File and workflow management...

...have become the major new issues now that I'm shooting with my new Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, and in fact for major sports events, shooting with both the 1D M4 and with my EOS 5D Mark II as well.

For field sports the 1D M4 has the 70-200mm f2.8.L zoom, often with the Extender EF 1.4 II for an effective focal length range of 98-280mm, while the 5D M2 has the 24-70mm f2.8L zoom for closeups.

Setups for both cameras is as identical as I can get it regarding ISO, White Balance, Exposure Mode, Metering Mode, and Focusing Mode and focus point.

Since I'm shooting in Continuous Shooting mode while the game is underway the 1D M4 is taking something less than 10 shots per second, while the 5D M4 is taking something less than 4 per second.

I'm shooting in M-RAW on the 1D M4 which is spec'ed at "9.0 mB 3672x2448" and in S-RAW-1 on the 5D M4, which is spec'ed at "9.9 mB 3861x2574".

Despite the fact that Canon says both of these produce files roughly in the 9.0-10.0 mB range, most of the RAW files I get seem to end up somewhere north of 15 mB each.

Go figure.

So I shot 2,341 photos in a Saturday of Vashon Island Soccer Club games.

(As a matter of policy I shoot *everyone* -- not just the "star" players -- on any team I photograph).

That comes out to 38.26 gB (that's gigabytes, folks) of photos as they came off the Compact Flash cards and onto a hard drive.

So my old method:

1) move Canon RAW files from CF card to hard drive on a Ubuntu Linux box,
2) burn to DVD,
3) copy off the DVD onto the hard drive on one of the two Win XP boxes I use for post-processing,
4) post-process on the Win XP box,
5) generate jpegs and web pages back on the Ubuntu Linux box that contains the local copy of my web site,
6) archive the DVD

has become:

1) move Canon RAW files from CF card to hard drive on a Ubuntu Linux box I'm now using as a file server,
2) review and tag acceptable RAW files over the network from a Win XP box,
3) move the tagged files to a new directory on the file server,
4) post-process the tagged RAW files over the network from a Win XP box,
5) generate jpegs and web pages on the Linux box that houses my web site,
6) delete unused RAW files that never made the cut, and
7) burn the tagged RAW files and the tiffs produced by post-processing onto a DVD for off-line archiving

It's taken a little thinking and fiddling to get this down and streamlined, but so far it seems to be working.

And it may be more separate steps, listed out like this, but in actual practice doing RAW conversion and post-processing using two instances of BreezeBrowser running on each of two Win XP boxes means I'm really able to keep things moving.

And one major advantage is that I'm no longer even keeping photos that never make the cut, which I did in the old method.

Although I'm paying only about $0.66 per DVD/c-shell case for storage, I don't need to keep something I've only looked at once and will never look at again...

Seems I should have...

...done more night photography at the Vashon Island Strawberry Festival this year.


These are from Friday night at Ober Park, the Tom Bean Blues band.


Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Canon 70-200mm f2.8L zoom lens at 70mm; Auto-focus one shot; single-center focus point; ISO 6400; Aperture Value exposure; f3.2 at 200th second; Metering Mode center-weighted average; Auto white balance as shot, but RAW conversion with Tungsten white balance.

It is absolutely astonishing...

...how fantastic the output of the human optical system is, compared to the output of even a moderately high-end digital camera.

If you were to walk into the Chautauqua gym for a basketball game, the lighting would look perfectly fine to your eye: whites are white, skin is skin, everything's in it's proper color.

But to (even) a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, it's dark, and the lighting (some sort of halide lights) is some *really* weird color.

All of the following were shot at ISO 6400, manual exposure of 250th second at f5.6: my standard "indoor sports" setup. Working from past experience at the VHS gym, white balance was set to 4000K or "fluorescent".

Example 1: RAW converted with a white balance "As-shot fluorescent" (4000K) and with an exposure compensation of +1.6 which yields a nice, fat, well-centered histogram with just a tiny spike of data off the right end, which I don't care about since it's blown highlights that don't even end up in the cropped image:

This is just *way* too pinky-rosey-yellowy, or something. It's just not right.

Example 2: RAW converted with a manually-set white balance of "Color Temp" at 3300K (this after some experimentation) and with an exposure compensation of +1.6 also...

This one's better, but still too yellow to my eye, and the actual colors in that gym (the key, the back wall) are just not what I remember them to be.

