Camera settings/technique

[H.Sandsleth]

I wonder if any can recommend good settings for me to use when taking pics of shiai with this camera (or do I just need a better/faster one). I have about a zillion modes to use. I usually use sports mode but maybe I should use shutter priority mode instead...? And would using the raw format make any difference? Thankful for any advice.

Kodak P880:
CCD resolution 8.3 megapixel (3350 × 2483 pixels)
Effective image resolution 8.0 megapixel (3264 × 2448 pixels)
Picture quality 8.0 MP (3264 × 2448 pixels)
7.1 MP (3264 × 2176), 3:2 print mode
5.0 MP (2560 × 1920)
3.1 MP (2048 × 1536)
0.8 MP (1024 × 768)
Still format JPEG/EXIF v 2.21, RAW*, TIFF
Lens 5.8X optical zoom, f/2.8–f/4.1 (24–140 mm, 35 mm equivalent)
Advanced digital zoom 2X
Aperture f/2.8–f/8.0 (wide), f/4.1–f/8.0 (tele)
Shutter speed automatic: 1/2–1/4000 sec.; manual (S & M mode): 16–1/4000 sec.
Viewfinder electronic, 237K pixels
LCD 2.5 in. (6.4 cm) indoor/outdoor LCD with adjustable brightness settings

[ejstans]

Raw format basically means the camera just dumps the values directly from the CCD to a file without applying any processing. This means that you have to process it manually with software before it is usable. Unless the camera uses a severely flawed algorithm, I doubt that it would make any difference to use raw format.

Basically, for fast moving action what you want is a fast shutter speed or the subjects will become blurry. But a fast shutter means that less light reaches the CCD, so to compensate you will need to adjust two other factors: light-sensitivity of the CCD (ISO rating) and F-stop. If you crank up the ISO, you will get more noise. Personally I don't like digital noise* so best use judiciously. Your lens is rated at f2.8 at the widest aperture, but for sports it's might be preferable to zoom in, so the subjects cover a large portion of the frame to be more effective, and then your lens drops down to f4.1 at the longest.
As you can see this is a little tricky and you will probably have to experiment on how to get the best results. I can't tell you exactly hard details, like "use a 1/500s shutter-speed, with ISO 400, at f3.5" because I don't know these things myself yet, hehehe.

Maybe try to shoot around 100mm (35mm equivalent) and see what f-stop you can get? Don't go overboard with shutter speed either; your camera can do 1/4000s but maybe you don't actually need quite that speed. Try to find a balance between all three factors.

Well, as you can see, I approach this from the completely manual end, because I don't know your camera, and I can't actually use automatic modes worth a damn anyway :)
You could try shutter priority, since that seems to indicate that the camera tries to achieve a good shutter speed...Maybe someone with same camera as you can do a better job than me...

Cheers and good luck!

* I love film grain! I shot some 3200ISO Ilford film at 55th All Japan, although the results were disappointing because of the lens...

[Shavanni]

There are a number of very talented photographers on this forum that can give you advice.

Most have posted on the Flickr thread. There is loads of info on techniques and the like.
Found here http://www.kendo-world.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13910

You can also get some really good discussions going in the Art of Kendo pool on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/kendo/

See this thread from some good tips.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/kendo/discuss/72157600906593095/


From my experience, a good camera will certainly help but a solid point and shoot will serve you well if you know what you want to take photos of. It all comes down to the photographer.

[JSchmidt]

Raw format basically means the camera just dumps the values directly from the CCD to a file without applying any processing. This means that you have to process it manually with software before it is usable. Unless the camera uses a severely flawed algorithm, I doubt that it would make any difference to use raw format.



Eh? Always use raw!.Get a decent raw-converter (I use the Photoshop one) and you can do wonders in the raw conversion. Keeping it in raw, means that you can easily under-expose by several stops and still get a decent picture out of it afterwards.
If you convert in camera a good 40% of information is lost forever.

