Effective sports preset
 

Situation:
Tomorrow evening I am filming a lacrosse game at my local high school.

Conditions:
1) I will be shooting handheld, running up and down the sidelines with the players.

2) The game will take place at night, on a lit field.

3) I do not need to document the entirety of the game to archive or anything… my only purpose is to get some dynamic close range footage for promotional ends.

4) Our school uniforms have A LOT of bright red in them, and I am a bit worried about that, as DV doesn’t, in my experience, seem to like reds. Often times I will shoot something amazing, only to realize that it is rendered useless when captured due to excessive aberration in this regard. How can I safeguard myself against this?

5) I know I want to use a high shutter speed for this application, as is so often done. What is a good starting point? Would it be a good idea to shoot in TV mode, as to use the AE function?

6) I want a very ‘contrasty’, icy-cold look, with crushed blacks, etc.

7) I will be shooting in 24p (2:3:3:2). Yeah, yeah, yeah… not the best for action, but I am only making a promotional video designed to make the players look big and bad.


With that said, can anyone with sports experience recommend custom preset settings in regards to the stipulations mentioned above?

For the look you described I would do a cool white balance (you can set it to the indoor preset or WB to orange or pink) this will curb the reds and give you the icy look. I personally like warmer stuff but that is an easy one to fix later. If you have to turn up the gain in order to get your shutter up to 1/250th or higher, be sure you also turn up the coring and tun NR on low.

To get your contrastly look, set the blacks to press and the knee to high. If that isnt crushed enought for you, turn down the master pedestal and the setup level a notch or two. I would use normal video gamma. If the colors are too muted bump the color gain a notch or 2, if the reds get noisy, turn the color phase a notch toward green or turn down the red gain.

Lastly, I would shoot it in 30P. There will be less choppiness but still no interlacing. Shooting in 24P with a high shutter rarely makes sense as it kills the motion blur that you are getting from 24P.



ash =o)

You might want to try a test at 24pa. This could strobe to an unviewable disaster.

I tried this for hockey with horrible results.

Yeah, I ended up shooting in 30p. Using Ash’s advice for presets as a starting point, I made a few tweaks to achieve the look I wanted. I ended up using a warm white balance as well. With further color correction in post, the results were awesome, and I believe that I really impressed the team (who are used to watching their game footage from a small dv camcorder mounted in the bleachers).

I will post some images shortly…

Thanks to all.

Let us see some grabs...



ash =o)

Jeff,

Share that Preset setup also if you would. I don't have an immediate need for a night-time athletic event preset, but I'd prefer to have it already in my XL2 Preset Manager files so all I'd have to do is transfer it to the cam. Thanks!

http://static.flickr.com/50/109802133_432479ee15_o.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/43/109802135_28b1348065_o.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/55/109802145_32c0ee3044_o.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/54/109802146_fcc29e040a_o.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/41/109802148_0cf5aa2baf_o.jpg


Patrick: It did not get as dark as I thought, and the lights were only used for the last 30 or so minutes of the game... so I am not so sure how this would have held up at night. I essentially used Ash's sports preset as available for download in the sticky, with just some minor tweaks for my own purposes. The footage isn't that great anyway... but not bad for a relative beginner like me.