Grow the sport? No thanks.

[JR]

I'm not sure if Jari did much or thoughtful cutting down of the amount of pictures. I'm sure he has hundreds to over a thousand pictures of that event. Last year i think he was at over 1000 pictures and he worked as much this year so i imagine these pics were at least hurriedly pre selected.

My video camera does not handle being pointed at the sky, lighting and colors well enough even on bright days as well as with manual exposure control with the rest being on automatic controls. There are not enough buttons on my camera to change the settings on the fly. I can only change one value on the fly at a time so exposure control is the only option with Canon Legria HF200. So i can't do a proper emulation of a Hollywood crew and it would be horrible for the players with so many people breathing to their neck or increasing the odds of being hit in the middle of the fairway. European Open and USDGC have towers so for static few holes coverage even a team could be possible in a manner that does not hamper the players, caddies and spectators. Of course that can't be the norm.

I have the utmost respect for videographers that can follow each shot of ach player from start to finish while adjusting everything optimally for each second of the video by manually adjusting everything. Consumer video cameras lack the buttons to do that. They use menus so only one or two things are available for fiddling with. With increased messing up chances. Did you see the Beaver State Fling video being out of focus much of the time? If Derek Hastings can't do it with his better equipment... It would be interesting to film something less demanding than majors with proper cameras. lcgm8 thinks that the larger lenses of pro cameras don't focus as well with quick zoom level changes (mandatory) as the smaller lenses of consumer video cameras. That requirement is a must for me filming from the middle of the fairway because the discs move so fast so the pans are also very fast. I haven't delved into pro camera world so i no clue about their autofocus speeds. I'm wary of manual focus adjustments while filming after seeing the Beaver State Fling vid. One thing that makes adjusting camera settings more difficult with video cameras vs still cameras is that you need to follow the disc and do the adjustments in real time while filming often being on 15x zoom with time restraints having to multitask while needing to keep the camera steady. Stills don't need during capture changes and won't induce motion sickness in the viewer.

How often do you film with 15x zoom being in the middle of the fairway to where the players throw? I've had people like McBeth and Källström say that they aimed at me. Big arms... The difference of video vs still at 15x zoom is that at 6-7x level of zooming the autofocus drops out so one has to anticipate that and slow down the rate of added zoom a lot. Another time constraint that makes moving away from an oncoming disc more difficult. A stills guy can get support or kneel down easily and move away without messing up the shot. When a video guy needs to move to avoid being hit it taxes the time that is needed to film the next shot because you have to move back to the filming spot. I've had situations where the only place on the course to film from was one to three inches wide and still had leaves in the way. The need to reposition oneself exactly is another world to a video guy vs a stills guy.

I have filmed from the tee extremely rarely and when i did i did just what you did with Val's pic. Easy peasy.

Your comment about so many pics being horrible is exactly the same for videos so that logic doesn't hold water. The difference for stills cameras and video cameras is that the time needed to adjust controls and available manual controls are easily manipulated on a still camera between shots on consumer gear. Not so for video cameras that aren't very costly. And holding a steady video zoomed in at the target at proper _variable levels_ of zoom while adjusting multiple things while shooting is a very different thing. You push the idea that you don't think doing all of the above is not more challenging than doing stills work. Here's your counter challenge: Do it. Film video from the middle of the fairway while keeping the disc large on the screen with great zoom levels positioned well for lighting each time (the big restraint) while showing the full flight while adjusting nothing at first then incrementally adding up more manual controls. Then you know why Hollywood uses so many people on the camera alone. Expecting to do the same with one person on a consumer camera might prove to be more than you can handle. Not missing a shot.

I've rarely not missed a shot during an event. If you manage all that please film the Worlds and the USDGC so that the sport has a better chance of being televised. I have not seen large disc footage like that. Terry Roddy and some other DGP filmers use pro gear and get small disc videos while possibly manipulating the camera manually IDK. Terry films for a living. That is the level of demands on doing changes on the fly: One competes with professionals in disc golf terms you'd need to be so good that you earn a living by playing meaning you'd need to be an elite player. I've never studied filming and neither has lcgm8 other than as amateurs -never in pro film school.

My claim is that not all professional filmers can handle disc golf filming while adjusting the pro cameras with button controls for everything. In fact we've witnessed that and taught some pros about how to film DG. I also claim that we've achieved at times better quality than the Val pic with video but it is of course subjective. So i claim that some if not many pro filmers with pro equipment can't achieve what you claim alone -exactly the reason for Hollywood using a crew instead of a single person to film pre choreographed event that is time limited by the director. In contrast to DG anything can happen at any time and the video event can last however long. Try to zoom in without waving the camera around at 15x zoom for 5 minutes standing up without a support and with a monopod. Even the monopod doesn't help me enough. YMMV. The steadiness of the shot needs athlete level of posture control muscle power and balance control while being able to not sway around for minutes on end. Even after having sprinted. I am a locomotive breath at times so that does not help the steadiness of video. Steadiness of a still shot is child's play.

 

[JHern]

We also need better video camera equipment to make further progress. In big sporting coverage, the cameras automatically cover the desired angles and a director simply has to scroll their finger across a touchscreen to move the frame of view so that it follows the action in real time. All these motions are damped/smoothed by software algorithms so steadiness is never a concern. Of course, this is expensive stuff, those cameras are supposed to go for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and require electricity, wiring harnesses, a computer, and a mobile van control center. Their lenses are insanely expensive.

