How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

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Bfindlay
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p.1 #1 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

Shot 2 high school games last night, and now i have over 1000 photos to wade through and select. Too many!

So, there i am parked on the floor under the hoop. Action coming at me, i can see the shot i want, but i need to capture frames with no arm blocking the face etc. if i only shot singles i would miss tons. If i let the camera do bursts, i get good shots, but have to wade through hours of decision making in post.

How do i find the right balance?

Jan 19, 2013 at 01:56 AM

clarence3
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p.1 #2 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

As you improve your timing, your keeper rate will improve. But even when you get down to 100 per half, it's a lot faster to cull before you PP.

I use a freeware program called irfanview from http://irfanview.com

Irfanview can read RAW and JPG. I press enter for fullscreen slideshow mode. Press space bar if I want to keep. Press D if I want to delete (move to the recycle bin). I spend less than a second per picture to cull. So 200 pictures from a game takes about 3 minutes.

Then with the keepers, I use irfanview to rename as 2013-mm-dd_####

Then I import into LR4 and PP.

Jan 19, 2013 at 02:18 AM

FMarquart
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p.1 #3 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

Once you go through the ones you like, the next time you go shoot aim to shoot your best ones you just picked out... Does that make since?? Peek action is what you want, and of course any other things that will make the sale.

Frank

Jan 19, 2013 at 02:22 AM

rsartin
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p.1 #4 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

Y'all are going to think I'm crazy....

Put the camera in single shot mode for a few games. You will be amazed at how much harder you work, how quickly you get better at anticipating action, and also how fast you can depress a shutter button.

Buddy of mine told me this last year, and since I have shot quite a bit on strobes in the past, gave it a whirl. It's a different way of thinking but really improved my photography.

I now shooting back in burst mode, but I am shooting about half during a normal game of about what I was two years ago. Might be time for me to go back to single shot for a game or two, it's a completely different way of thinking.

Jan 19, 2013 at 02:28 AM

Russ Isabella
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p.1 #5 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

So what kind of bursts are you talking about? If it's a matter of 2- to 3-shot bursts at a time, you'll have a hard time reducing your number of shots any significant amount. But if you're talking about frequently letting rip with 10-shot bursts, you can cut down on the number of shots by reducing the length of your bursts. But I don't know that I'm one to talk because I use only short bursts when necessary, and I consistently shoot just over 1,000 images per NBA game. 48 minutes of play, shots away from the action, two cameras working both near and far action.

Following on Clarence's post, if this is something you'll be doing a lot of, it's worth your while to use software that allows you to move through your images quickly. Photo Mechanic is the standard.

Jan 19, 2013 at 02:31 AM

Bfindlay
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p.1 #6 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

Ok folks thanks for taking the time to respond. I will try the single shot method to see if that changes my shooting style any! I import into aperture, then select from within that. Other than the time to import, i dont see the advantage to worklow using an extra software step, but i am happy to experiment!

Jan 19, 2013 at 03:22 AM

Carl Auer
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p.1 #7 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

Strobes.

Seriously. Strobes. I can walk away from one ambient lit basketball game with 700 to 1000 photos easy. With strobes, 150 to 250. Other options, turn the FPS down. My cameras can go full speed or 3fps. Also, field editing. During time outs or halftime you can try to do some deleting of images, missed shots, out of focus, ref butts. Shoot in bursts. Do not just mash the shutter. Snipe 3 or 4 shot bursts.

Jan 19, 2013 at 03:28 AM

rdalrt
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p.1 #8 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

Carl Auer wrote:
Strobes.

Seriously. Strobes. I can walk away from one ambient lit basketball game with 700 to 1000 photos easy. With strobes, 150 to 250.

100% agree with this.

Jan 19, 2013 at 04:04 AM

Bfindlay
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p.1 #9 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

I cant imagine ever using flash photography at these games. I would get bounced! Flash is sure to distract players and screw up the flow of the game. Heisenberg comes to mind...

Jan 19, 2013 at 04:20 AM

rdalrt
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p.1 #10 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

Bfindlay wrote:
I cant imagine ever using flash photography at these games. I would get bounced! Flash is sure to distract players and screw up the flow of the game. Heisenberg comes to mind...

Why? Strobes are used for all sorts of indoor sports all the time. Check out some of the threads on here. Used properly (not direct on camera flash) players don't even notice the strobes.

