HVX200 Sports: College Basketball

Look Out!!


Terrapins fans watch Maryland Terrapins guard DJ Strawberry head for a crash landing as he hustles to retrieve the ball that he slapped from the possession of Vermont Catamounts guard Jason Green in the first half of the College Hoops Classic men's college basketball in College Park Wed., Nov. 8, 2006.

I guess this is my first "official game," shooting with this HVX200. And please, read below, for a statement that I may post in my main page.

A day after staying at work late, and I was still a little groggy because of lack of sleep. Honestly, I feel the effects of some clinical depression, which makes it somewhat tough to keep up the enthusiasm. But Chuck made me feel so good when he told me that I'd be covering a Maryland Terrapins men's basketball game in College Park. It was a preseason against the Vermont Catamounts (I always think about amber maple syrup when I think about Vermont) which was supposed to benefit "Coaches vs Cancer." After shooting my first job (a quick portrait of a high school football player), I drove through the mist and afternoon rush hour traffic from Lake Clifton-Eastern to the basketball arena, with a Nikon 300mm lens in tow, intending to shoot some stills.

But something in my mind made me switch to the HVX200, while I gathered my gear from the back of the car. A shooter from the Washington Post walked with me, asking about the elections and how things are at work. Still carrying my 2 still cameras as backup, I parked my gear in the photo room, set up my laptop, and went to the court to take some test shots of a consolation game going on.

The lights are a little dark for shooting high speed shutter, so I wound up cranking the gain all the way to -12db. "Gain" is a term that makes a camera more sensitive to lower light situations. It forces the scene to brighten inside the camera, but the drawback is that the image quality degrades. But I had tried some gain-up before, and figured that I would give it a whirl, which allowed me to crank up the shutter speed to 1/500th second - fast enough to stop moving action without much motion blur. An Associated Press shooter scoffed as he saw the digital camcorder in my hand. A freelance photographer sitting beside me shook his head. "You'll never get me to shoot with one of those," he glared. "I'd retire before using that."

I had once thought the same. I never knew that the profession would go so digital. I didn't think it would happen so many years before I considered even imagining this time. Back in the mid-1990's, we had a staff shooter named Perry who was issued a Canon XL-1 digital camcorder. Our boss Jim gave him the task of shooting video for the web, a task that newspapers hardly gave a thought. But suddenly, after a short period, the effort was scrubbed. Just to think what inroads might have been made, had we continued.... Perry was so far ahead of the curve, but the curve is now here. And I'm catching grief or stares from the still shooters as well as the TV videographers. How ironic that I'm in the middle, and what I'm doing is merging the two mediums together. I just sat quietly, adjusting my butt to the hard floor, while the game continued, trying to shoot while manually focusing the lens, anticipating plays on the court.

The far basket? The HVX showed it was 121 feet to the net. Midcourt, about 60 feet. The near hoop, 19.1 feet, all shown in the lower right corner of my digital viewfinder. Missing the first basket since I was shooting horizontally, I began flipping the camera to a vertical position. Soon, I was getting into a groove, shooting the Terps attempting a defensive trap at the far basket, capturing the hustle after trying to steal the ball at mid-court, and leaping to slam dunk on the near side.

It's quite a change after learning to anticipate and squeeze the trigger of a still camera. And the process of extracting a movie file, dragging the file for a moment in Quicktime, copying the frame (Apple C) and pasting the image (Apple V) in Photoshop adds several more steps than simply dropping images from a digital card and editing them. Adding to the ingredients would be saving the first images as raw files, then using Photo Mechanic to add captions on them, then opening the files again in Photoshop to prepare them for transmission. Yesiree, it makes for more work. Will that change? Perhaps if someone comes up with some kind of program to automatically work out the steps. Or maybe create a "droplet," which can be programmed to automatically do certain steps for the user.

But the automatic steps can happen only within Photoshop, and can't be flopped over to, say, Quicktime. If I had to work on a short deadline, I doubt if I'd be ready to do all the steps, unless I know every file's contents in order to zero in on a moment.

As I wound up my shoot in the first half, I stopped at the other end of the court to shoot a little of coach Gary Williams. At first, I had thought about shooting some still frames with the Nikon but abandoned the idea, since such a decision would be the same as not trusting your effort. A rather bull-headed way of looking at it, but hey: The game action was captured all right on the HVX200, do you think?