On the other hand, I've been very impressed with some of the more recent DSLR cameras and their video capabilities. You can find lenses of all kinds for DSLR that have ultra-fast accurate focus at any size and any zoom. Many of these cameras can also automatically track moving objects in the scene and adjust the lighting and focus to the changing conditions. You still need a good tripod with smooth action, but these videos are often of very high quality, and are probably the best bang for the buck. I shoot with a Nikon D90, which has video, but it was their first mid-level DSLR with vid capability and so it isn't very sophisticated. I would have to spend $3-5K for a DSLR with much better video capabilities to get decent results.

I would love to shoot videos of disc golf tournaments, but I know myself and I know that it would be yet another thing that I would obsess over and would take up a lot of time while yielding little in terms of returns on investment. I can't rule out that I won't eventually try it, but for now that isn't in my plans.

 

[JR]

Why won't you take your Nikon to a weekly for exactly the same fun relaxed not so serious attitude filming session? If you limit yourself to never releasing the footage and only covering half a round you'd make sure you don't have anything publishing worthy so you don't need to stress and start obsessing? Or whatever you need to do to force you to take it easy and not fret I kick myself for mistakes mentally but i'm still trying to stay in the fun side of things filming. I mean come on it's a privilige not to be chased off of the course when the best players in the world are competing filming majors. The fun factor flew out of the window and work stress set in at the FO 2010 adjusting the manual exposure while filming. It would have been so much more easy and less stressful doing that from the tee. There i might consider doing the manual exposure again if i'm ever in that position while filming.

3k dollar cameras are too expensive in my books. Mine with accessories has cost me so far around 700€.

A word of warning about filming. It ain't the filming and preparing that eats up the time. It is the editing if you plan on doing anything more than cutting and pasting clips together. At full HD even that can take a lot of time. And since you're the obsessive perfectionist type that would mean an endless swamp of time consumption learning more and more and redoing better etc. I described lcgm8 btw.

There are 4K cameras video now. No not 4k$ but 4000 something by 2000 something resolution video cameras so pretty much 4 times the pixels of full HD. The memory requirements and the editor requirements are stupid and so many other aspects of the editing machine can freeze up. Then there's the fact currently it takes 4 SD cards and if anything goes wrong with one of them a quarter of the image is missing. Cropping into that resolution would give easier time for the filmer with less need to zoom in but the data amount is massive and cropping in consume stupid amounts of extra memory. Regular PCs may not be able handle it. You might need a pro level server to accomodate enough stable enough memory and who knows which other problems there are on the way. Save for the obviously huge amounts of processing time and rendering will take hours for normal rounds if not days even on smaller cluster computers. Hollywood has an edge with dedicated hardware for editing but they don't even support the formats consumer cameras record in so at least translation is needed and so on and so forth. Like i said it is a professional level matter to make better vids.

In case you ever want to upgrade your camera to a better video quality DSLR i'd definitely pick a camera with sensibly positioned buttons for exposure time, aperture size, exposure level and zoom controls if such a beast exists. Menu based controls effectively limits manual control to one aspect alone.

Regarding lenses lcgm8 bought Canon's wide lense for his Canon HSF21 and unfortunately the autofocus can't keep up with a disc. That camera cost 1200€ when he bought it so is imagine it can't be much more in USD now. Sure Canon has the pro model long barrel with multiple gyros going for around 5000€ here but i don't think it can be attached easily or at all to a video camera. Still such a lense that is twice as long as the video camera behind it makes filming a bitch. Even a regular video camera starts to weigh a lot filming majors. Even with a monopod. I need to wiggle my fingers to keep the blood flowing and straighten the fingers or they's freeze into curled position. I have forcefully used the other hand the straighten my right hand fingers after a round many times. Because i couldn't straighten the fingers of the right hand under their own power. Then there's the matter of filming from bushes to be able to capture the whole flight and even fitting into the bushes. Large cameras on wooded courses are very limited. Especially for running out of the way of a disc. There's no way a guy hauling a large camera can do what i did at Dutch Open 2010 waiting until the last moment to step out of the way of Anders Swärd's drive to try to capture the sound of a near miss. Too bad the mic ain't up to the task on my camera and it sounds wimpy compared to the real thing passing me within inches.

 

[JHern]

JR, what do you think of the GoPro Hero HD or similar?

 

[JR]

IIRC even that model lacks zoom and they are very wide lenses so fish eye can be a problem and they are for close work only. The great thing about them is that they are so light and small so you can get nice trick shots like varsi here took overhead shots with a camera mounted on top of a pole at the EO 2011. There are plenty of videos on Youtube out of those cameras including from disc golf. So you can judge for yourself. As a disc golf event coverage camera they are severely lacking with the lack of zoom. That means it is best used around the tee with a proper video camera with zoom on the receiving end.

 

[Muddyboots]

Anybody else think about how cool blimp shots of a big tournament with players on every hole could be? How about a blimp shot of a full course of glo players? Etch-a-sketch on crack? That's it, I am building a dirigible!
KP