Badminton Photography

[DoublesPlease]

Well here we go, a place to record miscellaneous pictures snapped on, around and all about badminton.

DP

[DoublesPlease]

Thanks to Kelvin_k who has loaned me a wireless camera to replace the mostly dead one I was fiddling around with in another thread. We have all systems go for a trial this Wednesday and in honour of the premiere guin... volunteer* I dub thee FeverCam. As you can see in the picture the gain is a little high on the recorder in the bathroom, lightling levels should be lower in the stadium to give better video. Also, it's quite comfortable, the camera and battery weigh next to nothing so it shouldn't impact too much on the play I would think, only one way to find out.

* No problem BF, there's 10 years of biking sweated into the helmet, wouldn't subject anyone to the interior.

dp

[kelvin_k]

lol nice pic, DP. Looking forward to the out come of your experiment.

See you tonight!
Kelvin

[chris-ccc]

Hi DoublesPlease,

Hahaha... A headgear that not only protects your head from shuttlecocks and rackets, but also takes pictures......


BRILLIANT !!! :):):)



Awaiting to see your innovative act tonight.

Cheers... chris@ccc

[monic@]

What a great thread idea! Why didn't it exist already!?
I don't have many action shots of badminton, but I just went through some old photos of games with friends at Monash, here are two which clearly display the disadvantages of plastic shuttlecocks. (Thanks go to my friend David, for taking the photos with his iRiver.)
Argh... I swung and hit, then searched for it until I realised that people were laughing at me. :o

[cooler]

What a great thread idea! Why didn't it exist already!?
I don't have many action shots of badminton, but I just went through some old photos of games with friends at Monash, here are two which clearly display the disadvantages of plastic shuttlecocks. (Thanks go to my friend David, for taking the photos with his iRiver.)
Argh... I swung and hit, then searched for it until I realised that people were laughing at me. :o
It's not due to the plastic shuttle.
It's due to your 16 lbs strings.
Beside, that is a backyard type of plastic shuttle.

[ants]

Hahhaha.. only plastic shuttles can do that.... i like it..

[DoublesPlease]

to our international guests. Feel free to contribute to this pictorial thread.

dp

[kwun]

What a great thread idea! Why didn't it exist already!?
I don't have many action shots of badminton, but I just went through some old photos of games with friends at Monash, here are two which clearly display the disadvantages of plastic shuttlecocks. (Thanks go to my friend David, for taking the photos with his iRiver.)
Argh... I swung and hit, then searched for it until I realised that people were laughing at me. :o
haha. that's funny. for feather shuttle, if it hits the area right next to the frame, it is possible for the string the break and then the shuttle get stuck there in a similar fashion, i have seen it happen before.

[DoublesPlease]

Not a raging success, managed to get the captures below. Video quality needs some work, images are way too bright which should be correctable with a filter. There is a problem with vertical sync which could be due to a number of things. Anyway, worth another go Friday, I'll be bringing some seasickness tablets along too.

dp

[kelvin_k]

hey DP, have you tried using the camera on a TV? Just wondering if it is colored there. I'll bring you another one on friday. Cheers.

[DoublesPlease]

hey DP, have you tried using the camera on a TV? Just wondering if it is colored there. I'll bring you another one on friday. Cheers.

no problem with colour nor brightness with the camera through the tv so both are being introduced by the capture device. picture is solid here so there must be some interference there.

dp

[monic@]

Okay, thanks to many reply posts and comments at Friday's social games, CCC@Waverley, I now know what an outdoor badminton shuttlecock looks like and that it should be hit with some sort of different racquet. I thought that it looked so strange compared to the usual plastic (indoor) shuttle. :p

[ctjcad]

Well here we go, a place to record miscellaneous pictures snapped on, around and all about badminton.

DP
..and fun stuff you've got going there, DoublesPlease..:cool:
Hmm, i wonder, were you a bit cautious when playing?? what was the reaction of your opponents whilst serving and playing against you?? Were they constantly aware that you had a camera sitting on the helmet??..Were they smashing away the shuttles as usual??..:p :D ;)
Btw, just curious, what kind of wireless camera were you using??..:confused:

[villeneuve]

Here are a few shots i took from my PDA camera. They turned out really bad, i had to resize them so you guys didn't see how bad they really were. :)
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y260/sC_apache/iPAQCam0275.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y260/sC_apache/iPAQCam0274.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y260/sC_apache/iPAQCam0272.jpg

[chris-ccc]

Here are a few shots i took from my PDA camera. They turned out really bad......