I mostly shoot with manual settings. I try to keep shutter speed around 1/125sec and adjust ISO and aperture accordingly. I'll drop the speed lower if needed, but that's my ideal.

[ejstans]

Ah, yeah, I misspoke there. I suppose it might actually be quite beneficial to use RAW in this situation. I don't have much experience with it though, and I stopped using it after I saw: RAW vs. JPG (http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm) :)

[JSchmidt]

That's the biggest load of nonsense I've ever heard and I'm very surprised to hear that from a professional.
He's effectively giving up 30-40% of the colour information by doing so.
One of the key criticism of early digital cameras was the fact that it was 8bit (per channel) and didn't have the same colour depth as film. Raw (12 or 14bit per channel) means that there's more colours than we can print!.(Well, almost)

[bobdonny]

ya i find for indoor kendo,

ISO 800 (1600 if really dark but bit too much noise on cannon), aperature wide open (you have good resolution you can always crop later - i use a nifty fifty) and a shutter speed of 500-750+.

Good results, with servo autofocus and continuous shoot mode.

Oh ya, cos I take so many pics at kendo i shoot jpg.

If i take a long time to set up a single pic i shoot raw.

[Kenshi]

I survived on a small fuji-finepix for ages until I lost it on a drunken night out in Kyoto 2 years ago. I think I may have given it to a girl, but im not sure. Anway, all the pictures from that are here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/sets/72157602327351468/). There arent many action shots in there for a reason - they are hard to catch. Instead you can change your focus from the action to whats going on around the shiajo.... competitors waiting, spectators, shinai lying on the floor... etc

After that I moved to a bigger and better point and shoot and got pics like these (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/sets/72157602327411070/)...... not all great, but a bit of photoshop can make a bland picture a bit more interesting.

I finally got a DSLR and im a bit lost at the moment. Still, managing to get the odd (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/2257642790/in/set-72157603890086957/) good (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/2222066057/in/set-72157603803960083/) shot (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/2255046540/in/set-72157603884257803/).

I guess you have to ask yourself "what am I after?" and then work out things from there.

Also - if you are serious about taking pics - you should think about your workflow. Two things ive learned to do is: 1. never shoot in continous mode (it removes your eye from the process) and 2. constantly review and immedietly delete bad or "just normal" pictures. The last thing I need is hundreds of files cramming up my hard drive and destroying my free time (and sucking the joy from kendo-pic-taking).

Edit: I forgot to add - take pictures of good kendo people, for obvious reasons.

[Ignatz]

i'm a digital beginner but for what it is worth I highly recommend Scott Kelby's book on digital photography. Not a lot of esoteric stuff, just "Do you want a picture that looks like this? Here is how you do it."
Good for idiots like me.

[H.Sandsleth]

Thanks a lot for the advice! And I'll definetively try the raw mode. I previously used a Minolta film based SLR which seemed better in regards of color and focus. Arg.

[enkorat]

I normally use a Nikon D70 at 1600 ISO. When I give it to someone I usually let them use a 28-70 zoom lens, when I'm shooting and feel somewhat ambitious I like using a 50mm (75mm w/ digital multiplier) 1.8 prime lens, namely for the increased speed of the lens. Course I get a lot of shinpan butt shots that way because the best photo angle is also the best shimpan angle.

I agree with the general consensus of RAW, however there is a few caveats. (I've taken hundreds and hundreds of taikai pictures).

One is that if you are shooting in continuous shutter mode, you might get lag time between the camera saving files to the digital media if you shoot in RAW. Also if your digital media is not so large, you may want to shoot in a compressed format. This is assuming that you're going to be using maybe one out of every 5-6 shots. This is mainly because if you give your camera to someone else, its sort of a hassle to explain how to swap out the media.

Also if you're not really going to do a lot of post-processing, or you're not into a lot of pixel polishing afterwards, or its not going to go anywhere special (ie. pictures just for kicks, not for publication or enlargements), most amateurs would be okay with jpeg. I say this because if you don't really work in RAW anyway, you'll probably hit the "lazy" wall sorting through the number of shiai pictures you have without having an established RAW workflow.

