Photographing matches

[jasonjmonroe]

Let me just say that there is no one magic camera or settings that will produce knock-out photos every time at FRC events. The conditions change so dramatically from area to area and event to event that it is impossible to recommend something over another. So far this year I have only shot 2 regionals Chicago [Day1] [Day2] and Flint [Comp]. Since Flint is not representative of typical lighting conditions please excuse that all my examples are from a very limited set of one regional. After a few years of shooting events, I can impart a few pointers:

First, know your camera! This is the difference of what a good photographer knows. A good photographer should be able to make dynamite shots with a disposable camera because they know what the camera can/cannot do. The honest truth is the difference between a several hundred dollar camera and a several thousand dollar camera is one will get you 90% of the shots you want to get and the other will get you 95%. But, if you chase that 5% of shots with the former camera you will be disappointed to find that none of them will come out acceptably. Find the capabilities of your camera and live within them.

Find the capabilities of your camera by taking a zillion or more photos, looking at them on the computer, and learning what works and what does not. Some things that work with one set up may not with another. This is where learning the capabilities of your camera come in to play.

Most of the time the limiting factor at a FRC event is as you pointed out that you are shooting something moving fast in not the most ideal lighting. You are getting into the 95% camera to really get the shots you want. All cameras will take nice shots outside on a sunny day. Generally the more expensive equipment is better suited to gathering more light and making better use out of the light available. They are more expensive because you are paying for larger glass to gather more light, using glass that is less lossy, and hitting a CCD that is more light sensitive. This seems to be a logarithmic curve between cost and performance. You can spend thousands and only get a marginal improvement, but that being said if those are the only shots you want than it may be worth it.

Most cameras these days you can manipulate most of the settings such as ISO, EV, white balance, shutter speed, etc. Most of these settings are a balancing act. For example, the ISO setting increases the gain of the CCD making it more light sensitive, but also increases the gain of the noise floor of the CCD. You want to use the lowest ISO setting you can to get the cleanest photos, but the lower the setting the less light you have and the longer the shutter needs to be open. If motion occurs while the shutter is open, then that part of the image would appear to blur.

Blur is not a bad thing! [Pic1] [Pic2][Pic3][Pic4][Pic5] We perceive it to convey motion, or to draw your eye to the area of attention. Turn it from being a detriment to an asset by using blur to convey context and liven up your picture.

Some times you do want a rock solid shot of the field with the robots on it. You can accomplish this with any camera, but you may need to make some concessions to live within the capability of your camera. Knowing that motion causes blur, take your shot when there is not motion! For example, right after the match ends but before the judges go out on the field and the drivers leave their post take your shot while the machines are not moving. Someone casually looking at the photo would not be able to guess that the match is already over. [Pic1] It is a little bit of smoke and mirrors, but remember that you are going after the shot and only you need to know in what context it was made.

There are things that you can do to minimize the amount of blur in your image. The source of blur can be your subject or you. Make sure you are holding your camera rock solid when you take your shot. You could try to use a tripod to help you keep steady, but I hate them. Tripods do not work well with as many people at an event as FRC and no one paying attention to where they are walking. You also want to be mobile to get around as quickly as the fast paced game itself. A tripod will only slow you down. Get creative. Set your camera on a trash can or rail to stabilize your shot. (This was after the event, I sat the camera on the stairs to leave the shutter open longer. [Pic1]) The one trick I use is I wrap the neck strap under my arm and make it short. Then when I lift my elbow to take the shot the strap tightens and I can use my entire upper body to stabilize the camera. With a pocket camera I sometimes hold it against my forehead to keep it from moving. If you have two hands on it and it is out in front of you to look through it is not easy to keep it still.

Take your shot when your subject is not screaming down the field such as when the machine is hurdling [Pic1] [Pic2] or sitting at the starting line. [Pic1]

OK, I can tell this is going to a multi-parter. If there is interest, I will continue with white balance, subjects, constitution, and more on mitigating blur in future segments……

-J

[jasonjmonroe]

I am back for another quick article. This is the subject of white balance, and could be the difference between good shots and great shots. This I found to be the trickiest off all things to get right at a FRC event and the most overlooked in shooting. The problem is that the field is typically lit by very hot, bright lights while outside the arena it is lit with a cooler mix of lights with tungsten, fluorescent, and natural light seeping in.

The problem is this, the environment absorbs, reflects, and takes on the personality of the light source. A light that is skewed toward the blue end of the spectrum will cause the scene to appear blue. A white piece of paper would look blue, but our brains tell us that we know that the sheet is white so we trick ourselves into compensating for this blue cast. Take a picture of the same scene and the camera will show you exactly how the scene looked at the time it was taken turning a perfectly staged scene into a group of lifeless zombie corpses ([Bad] as opposed to [Good]). The same can be the case if the light source is skewed reddish which tends to wash out all the color to where nothing in the scene pops ([Bad] as opposed to [Good]) or ([Bad] and [Good]).