Example 3: RAW converted, again, with a manually-set white balance of "Color Temp" at 3300K and with an exposure compensation of +1.6, but now color corrected in the tiff within Photoshop, this by manually selecting an area of white jersey in shadow (aka "faux" 18% gray) and clicking to define "white" for this image specifically

To my eye it's this last photo that's "correct", or maybe "more" or "most" correct. The whites finally look really white and all the other colors (the gray-green of the key is a good example, the wall in the background, the flesh tones in the shooter's left arm) are reasonably close to spot-on.

And the human optic system does all this correction on the fly, in real time, with out having to be told, and without us even thinking (or, for that matter, knowing) about it.

:-/

OK: Jumping ahead in time...

...and returning to the motor-drive topic, here's a quick sketch I pulled together from four shots taken at VHS Boys Basketball v Charles Wright on 01/10/2010:

(click on the photo to see all four shots)

Historically I haven't like motor-drive much, probably because of some nonsense photography-purist stuff about wanting to catch The Moment(tm) rather than just letting the camera fire away and accepting whatever it happens to capture.

But motor-drive does work pretty well, at least if you take enough shots, which never seems to be a problem for me :-/

In this sequence there's only one shot missing, that between the third and fourth frames, which showed the shooter landing back on the floor but the ball not yet in the basket.

Timing for the sequence: 19:31:42 to 19:31:43, so roughly one second in duration, which matches the EOS 5D Mark II's advertised frame rate of 3.9 per second.

Again, I've also switched back to AI Servo auto-focus after a brief (and unexplainable) flirtation with AI Focus auto-focus, which just never seemed to do a consistently good job of tracking a moving subject, this despite the fact that it's supposed to switch from One-Shot auto-focus into AI Servo mode auto-magically.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II; 70-200mm f2.8L zoom lens at 70mm; AI Servo auto-focus; ISO 6400; manual exposure at 250th second at f5.6; white balance "Fluorescent" or 4000K.

The motor-drive...

...sequences I shot at VHS Varsity Boys basketball v Cascade Christian on 12/18/09 seem to be coming out pretty well. I can see issues with consistent focusing within a series of shots: for some reason I shot with "AI Focus Auto-Focus" which is supposed to automatically switch from single-shot AF to AI Servo AF as needed.

Since the subjects in basketball are rarely stationary I have to wonder why I did it this way, but you gotta try stuff to see how stuff works.

Last night at VHS Varsity (both girls and boys) basketball v Charles Wright I shot entirely in "AI Servo ("for Moving Subjects") Auto-Focus" and very quick checks of shots while the game was underway seem to show more consistently accurate focusing through a sequence of shots, even when the subject was covering a big distance across the floor.

I'll know more when I get last night's photos burned onto DVD and get a look at them on the computer...

Wrestling...

...as I started to say elsewhere, is an interesting sport to shoot.

There's long periods of relative inactivity that are very subtle isometric battles, and then suddenly there's a burst of real motion as the balance of power shifts.

Combine that with the fact that there's a whole lot going on all at one: at the Rock Island Tournament they start out with three mats going at once, and this year (to kinda move things along..) they did the finals matches on two mats, simultaneously.

My best angle is right on the floor, on my knees (wearing my old volleyball kneepads) just inside the ropes that mark off the aisles from the mats.

So the backgrounds are incredibly busy: I'm shooting straight across the mat with the opposite bleachers in the immediate background.

There's a kind of Bruegel's-Fall-of-Icarus atmosphere about the whole thing: there's this titanic struggle going on out on the mat all the while a whole bunch of people are doing other stuff right beyond, seemingly oblivious to what's going on right in front of them.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II; 70-200mm f2.8L zoom lens at 75mm; image stabilization on; AI Focus auto-focus; ISO 6400; white balance "fluorescent"; hand-held; manual exposure of 250th second at f5.6.

I love...

...depth of field, and color.

This from Vashon Island Soccer Club Wasabi GU-12 soccer, just put up.

f5.6 has become my favorite aperture, I guess because it produces effective depth-of-field for objects that are reasonably separated, and yet provides for full focus on the subject itself.

Details: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 70-200mm f2.8L at 120mm; ISO 800; Exposure aperture priority (Av) at f5.6 and 1000th second; White Balance "daylight".

Here's a good shot...

...from VHS Girls Varsity basketball v North Mason, which I just put up.

The basketball's not even in the image and yet you get a strong sense of what's happened: the shot's off, the defender's late, who knows if it dropped, the photo stands on its own as a statement about basketball without containing the entire narrative.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II; 70-200mm f2.8L zoom lens at 73mm; ISO 6400; Manual exposure at 250th second at f5.6; white balance "fluorescent/4000K"; AI Servo auto-focus with a single, center focus point.