Oh and if the high ISO noise bothers you, and you don't mind doing a bit of judicious pixel polishing, there are plenty of programs out there that can "fix" that particular issue as well.... digital purists aside...

[Kenshi]

You know, I took a picture for my sensei the other day. JPG-basic large. Printed it out in 四つ切り size (254x305?) and ....... it looks fantastic. I was suprised at the quality and he was delighted.

My computer is old and slow. I bought an external HD to house my pics recently, but I cant be bothered handling massive data files, be it RAW or even JPG-fine. Ever since reading this Ken Rockwell article (http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d200/quality-settings.htm) ive gone basic-jpg in most situations. Maybe ive I buy a newer, faster, computer I will switch... but until then.

[Shavanni]

I recently experimented with raw. The venue's lighting was very bad and i figured that with raw I'd have more control over the exposure.
This was true but to be honest the amount of effort and time required by me in the processing made me rethink using raw.

I've gone back to using jpeg-fine and i'm happy with the results

[H.Sandsleth]

Well if I can get more control of the exposure it is very good, that is after all one big problem with the pics.

[Thunder]

Here is an absolutely wonderful website on digital photography. I ran across this when doing research on RAW and Noise reduction. A lot of great indepth technical description and practical knowledge.

AND-- AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHY.

Cambridge in Colour (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/)

[JSchmidt]

Here is an absolutely wonderful website on digital photography. I ran across this when doing research on RAW and Noise reduction. A lot of great indepth technical description and practical knowledge.

AND-- AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHY.

Cambridge in Colour (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/)

Good find. This article (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/RAW-file-format.htm) complete debunks Rockwells nonsense.

[ejstans]

Good find. This article (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/RAW-file-format.htm) complete debunks Rockwells nonsense.

Um, no it really doesn't. Please note that Rockwell does not say that JPG is better than RAW in any way except for convenience. If what you want is to carefully fiddle and tweak in the post-processing step, I doubt Rockwell would dispute that RAW offers more.
But if you do most of your "processing" in-camera then JPG might just be good enough, and RAW has little to offer.

[JSchmidt]

Digital cameras have to make several interpretive decisions when they develop a RAW file, and so the RAW file format offers you more control over how the final JPEG or TIFF image is generated. This section aims to illustrate the technical advantages of RAW files, and makes suggestions about when to use the RAW file format.

Rockwell on the other claims that there's virtually no difference in quality between jpeg and RAW, although it's evident even in his 'best' example.

[ejstans]

Rockwell on the other claims that there's virtually no difference in quality between jpeg and RAW, although it's evident even in his 'best' example.

As I understand it, what he is saying is that in many cases, RAW is overkill. His 'best' example is actually the lowest quality mode BASIC. Is there no difference? Of course there is, but maybe it's not always significant?

He certainly seems opiniated and generates a lot of controversy...

"Bad photographers make mistakes and have to tweak colors and levels afterwards. My decades of shooting film has taught me to nail my shots on the first try, not to waste time trying to rescue it later. It's easier and better to get it right the first time." ;)

[enkorat]

Well...

Shooting shiai pictures is pretty challenging. Most of the time the lighting conditions are, to put it politely completely out of your control. To put it bluntly, it can be awful. One shiai place had these old school orange lights that made everything deep orange.

You have to shoot fast moving action usually without a flash in a dark environment. Normally I don't have the best angle to take the shot, and even if I generally know the timing of kendo in order to get the best shot, you shoot continuously in order to not miss a possible shot, and in case you misread the timing and the players end up not doing anything, and you get 5-6 pictures of people just standing around.

Its kinda like when in wedding photography you have to start shooting continiously when they say "you may kiss the bride", because it only happens once. Same thing with the winning ippon you know? Only happens once. Its not like you can reframe and reshoot.

