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AF settings for figure skating.

Hoagie058
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · AF settings for figure skating.

Having just sold my A1 to try the R5/70-200 2.8 combo(still have anA7iii/ 70-200 GM Ii combo), what would be the best settings for mostly solo skaters from the stands in a small arena? I am so used to Sony and the R5 is completely different with a big learning curve. I've got the C-AF and servo part. Can I get some guidance for the rest of the settings please? I've been doing this for years but never with a Canon.

Jul 12, 2024 at 05:22 PM

RoamingScott
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · AF settings for figure skating.

You ultimately need more light by the look of it and that in turns helps your AF. Something like the 135/1.8 might be a more useful lens, provided you can get close.

Jul 12, 2024 at 05:37 PM

Hoagie058
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · AF settings for figure skating.

Yes, this was under spotlight and that isn’t the norm. I have tried the 135 1.8 GM but at 60+ feet away, I usually ended up in crop mode anyway.
I just need an idea what R5 settings to try. Eye AF with Sony was always iffy from up in the stands.

RoamingScott wrote:
You ultimately need more light by the look of it and that in turns helps your AF. Something like the 135/1.8 might be a more useful lens, provided you can get close.

Jul 12, 2024 at 05:41 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · AF settings for figure skating.

My experience is with the R6II (slightly newer AF features than the R5) and more so ice hockey. I use back button focus and have the AF-ON button assigned to simple fixed point AF (which can be moved with the joystick) like with a DSLR and the * button assigned to use subject/face/eye detection. With solo athletes (hockey player or figure skater), I will usually start with subject/face/eye detection and if for some reason it's having a hard time, will switch over to the fixed AF point (I use the single point with four 'assist' points option). I've found with the R6II that when exposure is higher ISO (lower light) than around ISO 6400 1/500 f/4 that the subject/face/eye detection mode focuses somewhat less consistently during bursts. The first frame will be good but subsequent frames less so. A few stops brighter, like ISO 3200 1/1000 f/4 and it seems to be a lot more consistent. This is with my EF 200-400/4 and it might be better with an RF lens, which appeared to be the case when I was able to use the 100-300/2.8 for a few tournaments. It will probably also be subject dependent (higher contrast subject being better). That is why I have set up the camera to easily use either AF configurations so that if/when I notice subject detection and tracking producing lower consistency, I switch over to the fixed-point configuration. I've found fixed AF point (non subject tracking/detection) to follow focus better during bursts, but somewhat limits how much you can let the subject move around the frame.

Assigning AF to one of the buttons is in the orange menus. Also check the options available in the AF settings submenu by pressing the INFO button. But I think the R5, being the same vintage as my R6, might have fewer of those sub-menu options than the R6II (and likely R3, R7, R8).

Anyway, that's how I prefer it, but there should be other customization options, such as leaving AF on the shutter release button and perhaps using a back button to turn subject detection on/off.

You'll have to experiment with the AF case settings. I've always been partial to Case 4 for field sports, but Auto might also be a reasonable starting point to get a feel for how the camera handles figure skating. It might take a couple outings or at least some experimentation during the first one, to refine the camera's performance.

Good luck!

Jul 12, 2024 at 06:49 PM

artsupreme
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · AF settings for figure skating.

Hoagie058 wrote:
Yes, this was under spotlight and that isn’t the norm. I have tried the 135 1.8 GM but at 60+ feet away, I usually ended up in crop mode anyway.
I just need an idea what R5 settings to try. Eye AF with Sony was always iffy from up in the stands.

What are your aperture/SS/ISO settings in the shot above?

I'm old school for this type of shooting and I'm sure some others might disagree, but I would use the good old fashioned AF point with small surrounding points and control it with the joystick to focus on the subject. I assign the eye/face tracking to the AF ON button and hold it with my thumb when I think it will be reliable enough to use. Electronic Shutter, 20fps, cRAW, M mode, Auto ISO, and set your aperture/SS for the shot. This is my preference.

Jul 12, 2024 at 06:59 PM

Hoagie058
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · AF settings for figure skating.

I don't have that info available but I believe it was mostly ISO 12,800, 2.8 if course and maybe 1/800 second.

artsupreme wrote:
What are your aperture/SS/ISO settings in the shot above?

I'm old school for this type of shooting and I'm sure some others might disagree, but I would use the good old fashioned AF point with small surrounding points and control it with the joystick to focus on the subject. I assign the eye/face tracking to the AF ON button and hold it with my thumb when I think it will be reliable enough to use. Electronic Shutter, 20fps, cRAW, M mode, Auto ISO, and set your aperture/SS for the shot. This is my preference.

Jul 12, 2024 at 07:12 PM

Hoagie058
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · AF settings for figure skating.

Thank you very much!

artsupreme wrote:
What are your aperture/SS/ISO settings in the shot above?