Jan 19, 2013 at 04:40 AM

andyz
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p.1 #11 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

Bfindlay wrote:
I cant imagine ever using flash photography at these games. I would get bounced! Flash is sure to distract players and screw up the flow of the game. Heisenberg comes to mind...

I don't know Heisenberg but I know a lot of folks use strobes at high school, college and pro games and the flash is fast enough, and not in the eyes of the players that it doesn't affect them. But, big but, the common advice is ask first, and have insurance.

An old podcast I listened to also said get insurance and said its only $40 a month. Certainly YMMV, and I'd hope it costs less than that. I'm more a hobbyist who will be using ambient if that is the case. Anyone who can estimate a cost here?

Jan 19, 2013 at 06:07 AM

dankopp
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p.1 #12 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

You can also use the slack moments in the game, and there are tons, to go through your shots and delete the obvious OOF, ref butt, etc. shots. Makes ingesting go faster.

Jan 19, 2013 at 02:31 PM

Scott Sewell
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p.1 #13 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

I'm curious who you are shooting for and why? Shooting under deadline for a client who is expecting images in a timely manner is quite a bit different than shooting for online sales or something else.

IMO, being able to quickly and efficiently sort through ones own images and select the best is a skill that's every bit as important as actually making the photos, for someone who's on deadline. If you're not pushing deadline I'm honestly not sure what to tell you. Spending "hours of decision making in post" is a little extreme in my opinion.

Having said that, I would think the priority would be to get the shots you need. If that means riding the shutter button and machine gunning throughout a game, then I'd say that's what you're gonna have to do until you get more experience and are able to more efficiently sort through your take.

In my experience, most photojournalists use Photo Mechanic to ingest and cull through images. Personally, I tag images in the camera throughout the game so when I ingest them into PM I can begin by looking at just those images. I don't often delete images in camera during a game unless it's completely obvious that it's OOF. Card space is cheap and those few images aren't taking more of my time when I sort through them all on the computer. I then color code those images I might want to look at closer, then I'll do a quick run through those and pick the once I want to process.

For a D1 basketball game I will typically shoot about 700 images and I'm usually packed up and headed out of the media room within an hour after the final buzzer. That means I've looked through, processed, captioned, and sent probably 50-60 images. Same goes for a D1 or NFL football game where I'm shooting probably close to 1,200 images. For football it might take me 90 minutes, but certainly not hours.

I'm guessing you're going to have to just keep working at it. Maybe you're too attached to each specific image and over-analyzing things? Look at other great sports images and think what you like about them--think about why they were published and what makes them worthy of being used--then start to apply that mindset to your photos.

Good luck.

Jan 19, 2013 at 03:02 PM

shaneroper
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p.1 #14 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

I try to select the keepers in camera and download to photo mechanic and then bring up the tagged images...I will look at the untagged images once just to make sure I didn't miss any and tag them if I did. From there I just decide which ones to use.. I use burst on plays like a dunk or something that might warrant it but other than that i will just tap and get one shot..if you can get your timing down it's not to difficult. The only reason I burst on certain plays is I never know where I might catch a face looking away during a dunk or something..

Jan 19, 2013 at 03:04 PM

shaneroper
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p.1 #15 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

I normally will only have about 500 images from a basketball game..I shot the outback bowl and only had about 1000 images..but I do delete in camera when I have time...
Good luck!

Jan 19, 2013 at 03:05 PM

basehorhonda
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p.1 #16 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

The two biggest things to help shooting basketball was strobing and using photo mechanic.

Just by the very nature of using strobes, you are going to have to slow down. 99.9 of the time slowing down is good. It forces you to think about the shot and lets you get a feel for the game so you can better guess what is going to happen next.

The question I have for you is what are you doing that takes you hours to go through over 1000 images? I think you need to streamline your selections so you get rid of the junk quicker. A few things I think about when I go through my first round of selections: properly exposed, good action, peak action, no limbs in the way of your subject, background, etc. If your spending more than 30 seconds on deciding if a photo is good or not, your wasting your time.

Jan 19, 2013 at 05:04 PM

Bfindlay
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p.1 #17 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

Great responses folks. To Scott - I am shooting for myself (learning, fun) and for our school. Final destination of these shots are our in-school video (TV in the hallways), and possibly yearbook.

So far I have spent about an hour and a half culling the 600 or so of the first game down to 29. This is what I was referring to in 'hours of post' I have not 'processed' any of them as yet - typically beyond cropping - I don't. I still have the second game to cull, so call it an estimated 3 hours of culling, wheedling and eventually cleaning slightly the 60 or so shots from this one shoot.