Take a look at an FRC event and you notice that there are many light sources lighting the same subjects in the scene. The main field lighting originates from rows of par cans on either side of the field suspended by the field truss. But, look around and there are plenty of other light sources to throw off the scene. These can be outside light seeping in or a mix of house lights. This causes a lot of trouble because the subjects take on the character of each light source. It may be impossible to compensate for everything in the view of the camera. I have found that it is just best to try to limit the amount of light sources in the scene as you can see in this photo the subjects are lit by house lighting but the background is saturated by natural light that is hotter resulting in the blue background [Pic].

Some times there is nothing you can do about the lighting situation. For example, the large displays are lit by even hotter HID bulbs. Take a look here and notice that the area around Delphi has a blue cast. [Pic] Correcting for the cast in the sign would have created a red cast in the rest of the image which would be even more noticeable. Correct for the primary subject in the field of view.

Some cameras are better than others in automatically correcting for lighting conditions. In a challenging lighting shoot like at a FRC event I mainly do not take my chances and do not use the auto white balance. For some cameras the sunlight setting is a good ballpark value for the main field and the tungsten setting is all right for the pit areas which are typically lit by house lamps. Using the built in settings makes it easier to shuffle settings between areas.

Many cameras allow you to manually compensate for the lighting conditions by shooting a blank pure white sheet of paper under the light your subject is under. If you tell the camera what you are shooting is white it can calculate the delta of how off the shot is and compensate for it. This does not work well in practice, however. The field will probably get mad if you go out on the field to shoot a blank piece of paper, and who carries a stack of paper with them anyway? A better approach is getting yourself a white balance filter. (http://www.digitalphotographykits.com/whitebalance.htm) It is a diffuse lense calibrated to pure white that you can just point at the dominant light source and hit the color correct button on your camera and you are done.

Another trick is if the image is fairly close but there is a little bit of a hue, and it is the perfect shot that you would like to print (minus the hue) it can be “fixed” in a number of post processing softwares. The main process is to identify an area of the photo that is pure white, pure grey, or pure black. It is fortunate that the referees shirts are white and black, since they make a great color reference. Also, the carpet on the field is normally grey. I occasionally take a couple loose strands of the carpet as a reference that I can hold up to the screen and match the picture to it. Note that this can only correct for minor color variances because a strong hue will loose color information from the other color components that it is over-saturating, so some photos just cannot be fixed unless you shot the photo in RAW format.

If your subjects are real close, you can generate your own light source with the camera flash. For example [Bad] or [Bad] as opposed to [Good] or [Good].

I do not find much use for a flash at most competitions. First, even the most powerful portable flashes will not give you the distance or field coverage really required without spending some real money. Also, even if you were using it for an effect such as opening the shutter slightly before the flash of a robot racing down the field. That would give you a streak blur and a crisp image of the robot. However robots are mainly metal and glares unnaturally even under a diffuse flash. Flashes work best with diffuse subjects such as people, but then create a whole new problem of red eyes, hot spots, and such.

One instance where a flash can work is if you are trying to overcome a significant back light such as [Bad] as opposed to [Good]. Though notice the red eye that should be post processed out. Try to surprise the subject so they are looking away to create a more natural looking scene and to avoid red eye from the retina reflecting the flash directly back to the camera [Better].

Another is to de-emphasize the background in a shot by overpowering it with a strong light source in the foreground. [Bad] as opposed to [Different].

Who knew there was so much to white-balance! Tomorrow I can post some more opinions on EVs, dynamic range, and lenses or answer any questions if anyone is interested….

-J

[Pjohn1959]

It always makes life easier to have a fast lens.
I have a Nikon D80 with a 80-200 f2.8 lens. It is great for those low light situations. Speed of the camera can be important as well. This makes for great action shots. This camera can only take pictures at a rate of 3 frames per second. I am looking to improve that this summer with a newer version.

[Eldarion]

jasonjmonroe,

I'm interested! Keep the excellent articles coming...

Eldarion

[Ken Streeter]

There's lots of excellent advice here in the postings by JasonJMonroe. I particularly like his advice that stopping all the action isn't always the best answer to getting a great action photo:

Originally Posted by jasonjmonroe

Blur is not a bad thing! ... We perceive it to convey motion, or to draw your eye to the area of attention. Turn it from being a detriment to an asset by using blur to convey context and liven up your picture.