I'm old school for this type of shooting and I'm sure some others might disagree, but I would use the good old fashioned AF point with small surrounding points and control it with the joystick to focus on the subject. I assign the eye/face tracking to the AF ON button and hold it with my thumb when I think it will be reliable enough to use. Electronic Shutter, 20fps, cRAW, M mode, Auto ISO, and set your aperture/SS for the shot. This is my preference.

Jul 12, 2024 at 07:13 PM

artsupreme
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · AF settings for figure skating.

Hoagie058 wrote:
Thank you very much!

Hoagie,

I'm not the best post processor here but I know for sure that your ISO 12.8K R5 image will clean up very nicely with all the new denoise software. I haven't kept up with what's best but I used to use DXO pureRaw with good results. I believe the built in LR Denoise feature in the most recent version of LR is supposed to be really good but I haven't tested it yet. There are some people here who clean up ISO 51K images all day long who can chime in. ISO 12.8K should not be much of an issue with proper denoise treatment. You might be able to get by with 1/640th, 1/500th, or even possibly less to help with ISO if needed.

Jul 12, 2024 at 07:48 PM

Hoagie058
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · AF settings for figure skating.

Thank you. I am not the best post processor either.

artsupreme wrote:
Hoagie,

I'm not the best post processor here but I know for sure that your ISO 12.8K R5 image will clean up very nicely with all the new denoise software. I haven't kept up with what's best but I used to use DXO pureRaw with good results. I believe the built in LR Denoise feature in the most recent version of LR is supposed to be really good but I haven't tested it yet. There are some people here who clean up ISO 51K images all day long who can chime in. ISO 12.8K should not be much of an issue...Show more →

Jul 12, 2024 at 07:54 PM

artsupreme
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · AF settings for figure skating.

Hoagie058 wrote:
Thank you. I am not the best post processor either.

Luckily, software is making PP much easier nowadays and there's a lot of people who can provide tips for high ISO shots. Unless your shot above was heavily underexposed, you would be surprised how nicely that would clean up (and sharpen up).

Jul 12, 2024 at 08:05 PM

Hoagie058
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · AF settings for figure skating.

I believe I actually ran the original photo through denoise and printed it for the parents. This version was an earlier version that was posted on FB in a post for skate parents and was just pulled off my phone today. I can take 2-3000 photos in a 2-3 hours of skating and never am able to denoise all.

artsupreme wrote:
Luckily, software is making PP much easier nowadays and there's a lot of people who can provide tips for high ISO shots. Unless your shot above was heavily underexposed, you would be surprised how nicely that would clean up (and sharpen up).

Jul 12, 2024 at 08:25 PM

artsupreme
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · AF settings for figure skating.

Hoagie058 wrote:
I can take 2-3000 photos in a 2-3 hours of skating and never am able to denoise all.

I hear that loud and clear

Jul 12, 2024 at 08:31 PM

stanj
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · AF settings for figure skating.

Hoagie058 wrote:
I can take 2-3000 photos in a 2-3 hours of skating and never am able to denoise all.

I shoot 2-3000 photos in 2-3 hours of owling. By definition it's late evening when I come home, I import the images and launch DxO PureRaw on them. If I have more than that many, I split it between two computers. By the time I get up I have a nice set of perfectly cleaned up, sharpened DNG images to import into LR. I never look at the raw images because they look like crap at ISO 25k or above, and it's hard to tell which image is OOF, blurry, or just darn noisy. I only judge the DXO PR files.

Jul 12, 2024 at 09:02 PM

artsupreme
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · AF settings for figure skating.

stanj wrote:
I shoot 2-3000 photos in 2-3 hours of owling. By definition it's late evening when I come home, I import the images and launch DxO PureRaw on them. If I have more than that many, I split it between two computers. By the time I get up I have a nice set of perfectly cleaned up, sharpened DNG images to import into LR. I never look at the raw images because they look like crap at ISO 25k or above, and it's hard to tell which image is OOF, blurry, or just darn noisy. I only judge the DXO PR...Show more →

Great tip Stan, have the computer batch process them while you sleep

Jul 12, 2024 at 09:31 PM

Hoagie058
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · AF settings for figure skating.

Great info. Thank you!

stanj wrote:
I shoot 2-3000 photos in 2-3 hours of owling. By definition it's late evening when I come home, I import the images and launch DxO PureRaw on them. If I have more than that many, I split it between two computers. By the time I get up I have a nice set of perfectly cleaned up, sharpened DNG images to import into LR. I never look at the raw images because they look like crap at ISO 25k or above, and it's hard to tell which image is OOF, blurry, or just darn noisy. I only judge the DXO PR...Show more →

Jul 12, 2024 at 09:31 PM

stanj
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · AF settings for figure skating.

artsupreme wrote:
Great tip Stan, have the computer batch process them while you sleep

I bet this takes a nice computer and RAM to handle a batch like that? Do you actually import all the processed DNG files into LR or do you use a program like Photo Mechanic to pick your favorites and then only import your keepers into LR?

