Sports videography ?

[Gints Klimanis]

Does anyone here do sports videography ? I'm doing martial arts fighting and kickboxing and would be interested in talking to someone dealing with close-up video, impact sound recording and
rapid panning.

[Keith Loh]

Dylan?

http://www.pyroglyphfilms.com/gallery/

[Dylan Couper]

I'm working on some martial arts related projects right now, and have done some promotional videdo and photography in that field.
Also shot a medium sized (500+ competitors) tournament once.

Paintball is the only other sport I've done video for. Put out two paintball tournament videos in the last year.

[Jim Quinlan]

Here's a sports video I did while learning Vegas Video a few months ago. I did it before getting my DVX100 and it's shot with a $400.00 Sony DV el cheapo camera. The low light scenes are terrible (in the pre event parties). It was a good learning experience for me though. I used Vegas to enhance the picture quality.

My Clips

[Jim Ioannidis]

Here is a video I just shot a couple weeks ago at a big mountain bike race. Me and one other guy did the camera work.
See if it's what you're looking for for examples

MTB race clip

[Mark Moore]

I've never shot martial arts, but have done some of my friends kids' soccer matches for them (little highlight videos as a gift). Having coached for 25 years, I can tell where the play develops and where I think the ball is going, so when I'm shooting a good team, I can get very good footage with a minimal amount of tape.

However, when the teams stink and kick the ball all over heck-and-half-of-Georgia, then it's very difficult to get decent shots because they never do what they are supposed to do! At the end of the game when someone asks if I got some good footage, I want to say, "No, because your kid and his whole team sucks", but of course I can't say that!!!

I have also shot some HS wrestling matches for a couple of friends and that was very easy to shoot! Some great footage from that!

And for what it's worth, most of the time, I use a mono-pod - especially with soccer, as it's very easy/mobile for me and I've learned to keep it pretty steady!

[Gints Klimanis]

Thanks for the example files, everyone. I'll post a few of my own.
I basically have a tight space 15' x 20', so it's a studio. I'm looking to add more microphones on the competitors and perhaps some floor mics in addition to the ceiling mikes and
camcorder-mounted mic.

Mostly, I'm new at this and having a lot of focus/zoom problems. Full zoom out on my vx-2000 + 0.66 Raynox wide-angle is too big, while the vx2k without the wide angle doesn't zoom out enough to fit both players. I simply do not have any space to back up!

How do you focus while zooming ? Different types of fights
need different zooms due to the distance between the fighters.
Unarmed fighting is pretty tight, but stick or multiple man requires
less zoom. At the end, I like to interview people within seconds of completing the bout. So, I end up zooming quite a bit and losing the focus. A friend of mine taught me to zoom in, focus, then zoom out. However, this doesn't seem to produce focused video at distances 5-15' from the camera. I've tried doing the focus process by zooming in on the furthest object. That doesn't
really work for all of the distances. Then, I've tried zooming/focusing in the middle of the room. I guess I'm a total newbie at stuff this obvious to the rest of you.

[Matt Stahley]

Gints is your Raynox a full zoom thru lens? That may be the cause of not being able to focus properly.

[Gints Klimanis]

Yeah, Raynox 0.66 HD-6600PRO58 only claims the zoom up to 6x, but the vx-2000 goes to 12x. I am a newbie at video (being an audio guy), and balked at spending more after just having
loaded up on a vx-2000. Little did I know ..

Tom Hardwick provided a fine comparison of wide-angle lenses.
Raynox makes a full zoom through lens HD-7000PRO, but I
haven't been able to price it. I just may take Tom's fine advice
and go for a more expensive, ahem, better wide angle lens.

[Matt Stahley]

I use the Canon WD-58 on my VX2k low price good quality and full zoom thru. I cant tell a picture difference between a full zoomed shot with the 58 on or off but im no pro.

[Rob Wilson]

Jim,

Great job on the Mountain Bike shoot. Especially like the nat sound mix level. To those of us that ride, it REALLY adds to the realism. Unfortunantly for me, I can best relate to the nats of the crashes!

[Adrian Douglas]

Jim,
HTML is turned off but you can use vBulletin tags. To make a text link use [ url=http://www.URLgoeshere.com ]Link Text[/url] but make sure you delete the spaces before and after the URL, they are in there so you can see the code.

[Neil Fisher]

http://members.shaw.ca/hydromedusa/hydromedusa/motion.htm

here are a few more free ride videos. Don't bougth downloading the April 26th vid, it's degrading. I'd suggest you watch the June 30th or Feb 13th & 14th.

[Jim Ioannidis]

Gints,

I can tell you that for the Mountain bike video I posted I used the Auto focus for most of the time and it worked fine for me.
But I guess I just had 1 object to focus on and in a fight you have 2 or more subjects at diffrent distances that need to be in focus.

I'd like to see your clips to see how you're taping the fights.
Not sure I'll be able to help since i'm still new at this and learning myself, but I bet they'll be cool to watch.


Rob,

Thanx man, Yea I like to crank up the mic on my GL2 to get all the sounds of the crowd and the sounds the bikes make as they go over bumpy terrain, the only problem is when people start cheering loudly they over load the mic.

[Ron Little]

Martial Arts is how I got started in video. I started making training videos and tournament documentaries ten years ago.

I recently did a made for video release that includes martial fight scenes that I choreographed and acted in. You can see it by going to Hollywood video and renting “This Darkness”.

Beware this is not a kids movie it contains nudity and violence.