i'm shooting a big track meet in two weeks and finally gave up on finding a cheap cord and plunked down the $65 bucks on the pocket wizard cord. My question is do people set it up on autofocus ever? is it possible? hopefully this isn't a silly question

i want to shoot a wide angle lens at the end of the long jump pit where photographers can't be because its a distraction. i will be doing trial and error tuesday when the cord gets here, but just wanted some feedback. i noticed russ used a remote on the balance beam from the side where manual focus would make sense, but what if the person is jumping towards you. i figured that would be near impossible to get a good sharp photo if i'm shooting at 2.8 at a set focal plane.

thanks, brian

Brian,

I don't have much experience with a remote camera, but I can't imagine a scenario in which you'd have much luck trying to have your remote camera AF. I think you pretty much have to pre-focus and then switch the lens to 'M'. Obviously, the more DOF you have, the better, but beyond that, you just have to pick your spot, focus on it and shoot the remote when your subject 'hits' that sweet spot.

Brian,
Just did that this weekend. Not track, but gymnastics. While we were shooting 3 other events, I had a remote set up on Vault that was off to the side, over one set of judges.

1D MarkII-N, 20/1.8 @ f/1.8, ISO3200 at 1/320th
Manual focus, Pocket Wizard trigger (manually) just before gymnast hit the springboard and 8fps until they landed and/or saluted.

Each sequence got about 18-32 pix and people loved it!

It takes some setting up at that DOF - take some test shots, adjust focus and then lock it down with gaffers tape. If you let it go AF, it will more than likely go to infinity, which is off for the low of DOF.

I too used the side for minimal focus issues. Like the long jump, in vault, the competitor is converting most of their horizontal energy into vertical energy and then coming to a sudden halt. The AI servo algorithms of cameras assume constant linear motion for the most part and cannot keep up with the dramatic slowdown for vault and probably long jump. On top of that, the visual from the side is much more impressive than the front, IMHO.

Hammy.

Hammy, any samples from that?

John

Notice the wonderful light cycling - different parts of the gym on different AC cycles.

http://s286.photobucket.com/albums/ll83/UTHammy/vault/?albumview=grid

or select fast (lower left) in the slideshow for a better effect:
http://s286.photobucket.com/albums/ll83/UTHammy/vault/?albumview=slideshow

Hammy wrote:
Each sequence got about 18-32 pix and people loved it!



Warning: the following 2 questions sound flippant and sarcastic, but please know in advance that they are not intended to be... they are genuine and sincere questions. Holding breath...

1. Of the 18-32 pix per sequence that you took, which one did the customer buy?
2. What did you do with the other 17-31 pix?

Hammy, you have described your workflow many times in the past as being one of immediate display to customers... with no individualized post processing beyond any batch you may (or may not) run. From those past reports of your "shoot to display" style, I take it that you are not taking the time to composite multiple frames of these vault sequences into a single multiple exposure collage prior to displaying the images. If the customer is then choosing single shots from the sequence, why shoot so many?

(Unless you do, in this case, composite multiple images into a frame on a per order basis... but then how do you sell customers on this without them seeing how their daughters will look first, without you investing the time/labor in post first?)

Ok, that is more than two questions, but ignoring the rest, the first two still stand as they somewhat relate to the usefulness of the images from remotes.

Focus, good questions...

In gymnastics, most gymnasts make two passes at the vault table. I'm not even sure if the scores are averaged, or the best of the two are taken I would generally take shots of both passes, but I only showed one in the link(s) above.

If the vault run was a round off back handspring onto the springboard followed by a double back pike and they nailed the landing, saluted and gots hugs from coaches, I would keep the shutter down and get 30+ images of one run. However, if the pass was a simple jump and rotate to landing, fall or just really quick, I may only get 20-ish images of a single pass.

For this setup, I ran a two FireWire cables (6ft + repeater + 33ft) from the camera to our downloader which was in our booth (behind some curtains separating us from the 'gym' floor) I'd peak through the curtains to see when they got to the right spot in the frame, hold the test button down on my PocketWizard and let go accordingly.
With the tether - the images are downloaded to our box instantly (with a few seconds lag for 4Mpix, ISO3200 images.) When all the images were into my downloader box, using our software, I clicked on the gymnast name and clicked on Download. From there, they were all name appended and categorized to our servers which created web sized images for our viewstations in about 35 seconds. No other processing, post chimping or anything was done to them, just dumped to the server and then available to our viewstations (before the next competitor was going.)
THEN - I also ran a slideshow of those images on two 42" plasmas - showing the whole sequence in order (sometimes I ran the slideshow between passes - coaches LOVED this to analyze the routine)

Now, as for what sold...
We only sold THREE (3) prints. One of each:
- 8x10 gymnast saluting
- 12x18 in air: tuck
- 24x36 launching off of springboard

The other 60 or so customers that purchased images - bought EVERY vault shot on disc - along with ALL the other images we took from each event.