Do I seem like some kind of plant to sell people into purchasing this camera? Perhaps some might wonder, but I'm simply writing about what I'm shooting with. The equipment has been issued through where I work, and nothing is donated. None of the gear has been sold to us at some kind of discount that I know of, unless it's volume discount. And I'm not being paid to write anything here.

HVX200 Accessories Ordered; Plus, Be an Editor for 2 Minutes (Lumix FZ30, Nikon D2H)

And I want more.

Okay, what if I'm a gadget freak? I want the new gear to shoot better, and I love working with it when it works. The equipment's on order, and I'm waiting to add them to the HVX200. As I use them, I plan on posting some reviews here, in future entries.

Meanwhile, after working on the Senate forum earlier in the week, I realized that tripodding isn't the way to shoot for me. Sure, I'll get a set of sticks, but they won't be top-of-line. My decision turned 180 degrees after not being mobile enough to shoot the candidates at the podium. I felt more like a local television camera operator, than a visualist.

I felt impeded.
Contained.
Stationary.
Stagnant.

Chatting with Andre sealed my decision, backing away from the threat to ask Duds for a $2,000 tripod (you NEED a well-built true fluid head tripod, I warned him, or it's junk). Dre opened a short piece he shot of farmers and boasted that much of what he shot was hand-held. The drawback with doing this at all with the HVX200 is how shaky the shot looks if you shoot it without any added equipment.

Seems kind-of weird, doesn't it? More equipment would make a camera more stable? Well, it depends. And I'm learning this as I continue working with the gear.

The HVX has the typical hand strap on the right side of the camera, where you slide your palm in to hand-hold the unit from the side and base:



Doing this with a palmcorder isn't a big deal for about 10 minutes. Add more time of use. Or another 5 pounds. You'll get the shakes with the HVX. Weighing over 6 pounds, try balancing that weight steadily at he base of your open hand while holding it close to your face. The weight will not only be top-heavy in your hand, but will also want to flop to the left side, pulling the strap against the outside of your hand.

Cavision has been developing gear that I only discovered a few days ago. Unfortunately, I had already asked for some other gear, which has been ordered, but it didn't cost way too much. The company has been adding some needed accessories for not only the HVX but other indie camcorders as well. The gear I hope I can get would make the camera look a little bulky:



Add all that weight, plus a wireless mic system and external drive, and you may have a much better balance at work. The completed harness should make the unit balanced, as the shoulder supports some of the weight while holding the handgrips stabilize the camera. In all, the gear may cost another $1,000 or somewhat more. But I'll remind Duds that it's 50 percent of what I first told him that he might need!




You're the Editor; Which Image Would You Publish?

......................

Before heading to the inner harbor, I had to swing by the site where the BGE work crew dug beneath the city street to repair a natural gas leak in their line, which caused an explosion in the manholes in the area. Boy, imagine working on the sewer line when THAT happened!

I shot images with both the wide and telephoto perspectives. Hop into my Flickr images and respond, or feel free to jot down comments here or in Flickr. Tell me what you like or don't like about each image. Critique me.

HVX200 Low-Rezzes Senate Candidates

(The above shots were all captured with the Panasonic HVX200, set to low resolution.)

"You can remember the dumbest things from your childhood, but you can never recall what you did yesterday."

I sit in the photo department while Gene works on photos of John (TV's "Gomez Addams") Aston, who now works as a film instructor at Johns Hopkins University. Gene starts singing the lyrics to the "Addams Family," and it starts getting in my head:

"They're creepy and they're kooky;
"Mysterious and spooky.
"They're alltogether ooky;
the Addams Family."

Gene couldn't help but sing the song, and it starts to get to me.

"You're putting that song in my head!" I yell from the back room. ""It's been in mine all afternoon!" Gene yells from a workstation as he tones the pictures he shot.

I just got finished with burning 5 DVD's after shooting more footage of the US Senate candidates at the harbor Marriott, earlier in the day. This time we had the trifecta: Michael Steele (R), Ben Cardin (D), and Kevin Zeese of the Libertarian Party attended the forum. Fortunately for me (and the gear I had), the candidates all agreed to allow each one the floor so he could answer a series of questions posed by a moderator. As the media signed in, the volunteer at the door commented about how many people from our work were there. Little did she know that Andre would arrive soon after to shoot stills, while John came to capture audio.

