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...

OK: what have...

...I learned?

That I need to shoot a lot more wrestling so I have some better feel as to what is The Real Moment(tm), so I don't shoot so bloody many photos.

I shot over 1,400 photos at Rockbusters wrestling, and over 1,700 at the Rock Island Tournament.

Part of the problem is that wrestling is characterized by relatively long periods of isometric inactivity, punctuated by relatively brief moments of very fast action.

So I have a tendency to start shooting as soon as someone flinches.

Combine that with my general policy of shooting everyone, and not just the stars, and combine that with the fact that the Rockbusters tournament went about six hours long, and the Rock Island Tournament went almost nine hours, and I get an almost-unwieldy number of photos to wade through.

Basically after the RAW files are burned to DVD I load half of them onto one Window$ box, and half onto the second Window$ box I have.

I do the post-processing (RAW conversion with exposure compensation; then rotating, cropping, levels adjustment and saving the resulting file as a tiff) on these two separate Window$ boxes, switching back and forth via a KVM (keyboard-video-mouse) switch, so I can keep the process moving along just about as fast as possible.

But it still takes a while...

:-/

Whew...

...where am I?

Post-processing Rockbusters Wrestling from 12/12/09; waiting in the wings, VHS Wrestling's Rock Island Wrestling Tournament from 12/28/09, as is Girls and Boys Varsity Basketball v Cascade Christian from 12/18/09.

I mean, I love the holidays and all, but they can be a real setback...

:-/

Now up...

Volleyball v Orting and Senior's Night, 2009.

Here's Rachel with another block:


Canon EOS 5D, 70-200mm f2.8L zoom at 70mm; ISO 1600; "fluorescent" pre-set white balance, Available light; Manual exposure, 200th at f8.0; Auto-focus, center point spot with focus lock.

Heavily post-processed: +2 exposure compensation at RAW conversion; Levels: mid 1.1, high 180-200; Fill Flash +3 and Saturation 35; Neat Image noise reduction at EOS 5d, ISO 1600, "remove half of noise"