Do you guys have any good tips for taking pics at FIRST competitions?
All input is wanted!
p.s. why do digital cams blur more than 35mm?
Point, [zoom if needed], Press button…
Pictures of action are better than after action pictures.
Don’t take a picture of scores, unless it’s a really good score (Like the 700pt matches at nat’s 2 years ago).
Pick a subject, center it, capture it. Those look better than random bot’s on a field.
Try to get as many pics as possible in the pits, it is just easier that way. oh also while getting pics make sure you try to get pictures where you are able to SEE the numbers. makes life a lot easier.
You should check your camera instructions. If the camera is set to have a shutter speed below 1/60 second then any motion will blur including film cameras. Many people get excited at competition and with lightweight, digital cameras, they have a tendency to push too hard on the shutter button. This causes the camera to move while the shutter is open and hence the blurring. Being zoomed in for a closeup makes the problem even worse. So, set your shutter speed for 1/125 or higher if you can, get closer to the action, and gently press the shutter. Some photographers will tell you to take a breath and hold it while you press the shutter and then release.
If you have a digital camera that has the sequence mode, use the sequence mode for action shots, just make sure you have a lot of memory cards. I liked taking shots of the robots as they hit the wall of bins, so while the human players were doing their thing, I would focus on the bins and hold my shutter release down half way and wait… got some decent photos this way.
And if your camera has multiple settings, make sure you check them before you start taking pictures.
And even if you don’t have a sequence mode, make sure you have lots of memory cards so you can take lots and lots of pictures. I took over 800 photos at VCU.
And make sure you have a good photo editing program…
MissInformation
<============>
Time it was and what a time it was it was
A time of innocence
A time of confidences
Long ago it must be
I have a photograph; preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left of you -Simon and Garfunkel
rules of good composition
-no posing
-do not put subject in the center of the picture
-framing (like a tree or sign in the side or corner… or top)
-leading lines, like a path of travel such as a road or an aisle in a pit
-balance (sorta like symmatry)
-look for cool patterns
well thats all i remember from photography class… here’s an example
Another tip: If your shot has human player bins in it, don’t use flash. The flash will reflect off of the retroreflective tape, throw off your camera’s light meter, and your picture will come out black with a few white lines in it.
The retroreflective tape combined with a flash can make for some very cool tron looking photos. Not very functional but very nifty.
I had alot of problems with retro tape at brunswick eruption, be careful where you point!
check out what retro tape can do in the bruswick eruption off season pic thread.
*Originally posted by Al Skierkiewicz *
**You should check your camera instructions. If the camera is set to have a shutter speed below 1/60 second then any motion will blur including film cameras. Many people get excited at competition and with lightweight, digital cameras, they have a tendency to push too hard on the shutter button. This causes the camera to move while the shutter is open and hence the blurring. Being zoomed in for a closeup makes the problem even worse. So, set your shutter speed for 1/125 or higher if you can, get closer to the action, and gently press the shutter. Some photographers will tell you to take a breath and hold it while you press the shutter and then release. **
Wait, so 1/125 is higher then 1/60? How can things get blurrier by being further below 1/60th second? Doesn’t shorter exposure time lead to less blurry pictures?
Silly cameras.
Greg
ummm, one tip, first nationals fireworks are pretty, but dont turn out in pictures.
*Originally posted by SkitzoSmurf *
**ummm, one tip, first nationals fireworks are pretty, but dont turn out in pictures. **
I found that out last year. I couldn’t see a thing in the pictures. Don’t take pictures on a rollercoaster, either. Doesn’t usually turn out (though I’ve seen a few that have).
if your camera has an autofocus, hold the shutter button halfway down for a second so that the camera can check it’s white balance (if it does that) and focus on the subject. This is even more important if your camera has a multi-point AIAF, where you have to check if it’s focusing on the right spot.
Otherwise, if you push it down really fast, it has to calcualte white balance and autofocus before it shoots, making the shot delayed.
I mistakenly set my camera for 1 second shutter speed during the second half the build period and didn’t check it until after we shipped. Needless to say, I have cool, albeit REALLY BLURRY pictures 
*Originally posted by GregT *
**Wait, so 1/125 is higher then 1/60? How can things get blurrier by being further below 1/60th second? Doesn’t shorter exposure time lead to less blurry pictures?Silly cameras.
Greg **
1/125 is less time than 1/60. The faster the shutter, the least amount of movement you will get. Longer shutter time will get more detail, but if the camera, or object is moving, it will blur.
I just bought my camera for the competion, has shutter speeds of 15 seconds, to 1/1500 of a second… so I should be good. I will also try out the multiple shots per second thing for action thing… sounds cool.
Okay, one thing that I see A LOT in pictures is the color balance. Especially at competitions or indoors under florescent lighting, pictures often have a very pronounced red or yellow tinge. With a digital camera, this is really easy to fix, but most people don’t do it and they’re pictures don’t come out as nice as they should.
Look for a setting called “White Balance” or something with just “Indoor” vs. “Outdoor” (vs. “Auto”). I found that in my expierience, Auto mode gets the right balance less than half the time - if you’re at a competition all day long, you might as well keep the camera set to Indoor balance mode or manually tweak the white balance. Your pictures will be a lot nicer.
To show you what this is all about, I dug up two pictures from the NYC regionals. The first picture was taken with the wrong balance setting - you can clearly see the red tint to everything. The second one was taken with the correct settings. Comparing them, you can clearly see that just a few seconds of flipping through the camera settings makes a world of difference.
I also ran the first one through the Photoshop Color Balance tool. You can see that with Photoshop, you CAN correct the balance somewhat. However, Photoshop compensates for the red tinge by increasing the intensities of cyan and blue. You can see that I brought the carpet to a ‘natural’ look, but in exchange, everything else now has a blue tinge to it.
Long story short: unless you have the time to tweak each individual section of a picture for 30-60 minutes in Photoshop, take the few seconds to find the Balance tool on your camera. Makes all the difference in the world.
(You can also see what people meant when they said flash+retroreflective tape is bad. However, I personally think the effect is pretty cool).
(Excuse the bad quality - I had to use quite a bit of compression to get the file to fit inside the max upload size limit).
Action shots like these
capture you right in the moment. You can imagine the feeling of what is happening. You can covey feelings of excitement through pictures of robots in the air and smashing eachother. Look at the VCU regional pics on the NASA Langley website for good ideas of what to look for (except NASA engineers in Hawiian shirts with big spider umbrellas).
Then there are still shots… the below’s a post modern still shot of a safety glass (engineering interest) with a computer screen reflection (programming/gaming) with background edited by photoshop.
ooo, thats nice…
I recently did a quick propaganda for glasses too. To convince my team to go out and just cough up 6 bucks for their own pair of saftey glasses rather than use a shoddy school pair, I did a little stylish look at how cool being safe can be. I wanted to go for the fisheye effect, but seeing as fisheye lenses are $500 and up, I just took two pictures from one spot to get the wide angle, spliced them, and did a fisheye filter on 'em.
http://24.186.144.31:81/robotics-misc_files/saftey.jpg
You can see my lack of time involved in this one (aside from the fact it’s taken on my bed) from what the bottom-left of the lense does - not exactly physically possible. Although, since it’s kinda hard to see it’s two pictures spliced, you COULD pass that off as strong refraction 
Anyways, the point is like monsieurcoffee pointed out, try getting a bit creative with your pics and try something different. You’d be suprised with what you sometimes get.
If you need some inspiration, check out Deviant Art - although the site is a bit slow (well, REALLY slow at times), they have tons and tons of amazing photography.