Each candidate had around 15 minutes to answer the questions, plus 3 minutes for a closing statement.

My HVX200, when shooting NTSC standard def video, can shoot 16 minutes per 4gb card. I only have 2 cards. So I decided to try "hot-swapping," where I would grab each full card from the back of the camera and download the data onto my PowerBook. The speed of the video card was fine for standard 480p, but all I wanted to do was transfer the MXF files to clear the disk.

First was Michael Steele, who gave his answers and closing statement. As Steele began, Andre started banging off frames with his camera, just to the left of me. Wishing I had an on-camera wireless system like the guy to my right, I could only glare towards Andre (my first time being upset about a still photographer's camera noise) while hoping that John was getting some audio that we could use, since I knew mine would be too spoiled for use. As the first card filled, I watched as the green light blinked and time dropped to about 16 minutes remaining, which is the halfway point, and when the cards would swap over, since the first card would have filled with data. When the light changes to green, you can remove it, but not during recording, when it blinks amber.

After the first P2 card filled, I removed it and inserted it in the PCMCIA card on the side of the Powerbook. It was filled with 3.54gb of the camera's native "MXF" files (which can be converted to movie files through Final Cut Pro). Transferring the data takes around 10 minutes, so I was really cutting everything pretty close. I grabbed my Lumix DMC-FZ30 to get ready just in case I ran out of space on the HVX, so I started shooting some "B-roll" with the camcorder feature. But Steele finished with several minutes to spare, and the forum called for a short break, so I transferred the data from the second P2 card and returned them to the HVX200 and reformatted each card, just in time for Kevin Zeese to take center stage.

I started getting into a rhythm of streamlining by wiping the P2 card on the laptop as the HVX recorded nearby. I started moving throughout the audience, getting more B-roll and angles as Zeese finished and Cardin began, just in time for another full P2 transfer and drink of water. But as Cardin was in the heart of his responses, my PowerBook warned that the disk drive was almost full! And I had to return the P2 card to capture his closing remarks. As the card's files transferred, there were less than 60 megabytes of free space left on my laptop -- talk about squeezing the files in!

But then, the other foot began to step on mine: As Cardin answered the final question, I showed only 3 minutes remaining on the first card in the HVX. Quickly, I opened the second camera card and unlocked the text file so I could drag it into the trash and delete the files, giving me a free card again. Just in time, I returned the free card into the port of the camera, which began recording as Cardin gave his summary. As he shook hands and left the podium, I had about 4 minutes remaining, so I went outside and captured some "establishing shots" of the harbor, the skyline, and the hotel where the forum was held and headed back to the office.

Back at the photo department, my disk burning is finished. Gathering all the filing papers and DVD's together, I smile, realizing that I'm a few hours ahead of schedule, while Gene laments about the impending rainout of the Cardinals/Tigers World Series game. Calling his wife, he suggests they make print-outs of the fun jingles to some of the old television shows, like "The Jeffersons" and "Car 59," for a future road trip they're planning. Gene tries remembering the lyrics to "Gilligan's Island" and finds it tough to recall the words to "Mister Ed."

Googling "Mister Ed" and "lyrics," he gleams with excitement, and I suddenly break out with the tune, through my own childhood memory:

"A horse is a horse, of course, of course;
"And no one can talk to a horse, of course.
"That is of course unless the horse is the famous Mister Ed!"

Now, what was it that I was upset about, yesterday?

HVX200 Sports: Volleyball; Nikon D2H: Floor Lighting

You know how hard it is to shoot volleyball with a video camera?

Not that hard.

Do you know how hard it is shooting video of volleyball in order to try getting a still frame?

Really hard.

Why? One BIG reason: The lack of proper lighting inside high school gyms. Your most important tool is light, and if you have something properly lit, it only depends on your skill and the right moment to get a good shot. Take that vital tool from your box, and you're bound to struggle.

My latest challenge was shooting HD video of a sporting event to get some still images for daily use. The game started at 5:30, and I only had 8 minutes of high def footage to shoot, since I'm still using the 2-4 gig P2 cards. So there's no way to shoot constantly; I had to shoot small clips, depending on my instinct to get some nice shots.