I will admit that I throw a lot of hardware at it: I use a Mac Studio M2Ultra, and an M1Max laptop. Now, due to a bug in DXO PR, any M2 machine is the same speed, so my M2 MacBook Air is the same speed (I have verified & reported this), so your barrier to entry is much lower than you think. It doesn't take much memory at all. I have 128GB RAM but PR isn't using much of it.

I will admit that I have a somewhat brute force approach to things, but it has the advantage that it creates a level playing field for all images: I wake up to a pile of DXO images, import them into LR, and create 1:1 previews. This is the place where the M2Ultra helps, as LR is using all the cores you can throw at it. One can hope that they will enable GPU preview creation one day... I'm doing this step as we speak actually, and LR is using 3GB RAM and every bit of the 24 cores, and it is reading from disk at about 300MB/s.

Once I have the 1:1 previews, I can go thru them very quickly, I can do about 3000 images in an hour, if we look purely at discard/keep. With owls it's mostly discard. LR is super efficient for this. I can do it on my Studio or on my laptop, usually while watching TV at the same time (something that doesn't require much attention, more like listening to radio with the occasional flash of images

)

Jul 12, 2024 at 09:44 PM

artsupreme
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · AF settings for figure skating.

stanj wrote:
I will admit that I throw a lot of hardware at it: I use a Mac Studio M2Ultra, and an M1Max laptop. Now, due to a bug in DXO PR, any M2 machine is the same speed, so my M2 MacBook Air is the same speed (I have verified & reported this), so your barrier to entry is much lower than you think. It doesn't take much memory at all. I have 128GB RAM but PR isn't using much of it.

I will admit that I have a somewhat brute force approach to things, but it has the advantage that it...Show more →

Nice to know about the bug in DXO. I have M1's and I'm trying to hold out for the M4.

Have you ever tried Photo Mechanic for culling? If yes, I'm curious if you feel LR is faster for culling than PM? I don't import everything into LR anymore like I used to. I cull with PM first and then only import my keepers into LR.

Jul 13, 2024 at 12:39 PM

stanj
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · AF settings for figure skating.

artsupreme wrote:
Have you ever tried Photo Mechanic for culling? If yes, I'm curious if you feel LR is faster for culling than PM? I don't import everything into LR anymore like I used to. I cull with PM first and then only import my keepers into LR.

Yes, I have tried. Back in the days when PM was much faster than LR, but in the new versions of LR once you have previews generated you can flip thru images like a movie, so the challenge is really the preview generation. My point is that PM doesn't render previews but rather relies on the embedded previews, completely undermining my goal of reviewing what the render would look like (with auto settings, or with large batch settings applied). So for this workflow to work you have to render the 1:1 previews, otherwise you're comparing apples with oranges.

The other reason why I don't use PM or other tools for culling anymore is that there's only so many apps that I want to have in my workflow. Back when LR was slow I had my own workflow with an external culling app, but that's really not necessary anymore. Once we get GPU support for preview generation that whole step will be moot, too.

Jul 13, 2024 at 01:04 PM

artsupreme
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · AF settings for figure skating.

Jul 13, 2024 at 01:29 PM

Mike_5D
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · AF settings for figure skating.

stanj wrote:
Yes, I have tried. Back in the days when PM was much faster than LR, but in the new versions of LR once you have previews generated you can flip thru images like a movie, so the challenge is really the preview generation. My point is that PM doesn't render previews but rather relies on the embedded previews, completely undermining my goal of reviewing what the render would look like (with auto settings, or with large batch settings applied). So for this workflow to work you have to render the 1:1 previews, otherwise you're comparing apples with oranges.

The other reason...Show more →

I did a trial of PM during January 2020 for my daughter's all-star tournament. At the time, LR was painfully slow. Like, so slow that simply selecting a handful of images and applying a star rating felt like I was using a Pentium II with a 4500 rpm hard drive. PM is great for blasting through action shots where I'm just looking for a small number of "maybes" that warrant a deeper look. The embedded preview is sufficient for determining that a shot of someone's back with no ball in frame is junk. I wasn't too fond of having another step in the workflow, but using PM reduced the number of images that made it into LR, saving time in LR.

I was planning to buy PM for the spring season, but that never happened. Without any high-volume shooting, there was no need for PM. By the time there was anything to shoot again, LR's performance had improved a lot. I'm not a pro and nobody is demanding photos in real time, so LR is fine now. Also, PM became a subscription product, and I don't need to spend more on PM than I do on LR+PS.

Jul 13, 2024 at 01:57 PM

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