and work best for me. Including the main setup, the outrageously heavy Nikon 200mm f/2 combo.
So here’s the combo that produced most of the photos in this recap post: a Nikon D700 and 200mm f/2 (review here). All 9 pounds of it. It’s definitely a lot heavier and chunkier than it looks believe it or not. The weight balance is not a problem for monopod shooters sitting in the shade in one place, but add a few other side cameras and this becomes a boat anchor. But the contrast, sharpness, and color that this older combo produces is in many ways better than the higher res newer camera options I’ve found.
The other combo I tried was mounting the 200mm f/2 on the tiny V1 mirrorless for an insane 2.7x crop and “540mm” field of view. This combo gets you a reach that is astounding, but with the drawback of using a small soap bar size camera with hardly any grip on it. The photo above is with the FF and native 200mm and the bottom photo is 200mm and V1 1″ sensor. By the time I swapped the lens over the team was quite far out on the lake and the reach of this combo is definitely viable.
All the photos in this part are from the V1 and 200mm f/2 combo. To have a sensor the size of some higher tier Sony digicams, it draws like an APS-C sensor. Since the prime is so good there’s hardly any color fringing that appears in like the water splashes.
The “500mm” FOV crop of this setup would be good if I absolutely need photos of boats in the middle or far lanes. Too far in the distance and you’d just be shooting the shimmering heat of our brutal Georgia summers though.
After that testing I switched back to the 200mm on full frame so you get the full view of how this amazing lens renders. 200mm doesn’t go that far for some situations (you can always crop in post), but I think the real strength of this lens is that it draws an image with color, contrast and bokeh that reminds me of fall photos at a college football game. Especially on the older Nikon D700 classic sensor. The Canon and Fuji that I also brought along (with a few photos here in this post) have their own way of rendering, but I think the 200mm was the top choice today.
Left: Heavy! Right: Heavier!
So that was a fun day at the lake. Great job everyone! The other picnic side was where we used to congregate years ago, way before that fancy boat house was built. Good times and good memories.