Every now and then...

...you really get one. (Click on the photo for the full view).

I shot 1,047 photos at VHS Varsity Basketball v Fife last night, 443 at the girls' game and 607 at the boys' game -- the difference being mostly cheerleader shots and crowd shots and band shots during the boys' game -- and every now and then I really get one.

This was late in the fourth quarter with the Pirates fairly well up; as I remember it (it's all kinda a blur when you watch a basketball game through a viewfinder) on a steal-fast break with only one Fife defender who was able to even get close to getting back on defense.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II; 70-200mm f2.8L zoom at 70mm; ISO 6400; White Balance "fluorescent"; Exposure "Manual" at 250th second at f5.6; hand-held, available light.

A definite keeper ;-)

And both the Pirate boys and the Pirate girls Varsity won: Girls 51-38, Boys 58-43!

What a better place to be...

...than on a soccer pitch on a cold-and-sunny December Saturday afternoon?

Buccaneers GU-13 at half time.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 70-200mm f2.8 with a 1.4x extender for an effective focal length of 98-280mm, this shot at 98mm.

ISO 800; White Balance "Daylight"; Aperture priority exposure at f8.0 yielding 400th second; exposure compensation -2/3 (Mr. Green Jeans);

Here's a...

...very quick first pick from Varsity girls v West Seattle last night:

This was the first opportunity I had to get the new EOS 5D Mark II into the Vashon High School gym and see what it would do.

I'm very impressed.

First off, having a native ISO of 6400 means that I can set a reasonable manual exposure of 250th second at f5.6, stop action pretty well, and still have something that I can actually see when I'm reviewing photos for RAW conversion and post-processing.

Details:

• EOS 5D Mark II; 70-200mm f2.8L; center spot-point focusing with AI Servo Auto-focus
• White Balance 4000K, for "standard" metal halide lighting; this was kind of a guess since the VHS gym lights are notorious for their weird color due to the random way light bulbs have been replaced over the years, and due to the wildly varying ages of the bulbs themselves
• ISO 6400; manual exposure at 250th second at f5.6; hand-held available light
  
• RAW conversion: Smart Noise Reduction "normal"; White Balance "Color temp" of 4000K; Sharpness "As-shot" of 3; this particular photo had an Exposure Compensation of +0.6
• Post-processing: rotate right 0.5 degree; crop; pull up the low end in Levels to +5

Oh yeah! Varsity won 57-52, and JV won 49-39!

Go Pirates!

This photo's...

...pretty amazing on a bunch of different levels:


Where to start?

1. Canon EOS 5D Mark II; 70-200mm f2.8L zoom with a 1.4x extender for an effective focal length range of 98-280mm; this shot at 98mm
   
2. ISO 6400, with no (that's as in "none") digital noise reduction after RAW conversion
3. I screwed up and (because I kept wiping the camera off with a towel from my trunk during one of Puget Sound's famous "drowning mists") actually shot this at 320th second, f5.6, rather than the 250th of a second I had really intended
4. So during RAW conversion this received an exposure compensation of +2.0
5. Manually set White Balance at 3300K in the camera, and during RAW conversion; noise reduction "high" during RAW conversion; sharpness "3" as-shot during RAW conversion
6. (You can see how the White Balance of 3300K really works pretty well because you can discern the different hues between the stripes on the jersey, which are a very pale cream, and the numbers, which as is the ball, are white)
   
7. Adjusted Levels down to 240 on the high end during post-processing
   

And all this was from a shot made under the (in)famous McMurray field lights, which are adequate for human vision at night, but worse than a joke for photography.

Fortunately the subject was right in front of me, and the light tower was just back off behind my right shoulder.

Tuesday night's...

...VISC soccer practices gave me a very good opportunity to work on several things I don't usually get to mess with during the course of an actual game.

• A manually-set color temperature of 3300K for the McMurray field lights works about as good as anything's going to get to establish the proper white balance at RAW conversion
• Shot at manual exposure, ISO 6400, 250th second, f5.6, and just let 'er rip: pick up the exposure pieces during RAW conversion and post-processing
  
• alternated between a single center-point-focus and the generic 9 auto-focus points; jury's still out, although I'm still tending to think that the single center-point-focus works best
• alternated between single shot and motor drive; in the past I've found that motor drive doesn't necessarily do any better at catching that One Perfect Moment(tm) than just becoming familiar with a sport and leaving the timing up to my shutter finger

Also I was able to get out on the field, right next to the goal, and get the lights (such as they are) somewhat where I wanted them...

Now up...

...VISC Alligators GU-11 soccer, from 11/21/09.