Hi villeneuve,

Those shots of yours are not too bad. :):):)

Cheers... chris@ccc

[DoublesPlease]

Kelvin, you were right. I updated the driver to the capture card and set it to PAL and no problems. Try again next Wednesday.

Picture below is of a raw egg after being dropped from about chest height onto a 10mm slice of sorbothane. Yes, it bounces and kept on bouncing: I needed roughly 30 shots to get the timing right, my knees say oh yeahhh. This originally started out looking for some cool highspeed racquet meets shuttle shots but the strobe is only a cheapy party fixed interval thing without triggering and the timing is tricky. I have a recipe for a sound trigger here which should straighten things out.

villeneuve: I won't pass up any chance to show off my new slr, we can give it a go next Friday if you're about.

ctjcad: It's a 2.4 or so GHz one I think, 9V battery operation and has JMK written on the side and although it makes a handy bullseye the guys down the other end were playing nice. Great thing about it is there's live feedback on the laptop. Virtua badminton... Left, left I said LEFT. SMMMAASHHH.

dp

[chris-ccc]

Picture is of a raw egg after being dropped from about chest height onto a 10mm slice of sorbothane. Yes, it bounces and kept on bouncing......


Hi DoublesPlease,

OK, you are innovative...... but how can you be so confident/trustful of Sorbothane ?

I would have used a boiled egg instead. :):):)

BTW, you have just reminded me to try out your Sorbothane at CCC@MSAC tomorrow.
And villeneuve said he will now be a regular at CCC@Waverley on Fridays.

Cheers... chris@ccc

[DoublesPlease]

how can you be so confident/trustful of Sorbothane ?

easy, stunt egg #1 met his demise like so:

wheeeeeeeee sorbothane:bounce, sorbothane:bounce, miss:splat

which is the reason there is a shaggy cloth under the sorbothane, to take the edge off the third or so bounce

stunt egg #2 has retired back to the fridge

dp

[ctjcad]

Kelvin, you were right. I updated the driver to the capture card and set it to PAL and no problems. Try again next Wednesday.

Picture below is of a raw egg after being dropped from about chest height onto a 10mm slice of sorbothane. Yes, it bounces and kept on bouncing: I needed roughly 30 shots to get the timing right, my knees say oh yeahhh. This originally started out looking for some cool highspeed racquet meets shuttle shots but the strobe is only a cheapy party fixed interval thing without triggering and the timing is tricky. I have a recipe for a sound trigger here which should straighten things out.

villeneuve: I won't pass up any chance to show off my new slr, we can give it a go next Friday if you're about.

ctjcad: It's a 2.4 or so GHz one I think, 9V battery operation and has JMK written on the side and although it makes a handy bullseye the guys down the other end were playing nice. Great thing about it is there's live feedback on the laptop. Virtua badminton... Left, left I said LEFT. SMMMAASHHH.

dp
..do you mind taking a bit of time to upload a bit of your experiment and share with all of us??(if you want to, of course)...;) :cool:

[helmut]

Hi villeneuve,

Those shots of yours are not too bad. :):):)

Cheers... chris@ccc

I actually like the colour cast, even thought about building a filter contraption to produce something similar with my camera. Currently my main complaint is the background: boring walls, doors, fire exit signs, basket ball fixtures etc.
Ideally they don't appear at all in the images, or they at least appear blurred, darkened, or -- colourised.

See further down in the thread for some more general ramblings on Badminton photography.

Cheerio
Helmut

[helmut]

Hi to all,

I thought it'd be much easier to take pictures of Badminton action that do not look outright amateurish. So far I am stuck with a single recipe:

MY RECIPE SO FAR:

Shoot from the sideline of one court through the net to the opponents' side with what one would call a short tele lens (about 80-100mm in old money); either peering down over the white line or from a very low point just above the floor. Try to
(a) to cut out all undesirable background (therefore the tele lens),
(b) to avoid the white net line crossing face or neck, or yuck, the eyes of the players;
(c) press the shutter release at turning point of a movement (such as a player rising for a smash or clear), freezing the motion to some extend; and
(d) keep camera prefocussed to a point where you expect to capture most action (autofocus does not work for me).

PROBLEM 1
The limiting factor is the dim light - at Glen Waverly it's about worth
1/50 sec at f2 (ISO100)
= 1/100 sec with ISO200
= 1/200 sec with ISO400.