My bottom line rule of thumb is that I can't sell what I don't have.

This does NOT mean spray and pray and just shoot gobs of photos no matter what they look like. If I hit over 10% crap pictures, then the sales start to tank - normally I average around 1% OOF pix with my photographers and I can live with that.

For the other events (bars, beam and floor), we were getting about the same number of pix. This gets an even spread and coverage in the mind of the consumer. If I were only to take ONE shot of them up in the air, I would have captured only 33% of what sold in prints. More importantly, parents wouldn't have been able to buy the whole sequence to pick the shots they want for their own collage, slideshow, critique, etc...

Another rule: the eye of the photographer does NOT equal that of a parent. What we think is a blah shot, they may think of as GOLD!

By presenting ALL the photos that we take, we present a much better value - as well as providing something they rarely, if EVER, have seen before (vault and bars almost never get covered) Now, of course, this goes along with our sales model - pushing images on CD. While we'll have no problem printing the 70 prints that sold at 3200ISO - but I'd much rather burn a CD and be done. Less time and higher profit - and our pricing scheme hit that very well - where we made TWICE what I had expected to make.

This model doesn't work for editorial, where one wants one shot - or does post processing to create a montage. And generally anything in volume breaks down without the ability to organize and handle the volume efficiently. For us, its very easy to download a complete set of images: whether one gymnast at a time on vault, 20 gymnasts shot into separate folders of the other events or 40 cheerleaders shot on multiple cameras/cards at a time. With that volume, the consumer wins with so much to obtain - which they could not otherwise get.

Hammy.

I am curious about your tether technology - and if this has been covered before, I apologize. You mention fire wire and a repeater, which I understand. What is the box/sw that gets the image to from the FW to the lap top screen (downloader?).
Thanks,

Brian

I would assume the meet is outside. If so, you do not want to set your camera to manual unless you are sure the lighting conditions will be exactly the same throughout the shoot. You may get cloud cover, or different lighting throughout the day due to the location of the sun. Also, don't set your camera to 2.8, set it to at least 4.0, if not 5.6. and even higher if you are setting your remote up at the end of the pit (which I don't suggest). When I do daytime remote setups, I am usually putting my camera on shutter priority to ensure freezing the action, and over expose by plus 1, then let the camera do all the work. Your camera should be set up perpendicular to the trench, with a wide angle lens for best results. If you set it up at the end not only do you run into issues with DOF, but also the possibility of getting sand in your camera. best of luck

Ron Calef wrote: What is the box/sw that gets the image to from the FW to the lap top screen (downloader?).

Ron,
The box is just a PC, the software is our homegrown downloader, built from scratch to handle all the different type of events and downloading that we may encounter. With it, we can download cards from a single reader with a single folder, or multiple cards with multiple folders (either matching or unique between cards) to either single or multiple targets. Where targets is the destination folder on our server that customers find their pictures under. We also add information to the file name to make them unique and help in sales reports without having to look at EXIF data: lens used, position, shooter, event, etc... anything we want really. And then we can also append a folder to the competitor/team name for event or game #.

Hammy.

Hammy was that a miss print in your first post? , you say you used a 20mmf1.8 or was it a 200mmf1.8 , doesn't look wide enough , when it is placed behind the judges.

Cheers
Allan

Allan,

It was indeed a 20mm/1.8 - Sigma.

I normally do use my 200/1.8 in gymnastics: smaller gymnasts on floor, or shooting over an aparatus to get another.

Remember, that on the MarkII-N, it has a 1.3x crop factor, so the effective focal length is 26mm. And when I said behind the judges, I meant right behind the judges. They were up against the wall - when they moved their chair back to stand up, the chairs would be against the wall.
I extended my tripod legs but kept them tight together - then I taped the legs against the wall - between the two judges at the table. Before the meet, I presented myself to the judges and asked they're blessing on having the tripod there and more importantly if they were ok with the shutter clicks that would be firing away as they were trying to do their job.
I showed them on the plasma display (about 20 ft off to their left) what kind of results we would get. They said it wouldn't be a problem. (later, they tell me that having the replay on the plasma was very cool - as they would verify with themselves that they did indeed score somebody correctly - not that it influenced their scoring, but that they could see it again.)

Hammy.

Thanks for that Hammy,
i was looking at that lens as a fast wide to get without breaking the bank. Did you have any issues with the lens itself?
The good thing about Gym judging is it is somewhat subjective, so the coaches cant complain after they see the replay as why the gynnast didn't get high marks.

Allan

Allan - that is why I got the lens a few years back. I haven't used it in a while as I usually have enough light for my Tokina 12-24/4, but it came in handy when I needed the extra stops. No issues to speak of - its certainly not an L lens in terms of IQ, but a solid lens none-the-less - and is much better and cheaper than Canon's 20mm/1.8

Hammy.