But, the light. Oh, the light. Direct overhead lights yielded only 1/120th second at f/ 1.7, and I had cranked up some gain to 6 decibles. A recipe for disaster? Only if you are clueless with how to use your equipment. But I sure pushed my luck, in any case. I had thought for cranking gain up to (I think it's) 12 db, but I figured that one frame per 30 fps would work. The problem is that you're shooting people who are moving all over the place. So many of what might have made good still shots with a 35mm camera couldn't work with a camcorder shooting at such a slow shutter speed.

I moved all about, shooting different angles, hoping I could find the right spot to capture some footage. Near the end of the shoot is when you wind up finding the "sweet spot," which was behind the last player sitting on the bench, aiming back at the net. I only saw the spot as I turned to watch the action after giving up, and I saw faces of players from both sides, trying to dink the ball on each other's side. Doh! I had less than 1 minute of space remaining, and less than an hour before my next shoot, so I pulled the plug and figured that I should have one image.

The editors back at the office had other plans: "We need one for color and one inside," Steve said, and I opened Quicktime and Final Cut Pro to check each file for a couple good shots. Fortunately, Photoshop and Final Cut are back in working order. There was no squeezing of images, like a couple weeks ago, and I didn't figure out what was done to remedy the situation. All I know is that the widescreen pasting was back.

I found nice "jubo" (the cool way of saying, "celebration," or "jubilation") but didn't have any deejay (my own term for dejection, but no one understands it) and a couple good frames that I copied and pasted onto the Photoshop file. All shot in 1920x1080.... but my camera shot the footage without the digital interlacing, and I was surprised to see no jaggies. I think my camera was set at 30p, and it helped me as well.

This weekend, we're shooting the Ravens at home against the Carolina Panthers, but I won't be able to shoot video, since they've banned those contraptions on-field at game time.

Here's also a shot of a coach. The size that Photoshop suggests for the original size of the Quicktime image is 1920x1080 @ 72dpi. I saved this at 200dpi, and it can be seen here, I hope in its original size. I optimized the size for web use, however. Just peruse the set in Flickr, with shots saved at 72dpi and 200dpi so you can see what they look like, opened in full size.

I also wanted to add some information about floor bounce lighting with the Nikon D2H (you can do this with any camera with a flash you can aim at the floor), from a shoot I did this day as well.

Take a lookie at the image of Dad and daughter, taken with my D2H at this Halloween shop on York Road in Timonium (made me excited about having fun this holiday, too!):



I simply used one flash, the SB-800, but even an undedicated flash will do, like a Vivitar 285. I simply turned the camera upside down so that the flash head will point onto the floor! If the head of yours can move about, just aim the puppy straight down at the ground, but make certain that the color of the floor is white or grey, or close to it. Otherwise you may get some weird color changes.... but don't scare from shooting anyway if you have an orange floor; that may yield some interesting colors as well! Since you're shooting digital, simply make color adjustments as you test the balance of the colors against whatever is in your subject field.

Notice, the lights behind the pair are the standard incandescent (tungsten) lights. If you're so particular that you want true white balance with all things, well, place a warming filter over the flash that will make the output similar to a tungsten light, and change your white balance on the camera to tungsten (the little lightbulb). I like the warmth behind the people, so I kept my flash output daylight balanced, while shooting with the overcast setting on the camera.

Bang out a frame of the light source to make sure that the lights don't over-expose in the frame. They should remain very saturated (another reason I stuck with the warm lamp glow, since a darkened light bulb won't show saturation, but grey if it's white-balanced). The image was shot at 1/60th @ f 4, so I switched the flash output to 1/8th power, since it would stay consistent. Using TTL or auto settings tend to give light outputs that are inconsistent, and with a dark background, I didn't want to waste time. Aiming the flash head slightly behind will keep the top of the flash from throwing any direct light onto the subjects, which make the lighting on their faces quite harsh. If your flash head can't rotate and turn backwards, grab a piece of cardboard and some rubber bands or something to hold it on your flash head and leave it pointing straight down.