I am using an old manual lens with a max aperture of f2 fully open (a 'Takumar' from the 1960s); with typical SLR zoom lenses one should expect about 2 stops less, i.e. f4 (at 100mm equiv.) which translates to:
1/50 sec at f4 (ISO400),
=1/100 sec at f4 (ISO800).

PROBLEM 2
The wider open the lens and the longer the 'length' (the more the lens is in the 'tele' range) the thinner the area where the objects are in focus (the so-called DOF -- depth-of-field). Focussed to a distance of, say, 8 meters, my 'Takumar' lens shows objects reasonably sharp between 7.42-8.68m (theoretical, calculated values). This is a range of just a bit more that 1.20m. Anything closer or further away will appear more or less blurred. An aperture of f4 would double the range to 6.91-9.50.

So one has to one's chances with motion blur and out-of-focus softness.

PROBLEM 3
Terrible colours, unreliable colours. The green and yellow walls firstly cast some additional hue onto the players and secondly trick the in-camera colour balance. See examples, the first one completely off, the second one, taken by Villeneuf, ok.

This problem may be fixed by just doing a custom white balance and 'can' it for the night.

PROBLEM 4
boring boring boring composition ... :mad: there must be alternative ways to take pictures ...

OFF-COLOUR SAMPLES BELOW

[DoublesPlease]

boring boring boring composition ... :mad: there must be alternative ways to take pictures ...

How about seated directly under the middle of the net with a fisheye lens? Onto a reduced sensor that should put most of the court into field. Bonus danger points too.

Other possiblity is high up from one end of the court looking over the net, if the player is deep in the court the net will be out of field. Need a ladder for this.

Blimpcam could possibly take a small point and shoot, if I ditch the motors and use a piece of cotton to steer it the camera could be up to around 90g. Cam would need to support remote or continuous triggering. Just a thought. It would need a volunteer who's happy to have his $300 camera suspended by velcro 10m above a concrete floor...

dp

[helmut]

How about seated directly under the middle of the net with a fisheye lens? Onto a reduced sensor that should put most of the court into field. Bonus danger points too.

Other possiblity is high up from one end of the court looking over the net, if the player is deep in the court the net will be out of field. Need a ladder for this.

Blimpcam could possibly take a small point and shoot, if I ditch the motors and use a piece of cotton to steer it the camera could be up to around 90g. Cam would need to support remote or continuous triggering. Just a thought. It would need a volunteer who's happy to have his $300 camera suspended by velcro 10m above a concrete floor...

dp

Yes, fisheye sounds very appealing, never mind the bonus points ... strong wide angle and fisheye lenses in particular produce DRAMATIC pictures -- provided one is VERY close to the subject, shooting up no less than a meter from the feet of the jumping player. Though someone seeking a less dangerous pasttime might prefer ordinary war photography :eek:

Seriously, the problem with blimp-cam and all wideangle solutions is that the players shrink to tiny fidgety flies once they are just a bit further away than very, very close.

I could imagine crouching at one corner of the court with a strong wide-angle (ca 20-24mm equiv.) and wait for something happing at that very spot. My shortest lens is 28mm though - no luck.

I think your flash/strobe ideas have a lot of potential -- I try to jot down some details in a separate posting.

helmut

[helmut]

CONTINUATION ...

Now, if one introduces flash light -- never mind the nuisance -- there seem to be interesting possibilities, such as:

- capturing the ultimate 'raquet hits shuttle' (DoublesPlease) moment;
- controling the light intensity of background and foreground separately
- creating 'artistic' effects by controling the direction of the light.

Summarizing the basic setup, as discussed with DoublesPlease on Friday:
- strong flash, triggered acoustically by the 'bang' of the shuttle meeting the raquet, while
- manually releasing a burst of, say, 3-5 shots at a 'promising' moment.
Can it work? Find below some camera math.


TECHNICALITIES (we can't get around the laws of nature ...)

The 'natural light' in the hall, according to my experience, is:
1/50sec, f2, ISO 100.

Now let's darken the natural lit scene so that the light comes predominantly from the flash. Let's make it 4 times darker by closing the aperture by 2 stops (2->2.8->4):

1/50sec, f4, ISO 100

We need to keep the shutter open much longer to increase the likelyhood of capturing an image while the flash fires. No problem, we can close the apterture much further and, at the same time, gain A LOT depth-of-field.
Let's go down three stops to f11 (4->5.6->8->11) and lengthen the shutter time accordingly (1/50->1/25->1/12->1/6). So we get:

1/6sec, f11, ISO 100

Still too short? Let's put on a polarisation filter, that cost a bit more than a stop, open the aperture a little (avoiding diffraction softness of too small apertures):

1/3sec, f10, ISO 100 + pol.filter (equiv. to ~ f14)

My old Oly E-1 shoots about 3-4 pictures/sec in bursts up to 12 images.
With an exposure of 1/3sec there is a 50% chance that the shutter is open when the flash fires.