I think back in the day of film (the medium I learned on when I was a kid) I'm sure that the "shoot once" mentality made sense to some. Even with film, I normally would shoot one particular subject in one particular position at least 5-6 times. But pixels are cheap and you can always delete later.

Really more than overall settings, I think its better to think of what kinds of pictures you're going to be taking and then work the settings around the kinds of pictures you want.

[JSchmidt]

I think back in the day of film (the medium I learned on when I was a kid) I'm sure that the "shoot once" mentality made sense to some. Even with film, I normally would shoot one particular subject in one particular position at least 5-6 times. But pixels are cheap and you can always delete later.


When I did film photography classes (eons ago), we rolled our own film and were encouraged to shoot as much as possible.
1 decent shot out of a roll was considered good.
We also spent a lot of time messing around with exposure, paper types, chemicals, etc in order to produce different results when developing the prints, not too different from what I do today in the raw-conversion/photoshop...except that I don't have to go to a dark room and that it doesn't cost me anything other than time. (And it's still faster than developing film!).

[Ignatz]

I'm trying to apply the lessons i learned in sound, never try to "fix it in the mix" if you can avoid it. Use photoshop to "finish" not to "fix".

my understanding is that most pro sports photographers shoot in jpeg for a number of reasons, not the least of which is file size. As they are usually shooting outdoors or in good light with $10,000 fast lenses jpeg might be a better bet. Bad light, then raw has the advantage.

Another advantage of raw is that you don't have to worry about white balance because you can change it later.

i have only just started playing with my new D40X and I love it but wish I had the $ for a D3. Again I recommend Kelby's book which could be subtitled (maybe it is) "How did they do this? Here's how." An example might be the SI outdoor athlete portrait where you use the "wrong" white balance to get that blue tint.

[H.Sandsleth]

Regarding white balance I think I will try to set it in the various halls on the day from now on. Also setting the custom settings beforehand might be an good idea (?) to try out some main variables.

One question: If I set the camera to shoot in black and white, and raw, will the resulting file still contain more info in some areas? Referring to the article mentioned, for instance enhanced sharpening possibilities...

[bobdonny]

raw retains all your colour info even if you shoot in BW.

Its best to shoot in full colour as the cust BW (using a color mixer) will be more dramatic

[enkorat]

In the digital workflow (as opposed to film), many people recommend shooting in color and converting during post processing.

One book that I bought that I found was a good introduction to the process was "Mastering Digital Black and White Photography" by Michael Freeman (ISBN 1579907075). I picked it up at a my local large book retailer.

There are several different ways to do color->black and white conversions (other than ->greyscale) that can give you a high degree of control over what/where/how things can be done, and I found it both very appealing and easier as a long time black and white darkroom photographer to have that level of control digitally. Plus it is actually cheaper and exposes me to less chemicals, and smelling like stop solution after a day of developing.

To make a very complex explanation a very simple one, it has mainly to do with the fact that a color image has at least three distinct luminosity "channels" of information (three distinct black and white images originating from each color), and in post processing you can manually choose which, and how much, information from each channel to use in the final image.

If you shoot in B&W in the camera, the camera through its firmware applies its own factory setting mix, and you essentially lose all of that information.

[hyuna]

That's the biggest load of nonsense I've ever heard and I'm very surprised to hear that from a professional.
He's effectively giving up 30-40% of the colour information by doing so.
One of the key criticism of early digital cameras was the fact that it was 8bit (per channel) and didn't have the same colour depth as film. Raw (12 or 14bit per channel) means that there's more colours than we can print!.(Well, almost)

this isn't a photography forum so i don't want to get into this too much, but i'll say this much

1) if you aren't printing, then 12+ bit depth doesn't mean squat since you don't have a 12 bit screen

2) last time i shot a kendo tournament, i ended up with over 300 frames. raw -> jpg conversion time alone, even on my fairly hefty machine, means that raw is grossly impractical for me when it comes to shooting kendo. nevermind the nuisance of needing 4x the storage space.

