Smoke and Laser! The Dutch Are Coming!
- Bánhalmi Norbert
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 9 hours ago
• Professional photography article •
On Friday evening, the city turned orange. At the request of the marketing team of the Dutch national football team, before the Czech Republic–Netherlands round-of-16 match, we photographed the Dutch fan base and a particularly creative visual concept together with the ShootEasy team.
For the project, I had access to the complete Olympus camera and lens range. My original plan was to work with an Olympus E-M1 Mark III and the new M.Zuiko 8–25mm PRO. Then I thought better of it and called our ambassador Zsolt Dékány, who knows practically everything and had already tested the lens, to ask how he would approach the series.
On his recommendation I chose the M.Zuiko 7–14 PRO, although I also brought my favourite M.Zuiko 17mm PRO.
This was one of those cases where you make a plan and reality rewrites it.
As long as the street lights were on, I thought everything would be fine. But with the street lighting, the laser would barely have been visible, so all four locations were plunged into darkness.
The shooting took place from 9 p.m. Friday until 5 a.m. Saturday, with both stills and video.
On location I realised that, because of the smoke, I had originally planned to use a relatively slow shutter speed. But to capture the combination of smoke and laser properly, I needed around 1/50 second. The density of the smoke changed constantly as well.
High ISO was not an option, so I locked it at 1600.
That was the point when I knew the 17mm would be the winning lens if I wanted the photographs to look the way the scene actually felt.
Following Zsolt's advice, I shot sequences because the client wanted the laser-wave effect to be visible on several planes.
The problem was that the wave only appeared clearly from certain angles, and I had to be extremely careful not to let the laser sweep directly across the sensor, because that could have ended the story right there.
I also used double exposure, which allowed me to place multiple waves into a single frame.
The next issue was colour. The orange laser looked much more red than orange in camera.
In post-production I therefore had to recreate the exact orange associated with the Dutch team and shift the overall hue so that even the buildings moved into the same colour world.
From almost 4,000 images I had to select the best 30 and finish the post-production in time for the client to approve everything by 8 p.m. Saturday.
A short promotional film was also produced about the project.
Several media outlets picked up the project. Here are the first two that spotted it. :)
Then came Sunday.
By 10:30 a.m. I was already in the media tent of the fan zone built at Budapest's City Park Ice Rink.
I received a detailed list of what I should photograph — and what I should not.
For example, a scene could be excellent, but if someone was visibly wearing certain brands, the photograph had to be discarded. Competitors of the team's official partners could not appear in the images.
No problem, I thought. I'll retouch them.
Then came the cold shower: I was expected to deliver finished images straight out of camera, in 16:9 format, with the subject composed centrally enough to be cropped for different media.
There would be no time for colour grading or other adjustments.
Fortunately, the E-M1 Mark III allows different settings to be programmed in advance. I created a cinematic colour profile and another, slightly more saturated and contrast-heavy version — because if the Dutch want orange, they want it very orange. :)
I also had to capture video clips, so I prepared separate settings for that too.
When I first read the assignment, I thought my favourite lens pair — the M.Zuiko 12–40 PRO and M.Zuiko 40–150 PRO — would be enough.
Once I saw the real range of tasks, that theory collapsed. I ended up needing such different lenses that I nearly used the entire "arsenal" supplied by the Olympus store.
For crowd shots I needed wide angle, so the M.Zuiko 7–14 PRO was the right choice.
For performers on stage, the M.Zuiko 45mm PRO worked best.
For faces in the crowd and the supporters' bus, I used the M.Zuiko 40–150 PRO.
For isolating individual moments from the crowd with strong background separation, the M.Zuiko 75mm 1:1.8 was useful, although in the end I used it relatively rarely.
I transferred the photographs via mobile app and sent them straight to the cloud so the media team could begin working with them immediately.
Because the images required no post-production, I even had time to create two simple mood videos.
That was entirely thanks to being able to prepare the in-camera settings in advance.
Almost every exposure was usable, so there was barely any need for selection either.
By the end of the day, I felt that the M.Zuiko 17mm PRO would have been a better choice than the 75mm, because I missed some wider moments in which I could still have separated the subject beautifully from the background.
One of my biggest surprises came after almost six hours: the camera battery had only fallen to 54%, despite heavy use of the display, Wi‑Fi, image stabilisation and everything else.
I am extremely proud that they chose me from Hungary to carry out this project.
It still feels unbelievable. :)
Special thanks to our Olympus brand ambassador Zsolt Dékány for his help.
The artistic photographs also received a dedicated page on the official website of the Dutch national team: https://www.onsoranje.nl/node/79207
Norbert Bánhalmi
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