If you and your subjects have time, play with the direction and zoom function on the flash head, so you can remember what settings please you (and your subject). I like my zoom feature placed about 50mm to 85mm, but you may like the wider setting. To me, the zoom will allow for more directional yet soft lighting.

HVX200 Tip: How To Extract Pics From Widescreen

Another layer of work was added in the office to extracting still images (jpegs) from high definition video, and I can't figure how that happened. Somewhere, someone must have changed some preferences, because the monitor sizes are all widescreen, and I had extracted wide images from HD clips a few weeks ago.

When I learned about jpeg extraction, the file was 1920x1080, and I could double the size of the movie in order to double the size to 3840x2160. Now, two things happen when extracting a jpeg at original HD size: The width becomes something like 1260, while the depth stays at 1080. Somewhere along the chain, the movie file is recognized as NTSC (television format, 4x3) instead of widescreen 16x9. So the image compresses from the sizes, making everything look like they've been squished against a concrete wall by a Mack truck. As I write this entry from my laptop, my PowerBook still is conformed to recognizing the HVX200 clips as widescreen. I'll try to recall what I did to stretch the NTSC image back to its intended size.

I asked Guru Dave what was going on, but he was clueless. It also didn't help that his mind was on getting out of work to start his 2-week New England vacation. But anyway, I had almost decided to shelve the camera until I could get this cured. But I'll keep using it. You won't learn anything if you've given up.

So, here's the recipe for extracting jpegs from HD movies.

Ingredients:
Final Cut Pro (untested with Final Cut Express)
Adobe Photoshop (mine is PS8, Adobe CS)
Quicktime Pro
A video-capable computer (mine's a Macintosh G5)
A little patience.

1) Turn whatever HD movie clips you have into Quicktime.
2) Open the file to its original size.
3) Play your file until you find the optimum frame that you'd like to extract as a still image.
3a *Opt*) Double the size of the movie clip by hitting "Apple-2"
4) "Apple-C" (which is a key shortcut for copying). The frame is then copied.
5) Open Photoshop (or, something like TextEdit, which you can paste).
6) "Apple-N" (a keypad shortcut for opening a new file).
7) The file can be custom-created.

But what Photoshop does is recognize the copying you've done and makes a size that conforms exactly to what your image size is.
*HINT* at the top of the prompt, the document is named "Untitled-1." I like to rename the image as the same name of the movie file I'm using. Sometimes I extract more than one image, so I then add letters from A to Z. This is invaluable if you need to revisit the movie clip later.
8) Go to "Layer" in Photoshop and flatten the image (at the bottom).



Do what toning and resizing you want, and save your clip.

For those suffering the NTSC/Widescreen squeeze, read further.
If your computer is spitting out anamorphed images (another term for squeezed), uncheck the "constrain proportions" box after opening "Image Size." You MUST have the file's original pixel size handy in order to return your morphed image back to its unsqueezed proportions. Here are some as a cheat for you:


Double HD Squeezed: 2880x2160
1080 HD Squeezed: 1440x1080
Double 720 HD Squeezed: 1540x1152
720 HD Squeezed: 960x720

You want to return to the "Image Size" function to uncheck that "Constrained Proportions" box so you can return the file size to its original proportions. Replace the top number (which corresponds with the first set of numbers as shown above) with the first number of the widescreen size, listed below.

Double HD Wide: 3840x2160
1080 HD Wide: 1920x1080
Double 720 HD Wide: 2048x1152
720 HD Wide: 1280x720

So, if you've shot in 720p and have a file that's now 960x720, uncheck that box in Image Size, then replace 960 with a pixel size of 1280. Hit "Okay" and your wide format has returned.



For the 1920x1080 image of the beach, here's a Flickr post of the finished image. In the meantime, I'm gonna take my PowerBook into work and figure why my laptop recognizes the widescreen size when the G5 desktops don't.

HVX200 Shoot: My First Cinematography Assignment

I try to make any links some kind of informative and independent review.

Armed with a shotgun mic, Panasonic AG-HVX200 and Lumix DMC-FZ30 cameras, I drove 75 miles due east, heading for the town of Denton, MD, to shoot some footage of the 70 mile commute of a woman and her 2 children. The first stop was the local auto parts store, because I needed to get a portable light. At the Pep Boys store, only AC current lamps were for sale, so I picked a fluorescent lamp, which seemed daylight balanced and burned cool.