3) think about what storage you have on-hand and how fast your camera can clear its buffer when shooting raw vs jpg. remember that the thing that will make a great kendo shot great is not the color depth or the difference between being tack sharp or pin sharp :p. it is going to be the timing and the composition of the shot. in other words, sports is a time where the extra picture quality is not worth the risk of losing a shot.

Finally, I don't know why you would be surprised at hearing this sort of thing from a pro. A pro who is *that* serious about image quality (e.g. advertising) can use a tethered medium format digital back. If you are shooting with an SLR then you are already sacrificing a lot of quality for mobility and speed. I personally don't think that raw adds anything of value to a sports shoot. If you are doing portraits or still life in between matches, then by all means switch to raw, but if you are shooting a match, IMO you are just making trouble for yourself for trivial gain.

[enkorat]

I'm trying to apply the lessons i learned in sound, never try to "fix it in the mix" if you can avoid it. Use photoshop to "finish" not to "fix".
[...]
i have only just started playing with my new D40X and I love it but wish I had the $ for a D3.

Ah yes. I've started drifting towards pushing the limit of photomanipulation, and getting away from journalistic photography, mainly just to learn how far it can be taken.

In addition to the book I previously mentioned, I was inspired to learn how to essentially do extreme "pixel polishing" by another book, which was "Welcome to Oz: A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop (VOICES) (http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Oz-Cinematic-Photography-Photoshop/dp/0735714002/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203021036&sr=8-1) by Vincent Versace. It really opened my eyes to the other end of things, which also made me cautious about photography in general, as I became increasingly aware that a photograph may no longer represent reality as I more easily assumed.

I'm also starting to dabble in HDR imaging, which is fun.

I hope you get good use out of the D40X, as they always say we don't buy the camera body, we buy into a lens system...

My advice about RAW and for kendo taikai is probably pretty close to my kendo philosophy.

If you have to ask about RAW, it probably means that you don't quite know enough about it, or have used it enough to gauge if you need it. I'm still playing around with RAW and haven't quite decided if its particularly useful for me, especially since I use an open-source workflow that doesn't easily use 16+ bit images. My advice is to take your camera out before a taikai and just shoot stuff in RAW, do some reading about it, and see if its something you find particularly useful.

[SmellsLikeBogu]

probably a very fast shutter speed, and a big aparture to compensate.
(the lower the f-stop number, the more light you let in your camera)

you could do it semi automatic, using shutter priority setting the shutter speed fast, and let the camera itself adjust the aparture.

thats a very basic explanation :) Im sure there are much more professional people here :)

also for the raw format, this takes alot more diskspace on your flashcard, so you'll be able to take fewer pictures.

I would set my thing to the fastest burst mode possible, and let it snep 5-6 pictures of an action, makes it easier to pick the good ones out, instead of hoping you'll catch the exact right time with one shot.

[Kenshi]

I would set my thing to the fastest burst mode possible, and let it snep 5-6 pictures of an action, makes it easier to pick the good ones out, instead of hoping you'll catch the exact right time with one shot.

What about the joy of getting a good shot in 1 push? I mean, if its an action shot you are after. I recently got a couple of nice-ish (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/2255046540/) ones (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/2257642790/) simply by taking my time and watching the people fight. Not the best photo-quality, and certainly not the sharpest images but, hey, im satisfied. Its like a good ippon.

Personally, im not really into money-shots per-se, but its fun sometimes. For me they can get too same-y and tend to be boring. Its sex without the foreplay, the ippon without the seme-ai. Just take a look at the kendo mags everymonth.... the pics are pretty bland.

If you have more time and you want to compose things a bit more carefully then you can get things with a bit (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/1565518251/) more (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/1565518243/) impact (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/515723655/) / story (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eikenkai/1560099504/) (all of these are shiai-scences with a not DSLR). I think these types of pictures say more about you as a photographer and are independent of raw vs jpg and technical arguments.