The bit about strobes is interesting, and I will look into it, but image quality is not my main concern yet - simply managing the sea of too many pictures.

What I did in that hour and a half was this:

1: Download into Aperture, tag the first game (batch processing) to separate it out from the rest, then go through each shot tossing oof and face blocked bad shots - shots that were not interesting etc. Spending usually 3 to 5 seconds each, some longer than thirty seconds. Keepers I arbitrarily rated at 2.

2: Go through the 150 remaining with the viewer window set to '3 up' and raise the rating on pictures based on interesting composition, attempts to get as many different players in the action (we are talking teenagers - who want to see themselves on screen), and general (comparative) 'feel' for the shot.

3: This gets me to about 60 pictures. (My goal was 20 for each game). Then I go through a final time and demote pictures that are redundant (same action/player captured elsewhere), or not necessary to the story (interesting expressions or postures that are good shots, but don't include dynamic action)

I arrived at 29 pictures final.

First round, I am trying to be brutal and quick, just doing an obvious cull of a large amount. Second round, takes much more time on each picture. Third round takes me less time per picture than round 2, but much more than round one.

Jan 19, 2013 at 07:58 PM

Russ Isabella
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p.1 #18 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

A couple of efficiency-based questions:

1. Does Aperture tag as the images are being ingested? If ingest and tag are two separate steps, you're wasting your time.

2. Personally, I don't see any point to deleting bad shots as an early step in your workflow. Once you've completed your process of selecting the various levels of keepers, what's left can be deleted. Thus, rather than identify and then delete the 'bad' images, spend your time identifying the ones that are not bad, then treat the rest as 'bad' and delete in one fell swoop.

With practice, you'll get to a point where, first time through, you can differentiate between keepers and non keepers, and within the keepers, top-, middle- and lower-tier. Obviously, being able to do this with one pass (your first and only pass through the images) is advantageous. Then, you work with your top-tier images and, if you need more, or if you just want to play it safe, go back through at least the middle-tier keepers to see if there are any you should have rated higher (just as, when you go through the top-tier to edit, you will find a few that didn't warrant that top rating).

Jan 19, 2013 at 08:31 PM

OntheRez
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p.1 #19 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

I shoot HS sports for a small paper and 400 shots for a game is around average. Girls generally a bit less, boys maybe more as it is a faster game. While I do use burst mode it is pretty selective say on a nice drive to the basket in traffic. I have deadlines but not as tight as folks like Russ in the big time

I can have the night downloaded (girls and boys are scheduled consecutively on the same night) and those worth considering identified in around an hour. A half dozen to the paper's online site takes 15-20 minutes occasionally a bit more. For the one shot each of girl and boy that makes the paper (I select not the editor), I generally spend a little more time on as the print process truly hammers the quality (B&W low-rez). So what, maybe 2 hours and done. Football take a bit longer because of more shots and the light is so bad that even the keepers generally need a bit of work.

I've used PM (great program), Aperture, which I am now just abandoning because I don't believe Apple is going to continue supporting it, and now LR. Process is similar in all programs. Practice helps and bluntly the really good ones stand out pretty easy. I keep a few extra "stock" ones to document each player partly because there is an occasional parent sale and I also, for a nominal sum, help with the school's yearbook.

Yes Aperture can tag on download (and keyword). I use an Import file name indicating sport and date so that's dealt with in process.

As for those suggesting strobes, some athletes at this level are bothered by them and the league(s) I shoot in ban all flash. Have spent plenty of time "suggesting" a policy change, but it's not going to happen any time soon.

Robert

Jan 19, 2013 at 11:07 PM

sklar
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p.1 #20 · How to shoot BBall without too many pictures?

clarence3 wrote:
As you improve your timing, your keeper rate will improve. But even when you get down to 100 per half, it's a lot faster to cull before you PP.

I use a freeware program called irfanview from http://irfanview.com

Irfanview can read RAW and JPG. I press enter for fullscreen slideshow mode. Press space bar if I want to keep. Press D if I want to delete (move to the recycle bin). I spend less than a second per picture to cull. So 200 pictures from a game takes about 3 minutes.

Then with the keepers, I use irfanview to rename as 2013-mm-dd_####

Then I import into LR4 and PP.

Anyone know of something like this for mac?

Jan 20, 2013 at 02:37 AM

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