Stopped at a barbecue place beside U.S.50 to get some ribs (don't order the dry rub kind, they are dry inside as well!) and drove over the Bay Bridge, getting to Denton around 10pm. After grabbing some snacks at a grocery store, I hunkered down for the night at a local hotel.

But I couldn't sleep.

Almost all night, I was wound up, a bit nervous about my first shoot. Would the sound be okay? The color retention and quality work? The angles of the clips? I decided to go to the truck and pack all my video gear, so I grabbed the FZ-30 to shoot what's called "B-roll," which is cutaway footage with a different camera. After charging the batteries and checking online for the exact address of the subject, I packed my gear into my bag and fanny pack while watching some [adult swim] on Cartoon Network.

Finally, at 230am, I was exhausted enough. So I set the alarm for 445am and asked the front desk to give me a wakeup call for 430am (so I could have an alarm backup, in case I passed out).

Up & at 'em at 5, I started on MD-404, driving past a water tower with "Welcome to Denton" adorning the exterior. I chose to return after finding the family's home, which was nestled in a quiet part of town, just at the fringe of Denton's border. Twilight blue mixed with the tungsten lamps of the block, which were shot with the HVX200, which was apparently built on the platform of the AJ-HDC27 VariCam.

A couple joggers worked out on the other side of the main road, running along a snake rail fence, so I took my B-roll camera and mounted it on a monopod to shoot some quiet street scenes. As a car drove up the road, I squeezed against the wood fence, but the angle wasn't quite right. Lifting the monopod above the fence, I set it down just inside the fence.

Moving it close to the wood, I started framing a shot, but felt a light jolt in my fingers. After a moment, another jolt popped my hand. Doh! My monopod started rubbing against a charged cow fence! I abandoned shooting any more of the fence, and returned to capture a shot of the water tower to give placement of where things would start.

Returning to the home, I knocked on the door, and the husband welcomed me, inviting me to head upstairs as the mother got her daughter ready for the trek. After putting on clothes and brushing their teeth, they were all ready to go. I exited first, and framed a shot of the door knob, and shortly after, the family left their home and packed into 2 vehicles -- Mom belted the children in the back of her Expedition, while Dad got in his Honda "commuter vehicle" (a higher-gas mileage car). I stuck my B-roll beneath the Ford, starting the REC button, and moved aside so the Ford could back out, over the camera (I remember that from a scene in The Bodyguard).

Running to the end of the block to catch up to the Expedition, I rode with Mom and the kids, who watched a cartoon in the back seat. I tried shooting as much as I could, including a grab shot of the front wheel, the Bay Bridge (with the hood of the truck), and a quick grab of fisherman on the bay. As we got to her folks' home in Severn, I shot some of the goodbyes, but had only one minute left before my P2 cards maxxed out! Doh! Too little time to download, I grab the B-roll and shot a little goodbye kiss, and we left for her job in Annapolis.

I zoomed in tight on her odometer, which read 12,000 miles. "That's how much I've driven this year," she said, adding that the truck was newly bought just several months ago. Let's see, how many MPG's? About 16 or so, and at $3 per gallon? Asking her if she had considered a minivan, she scoffed: I'm too young to drive a minivan! I don't want to be a minivan mom!"

As we arrived, I clamped a head on the child seat and aimed my B-roll out the rear door window and ran up the small hill to frame the truck as Mom exited. I held shot, pulling out to the whole SUV as she walked into work.

The shoot was perhaps a little under-exposed. I still don't quite know Final Cut Pro, and I may have messed up a bit, because I shot everything in "480p 30," which is the lowest rez you can use on the HVX200. And I only did that because I could shoot 32 minutes with 8 gigs of P2 cards -- shooting high-rez would only give me 8 minutes or less to shoot with!

But the shots looked like friggin film! Not one frame resembled video, and Dudley watched some of the clips, completely amazed at the quality for something shot in a low-rez format. I hope I can yank some contrast while retaining color, without blowing too much out.

So I thumbed through Google, finding a tip on how to expose shots with the Panny. As I told Dudley, the only way you learn is sometimes by mistake. And you're only an idiot if you don't learn anything from a screw-up.