Arrgh, its possibly im anti-techie!! I might take a holga with me to the next shiai I go to......

[enkorat]

I think these types of pictures say more about you as a photographer and are independent of raw vs jpg and technical arguments.

Arrgh, its possibly im anti-techie!! I might take a holga with me to the next shiai I go to......


Naw... I was gonna maybe say something about how you can still take crappy pictures in RAW and no amount of post processing is gonna fix fundamentally crappy composition and bad photography technique... and how a good photographer could take a 20 dollar holga and get interesting and compelling pictures, while a 1000 dollar camera wouldn't necessarily give good pictures...but you beat me to it.

Hmm... maybe I should take the Holga to the tourney this weekend....I've never really taken pictures with my Holga indoors...

[Shavanni]

Personally, im not really into money-shots per-se, but its fun sometimes. For me they can get too same-y and tend to be boring.


I agree with George on this. When I first started taking kendo shots I was constantly after the money shot. It felt good to get it too. But when you go review all the photos you took of the day, you find that half of them look the same. I only wanted one men cut, not 10.

I think the feeling and emotion of kendo can be found in people faces through the mengane, or the solitude of two people out in the shiai-jo alone. These are things I try to capture now. Too be honest its a lot harder to do than just capturing ippon

[michaelm]

As far as optical quality is concerned, nothing has really improved since the 70's.
What has changed (improved) since then has been convenience. (Film->Digital, Manual->Auto, Darkroom->Photoshop, etc.)

Give me a pinhole or a $5K camera and I'll make pictures. Like my kendo strikes, they will be mostly sloppy, but once in awhile there will be a few that are undeniably "in". I assure you that my good ones have nothing to do with whether or not I was using madake bamboo or carbon fiber.

The trick is to know the limitations of the equipment and shoot accordingly, then to make each image uniquely mine and give it my artistic voice.

Shoot what you got. Have fun. Experiment. Find your own voice.

YMMV
-michael

[Kenshi]

I was constantly after the money shot.

Sounds like my 20s.

[Shavanni]

Sounds like my 20s.

Why limit yourself to just one decade of your life.....

[Fudo-Shin]

Sounds like my 20s.From what I know of you George, it's not dissimiliar to your 30's.

[Kenshi]

oi ～　oi ～ boys!

I see you guys need some re-education.

I will take care of the matter in May.

[Fudo-Shin]

You're not threatening to come here are you?

[Shavanni]

oi ～　oi ～ boys!

I see you guys need some re-education.

I will take care of the matter in May.

This is directed at me.
I'm heading over to Osaka in May with a few of the boys in tow to get some "re-education".

I just hope I don't see Kenshi reliving his 20's

[Fudo-Shin]

I think he's still reliving through his teens, so you should be right but beware (PG recommended). Bring back his ginger scalp...oh that's right, he hasn't got one!

[H.Sandsleth]

Naw... I was gonna maybe say something about how you can still take crappy pictures in RAW and no amount of post processing is gonna fix fundamentally crappy composition and bad photography technique... and how a good photographer could take a 20 dollar holga and get interesting and compelling pictures, while a 1000 dollar camera wouldn't necessarily give good pictures...but you beat me to it.

Hmm... maybe I should take the Holga to the tourney this weekend....I've never really taken pictures with my Holga indoors...
Maybe I will take this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kodak_Retina_I.jpg
I've actually used it quite a bit. Had no idea it is that old...the pics get a certain haze to them.

[hyuna]

Maybe I will take this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kodak_Retina_I.jpg
I've actually used it quite a bit. Had no idea it is that old...the pics get a certain haze to them.
could be that an internal surface of a lens is dirty, or etched from fungus or something. it might be fixable.

those are beautiful cameras.

[H.Sandsleth]

Thanks. I'll have the photo store to have a look at it.

[enkorat]

Maybe I will take this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kodak_Retina_I.jpg
I've actually used it quite a bit. Had no idea it is that old...the pics get a certain haze to them.


Oh man, that looks like a great camera......