A three-day turnaround. Not bad for having shot 734 original RAW photos.

Whittled that down to 159 tiff's that made the final cut.

That's about 22%.

:-/

Pretty straight forward stuff: EOS 5D Mark II; 70-200mm f2.8L zoom lens with a 1.4x extender for an effective focal length range of 98-280mm; image stabilization on, hand-held.

White balance "cloudy"; ISO 1600; aperture priority auto-exposure (Av) at f5.6; most shutter speeds in the range of 1/320th to 1/800th second; one-shot auto focus with a single, center focus point; focus lock.

RAW conversion with Breeze Browser: smart noise reduction "normal"; white balance "cloudy"; sharpness +4 (as shot +3); exposure compensation in the range of -0.4 to +0.4 as needed.

And it didn't rain.

:-)

Now up...

...VISC Comets GU-12 soccer from 11/14/09.


Pretty straight forward: Canon EOS 5D Mark II with 70-200mm f2.8L zoom and a 1.4x extender for an effective focal length of 98-280mm; image stabilization on, hand-held.

White balance "cloudy"; ISO 800; aperture priority auto-exposure (Av) at f5.6, producing typical shutter speeds of 500th second; one-shot center-point focusing with focus lock.

Now up...

...Raptors v Storm BU-12 soccer shot at night under the lights at McMurray.

I finally decided to add just a touch of digital noise reduction to the post-processed tiff's using Neat Image.

Neat Image uses either canned or self-created profiles of digital noise for specific camera bodies at specific ISO, shutter speed, and f-stop combinations.

I used a profile for my old 5D at ISO 1600, 200th second at f5.6 because it took just a taste of the very little digital noise that came out of my new 5D Mark II at ISO 6400, 200th at f5.6.

Again, the RAW's received exposure compensation of +1.6 during RAW conversion into tiffs, and then I did a little top-end levels adjustment during cropping.

The resulting photos are consistent, if not a little too soft in some cases.

Well, that's interesting...

Canon Service Center (as I guess it's supposed to be called) just called (my old 5D died with a "main mirror detachment issue" -- which they're fixing for free) and said that, since my old 5D has over 85,000 (!) shots on it, would I like to replace the shutter and mirror box while it was in for service anyway, which they recommend doing at about 100.000 "clicks" as she called them.

I said "How much?"

She said "About $600.00."

I said "I'll pass..."

Since I've just bought my new 5D Mark II, the old 5D is going to become a backup body/second-lens-mounted body, and I'm not going to sweat 15,000 more shots before it might need to be replaced outright.

Hey! Maybe then I'll get the EOS 1D Mark IV I'm lusting after...

Very first impressions:

The EOS 5D Mark II seems to produce a softer image than the original 5D, very subjectively.

This would be for the soccer photos shot yesterday under very flat light because of the heavy cloud cover.

Also (of course, having to always fiddle with something...) I approached focusing differently from how I've set it up in the past, and that may have had something to do with it

I'm dialing-in a little more sharpness than I previously have during RAW conversion, that being turning it up from "3 As-shot" to 4 of 7...

Just shot...

About (I'm not making this up) 1,700 photos at two VISC soccer games today: Comets GU-12, and Pirates FC GU-11.

The deal is that I try to get some shots of *everyone* -- not just the stars, and not just the star moments.

So I take lots of photos.

Also I wanted a lot of photos to look at to see how the new EOS 5D Mark II body is doing.

70-200mm f2.8 zoom with the 1.4x extender, for an effective focal length of 98-280mm.

ISO 800 early on, then to ISO 1600 as some heavier cloud cover came in. White balance "Cloudy". Aperture priority exposure at f5.6, most shutter speeds (that I noticed) > 500th second.

Using center-point auto-focus, AI Focus, with the Auto-Focus Stop button and the AE/FE buttons swapped at C-Fv IV-2, and thus working as a Focus Lock/Stop.

Love the BG-E6 Battery Grip as it lets me quickly roll the camera over to Portrait when the soccer players get right up on me at the side lines, and then quickly roll the camera back over to landscape as they pass by.

Oh yeah: the Comets GU-12 team won 3-nil, and the Pirates FC GU-11 team won by either 3- or 4-nil!

I just got back...

...from Glazer's Cameras in Seattle, and am now the proud owner of a brand new Canon EOS 5D Mark II, body only.

Sure wasn't planning on having to spend this sort of money right now, and I'm sure I'll feel OK about it once I get past my current state of shock.

:-/

And once my original 5D is fixed I'll have a second/backup body, which will be a Good Thing(tm).