Now we need to fill in the values for the flash. My suggestion: set up the flash at the sideline of the court. Assume a distance of about 4-5 meters from the player (we wait until the action is on our preferred side of the court). How much light is needed? The formula goes: distance * aperture = guide no:

4*14 = 56

So, a flash set to guide no 50-60 should work - a lot of light (my old hammer grip gun is just rated 60).

In summary: theoretically possible, but just :(.

However, it might turn out that some parameters are too much on the cautious side. I would be most interested to reduce the distance of the flash to the player. Or to reduce the contrast between natural light and flash for that matter. Or going for shorter shutter speeds and open the aperture by 1 or even 2 stops.


'ARTISTIC' OPPORTUNITIES

As the background will be darkened one has more freedom in terms of focal length (wide angle) and vantage point. I also wonder what a light coming from a (slight) back-angle would do: emphasizing the outline of the player but lighting up the strings of the raquet and the hopefully impressively squashed shuttle spraying feather dust?

[BadFever]

Hi guys,

There is a Photography & Equipment Exhibition soon in Melbourne Exhibition Centre. This should be good, they even provide free workshops. Goto the link below to register for free entrance (You need to pre-register, otherwise it will cost $20).

http://www.photoimagingworld.com.au/

[DoublesPlease]

Photography & Equipment Exhibition...

Hey BF, missed your suggestion and the exhibition, perhaps next year.

And to all my opponents: beware the curse of the pyramid.

[villeneuve]

Here is the photo that i'm most likely to use for our CCC flyers. If you have another photo which you think is more appropriate, please let me know; i will consider any entries, and we can have a CCC members vote on which one to use. Also, if there are any suggestions to make the current photo better, i can incorporate that too, keeping in mind that it has to be in black and white, and reasonably small.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y260/sC_apache/IMGA0994.jpg

[chris-ccc]

Hey!!! That's me going for the netplay.

:):):)

[DoublesPlease]

Also, if there are any suggestions to make the current photo better, i can incorporate that too...


Hey Vill,

background could lose some detail, how's your photoshop? And cranking up the whimsy how about a swirl of stars or snowflakes ending at the big black one in the foreground?

[chris-ccc]

Hey DP... any news of when you'll be coming back from Brisbane ???

:):):)

[wood_22_chuck]

Pic toned.

-dave

[chris-ccc]

Pic toned.




Hey Dave,

Thank you for toning the pic... How did you do it ???

The pic image is now of sharper quality.

:):):)

[Neil Nicholls]

Here is the photo that i'm most likely to use for our CCC flyers.
nice. I like it.

[wood_22_chuck]

Direct grayscale make the pic flat. I used Photoshop to mildly fix it.

Image, Adjustment, Channel Mixer.

Check Monochrome. Adjust sliders.

-dave

[DoublesPlease]

Hey Vill,

Looks like I misread your post, attached mod does much better as an emblem than a feature photo.

[helmut]

Hi everyone -- Villeneuve congrats to the image (I packed away my camera after I saw your picture) and to the post processing. Amazing what is doable with pp!

Cheers
Helmut

[chris-ccc]

Hi Villeneuve,

I have made announcements, via CCC@Badminton Central and CCC@Facebook, about your CCC Flyers.

So... be expecting more comments/suggestions to be coming soon.

And many thanks are to be given to our many contributors thus far. :):):)

Cheers... chris@ccc

[DoublesPlease]

And in honour of the rollover to a 9 bit post count, some wisdom -

There are 10 types of people in this world: those that understand binary and those that don't.

[helmut]

And in honour of the rollover to a 9 bit post count, some wisdom -

There are 10 types of people in this world: those that understand binary and those that don't.

... those who can count not to 2 and those who cannot.

[chris-ccc]

And in honour of the rollover to a 9 bit post count, some wisdom -

There are 10 types of people in this world: those that understand binary and those that don't.




Well... Congratulations to DoublesPlease !!! :)

Today, Monday 1-October-2007, DoublesPlease has a 9 bit post count.

:):):)