One of my favorites from this year, captured on a Nikon D200 at the BAE Systems Granite State Regional, was taken by my father-in-law, who is a long-time amateur photographer:



The above pic was taken using aperture priority at an f-stop of f/4.5 with an effective ISO of 400. Camera was panned by hand, steadied against the forehead using the viewfinder (rather than the screen). Auto-exposure was 10/250 of a second. (Discussion on photo here on CD.)

The real trick to getting photos like this is practice and experimentation to learn the right combination of shutter speed and camera panning to use to have the moving subject be sharp while very slightly blurring the background. Experimentation (and digital film) is your friend for this!

Tripods do not work well with as many people at an event as FRC and no one paying attention to where they are walking. You also want to be mobile to get around as quickly as the fast paced game itself. A tripod will only slow you down.

Lots of good advice here, too! Some videographers love a monopod to balance the needs for flexibility of movement to choose the correct location for the shot with the need for a stable platform for the camera.

Best Regards!
--ken

[MissInformation]

If you are reading these replies and thinking all of this talk about shutter speeds and what not is daunting then let me tell you that while it is really good to know all of this, it is not the absolute end to getting a good photo... I don't mess with shutter speeds, most of my camera settings are on "auto" and I still get good shots... I am not a professional photographer, but my photos have been used by local papers and in a NASA end of year report, and I am often asked for permission for my photos to be used on other websites.

My camera is a Panasonic FZ20, with a 12 X optical zoom and image stabilization (a must for the bigger zooms).

Mostly advice for digital photog: Fast shutter speed is important to me for catching action shots, so I use sequence mode quite a bit. If you use sequence mode, make sure you have lots of memory because you will take a lot of photos (over 1,900 the two days I was at VCU this past weekend). Ideally, I try to be as close to the field as possible and not hate the people who actually get to be right there at the field (I think if I were a pushier person, I could get that close, may have to work on this).

I've always been anti-flash, but I've softened towards it during the past 2 years (mainly because the camera I have now is no where as good as my UZi was in low light). I tend to only use flash if I think the shot is a one chance deal or if I notice the light is still too dark for sequence shots.

Don't be afraid to use editing software on your photos. If they are too dark, they can be lightened. If a little blurry, sharpened. Something distracting in the shot that takes away from what you want the focus to be on? Cropping can sometimes help. Histograms, curves, learning your editing tools can be as useful as learning your shutter speeds.

Heidi (who swears that one day she will take a photography class and learn all of those shutter speeds, iso thingies and what not)

[Viper37]

Originally Posted by MissInformation

Don't be afraid to use editing software on your photos. If they are too dark, they can be lightened. If a little blurry, sharpened. Something distracting in the shot that takes away from what you want the focus to be on? Cropping can sometimes help.

Not to detract from what you are saying, but when you take as many photos as I do, you really have to do it right the first time.

[Andrew Schreiber]

For the Kettering regional I shot with a canon 70-300 mm IS lens at 1/60th shutter speeds. ISO 1600. I had some problems with depth of field and not blur. The trackballs are so big that my camera tended to focus on them and not the robot. It was a little annoying.

I use a canon Xti and it worked fine.

As for a tripod, I wouldn't use it unless you have to because you shake too much. I know I was moving the camera the entire time. A monopod might work better because you won't be locked in a position.

Also, the blur can be a nice thing, follow your subject which will keep them nice and sharp but the background will blur, this conveys motion really well. Also it looks kinda cool. Don't forget that depth of field could be causing blur in your shots as well.

Just my thoughts.

[billbo911]

Here is one more shot that is rather fun to do as well. This shot was taken with a Canon 30D, ISO 100, f/ 22, 17 mm for 13 seconds. It was on a tripod. When I took this shot, the Pits were full of people. As you can see, the motion of the people caused most of them to be blurred out and the stationary people and object remain.

[maikull]

For technical aspects, the key is two-fold:

1) Use a large enough aperture to let enough light in. In my experience, this is usually f/2.8 or larger, unless your field has very bright lighting.
2) Use a camera that has a relatively noise-free sensor at ISO 800-1600. This inherently rules out virtually all point-and shoot cameras and a good number of digital SLRs.

I've had good success with Canon EOS 20D and 40D bodies, and with the f/2.8L zooms.

To capture interesting photos, there are three important points to remember, but they are vastly different from the former two:

1) Ensure your shot is a verb, not a noun. Don't photograph a robot. Photograph a robot doing something. Don't photograph a person. Photograph a person doing something. And, try to show that action in your shot. Sometimes blur is effective for doing so, but it's not always necessary.
2) Try to get as close to the field of view of the human eye as possible, without a) compromising your composition and b) being too far away from your subject. Getting closer with a telephoto lens is no substitute for using a wide angle lens and physically getting closer to the action. That's what makes a viewer feel like they are "there", when viewing a photo.
3) Capture a vantage point that is atypical to the average bystander. Usually this means having your camera higher than 6 feet or lower than 2 feet, when shooting. You'll be amazed at how much interest this can generate, just because we are unaccustomed to this perspective. This is especially true when photographing small people (like children) or animals -- do so from their eye level.

The human eye has a field of view close to 180 degrees, when including peripheral vision. A telephoto lens will have a field of view in double or single digit degrees. That's only a fraction of what you would see if you were at an event in person, so it ends up looking like you're watching the event through a window.

On a Canon EOS 20D/30D/40D, your best option is the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM or EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM. On a Canon EOS 5D/1Ds/1D, your best option is the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM, because of the flexibility of a zoom, or the EF 24mm f/1.4L USM, because of the much wider aperture.

Yes, those are expensive lenses, but the only way you can get around that is by introducing more light. That usually means flash. Bouncing isn't an option in an open arena, IMO, so that leaves a diffuser. However, even with a diffuser, you are now changing the actual scene and the background will almost always be darker than it would without the flash.

If you can't afford a new, fast lens, try a used one. Even the original Digital Rebel (6.3 Megapixel) body with an f/1.4 lens will yield better results than the 1D Mark III with a slow lens.

My most recent examples are here: http://robotphotos.org/v/first/fingerlakes/2008

The absolutely cheapest setup I can recommend that will yield better options than your point-and-shoot is the original Digital Rebel with the EF 50mm f/1.8 II. However, you should be aware that the 50mm focal length on the Digital Rebel will have a field of view similar to an 80mm lens, which is considered telephoto. So, it's not going to have a wide field of view. The EF 35mm f/2 would be wider, and slightly more expensive, and a little bit slower. The EF 24mm f/1.4 would be wider yet, and much faster, but not as wide as the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM (or the II version).

The EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM is just not an option, because at f/3.5 it's marginally too slow, and at f/4.5 it's way too slow.

[VEN]

Nikon D80
55-200mm lens
ISO 1600
f/4
1/400th shutter speed
no flash

here is several that i took today at the Waterloo Regional, I wasn't in a very good spot. Personally I think they are too dark.

Karthik going all-out ninja

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by VEN

Nikon D80
55-200mm lens
ISO 1600
f/4
1/400th shutter speed
no flash

here is several that i took today at the Waterloo Regional, I wasn't in a very good spot. Personally I think they are too dark.

Karthik going all-out ninja

(pics removed)

Honestly, those two seem alright by me. The field is more or less properly exposed, perhaps a hair under (1/3 stop or so) in the second picture. Given the lighting, you're not going to be able to get both the crowd and the field properly exposed in most arenas--it's going to be one or the other. Color me envious that ISO 1600 looks so good on your camera--the point-and-shoot I have pegs out at 400, and it's a left turn down Noise Avenue.

Keep shooting!

[maikull]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Color me envious that ISO 1600 looks so good on your camera--the point-and-shoot I have pegs out at 400, and it's a left turn down Noise Avenue.

Well, don't be too envious. This is an inherent difference between point and shoot digital cameras and digital SLRs. It's because the sensor size in point-and-shoots are so small. Some digital SLRs are even better in low light. For instance, the Canon EOS 1D Mark III has a relatively noise-free ISO 6400.

[Frinkahedron]

Originally Posted by MissInformation

Ideally, I try to be as close to the field as possible and not hate the people who actually get to be right there at the field (I think if I were a pushier person, I could get that close, may have to work on this).

As one of those people right next to the field at VCU, all I had to do was ask the media desk. (edit: in Atlanta, this is obviously not possible. However I believe that each team there gets a media pass in their welcome packet)

I primarily used my Canon 30D + 70-200F/4 L when shooting the game itself. I usually pushed the ISO to 1600 and got my shutter speed up to 1/250, which is about maxing out my f/4. (Oh I envy you people with a 70-200 2.8) This was at VCU, which did not have the greatest lighting. I'm sure I could get much better results in the Georgia Dome.

When in the pits, I used either my 50 f1.8 or the (crappy) 18-55mm kit lens along with a 430EX flash.

http://www.chantillyrobotics.com/pho...g2_itemId=6184 everything with an "overdrive###.jpg" name is mine.

[Coredesat]

I was actually able to get decent photos of matches at VCU with a Sony CyberShot DSC-S650 point-and-shoot camera set to -0.3 to -0.7 exposure value and 200 to 400 ISO (mostly 200), with flash turned off. 100-200 ISO was fine whenever I used flash. I had to resort to using 320 ISO for some of the matches due to the poor lighting, though, although they weren't as grainy as some other photos I have that were taken at 320 ISO.

Next year I will hopefully have a Fujifilm S700, so I can take some better-looking photos (as well as videos that aren't horrendously loud and clipped).