Girls Soccer Show -- 1st effort

[plehmann Profile Private message]

Here's a 14 minute, end of year show for a girls 11-12 year old select soccer team. This is my first year getting serious about photography. I purchased my first digital SLR (Rebel XTI) and this is my first time putting together anything like this. I'm the father of one of the girls on the team and volunteered to be the photographer for the season. We'll be having an end of year party next month and I hope to show this and give a DVD copy to each girl.

Please let me know if the show is enjoyable and how I might improve it. I'm pretty happy with it overall -- some of the photos had to be shot at high ISO to get acceptably fast shutter speeds in lower light and I'm less than pleased with some of the resultant graininess in some of the pictures, but I feel pretty good overall that all of the girls are represented in the show with good pictures.

BTW, I decided not to make the show a "week by week" chronology because the season starts in March and ends in December -- lots of tournaments and games -- too many to run like "chapters".

Peter

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewsho ... 3295&alb=0

[iknowwhereitis123 Profile Private message]

Bravo! You have some fabulous shots there! The show really caught the spirit of soccer. I had only planned on watching a few minutes of it to be honest but I watched every second of it. This is a show to be proud of. Two thumbs up!

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Greetings !! someone from my corner of the world (I'm just NE of Seattle).
Nice pictures - what lens were you using to get in that close ?
As far as the show goes, you had some great pictures, but the transitions
did not match the music (the music was appropriate, but the transitions
should be much faster to fit - you can time them to the beats of the music
too). I agree with your comments on the noise and ISO and have made
the same choice when I shoot my daughters team (I also got "elected").
One thing I have done when I create the DVD's for our team is put a
folder on the DVD called /EXTRAS and in there, I put all the original
pictures with the note to the parents that all the pictures are there and they
are free to use them any way they want.

Here is a link to another soccer show done by Michelle Funk that I though
turned out really well.
http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewsho ... 8871&alb=0

You have some great shots there, I liked the section where you did each girl
with her name and number. All in all, it has great potential, but the
show was too "smooth" for the music (and the type of sport). Great shots
considering the amount of good lighting we get up here in the Northwest !!

mikey

[plehmann Profile Private message]

iknowwhereitis -- thanks for the encouragement!

Mikey -- my lens is the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. I really like the lens but if I had more $$$ I would love to have a faster L lens. To get the tighter shots I shoot a ton of photos at 300 with a really wide open lens for speed. I cannot tell you how many shots went into the virtual dumper because the shallow depth of field misses the intended target or I miss the timing on the shots!

Regarding transitions, I am going to think about what you said. I did my timing without using the feature in Gold that lets you synch slides and transitions to the music because the feature did not seem all that user friendly. I will play around with it and try adjusting the timing of my transitions.

How do you place the folder and files on the DVD? Can you burn them on the DVD after you have burned the show onto it?

Peter

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Peter - I do understand what you are saying about discards -- remember I
shoot my daughters team (and son't team also in previous years). I typically
shoot 250 shots or so then discard 1/3 to 1/2 of them when I get home (back of
the head, focused on the distant tree - you know, the usual )
I also have a 70-300 lens for my Nikon, but they are invariably at the other
side of the field (we think the camera scares them away). There are a lot
of shots I keep that while not great shots, are nice and clear and I think the
parents of that girl might want them. They don't make it into the show, but
they are there for the parents to sort through if they feel like it.

As far as putting the pictures on the DVD in another folder, I'm not sure Gold
allows you to do that easily (producer does though). There are several
work arounds that I used to use when I had Gold a couple of years ago.
You can create an ISO file (which I always do anyway) then use something like
ISOBUSTER etc to add another folder to the disk with the pictures in it or, what
I used to do was write a DVD then simply open it on the computer, copy the
files in the VIDEO_TS folder back to my hard drive. Then using Nero, one
of the templates was for a "Video DVD" - select that template, copy the files
you saved on the hard drive from the VIDEO_TS folder to the VIDEO_TS folder
on the nero template, add your "/EXTRAS" folder to the template and copy
all the pictures into there (and anything else you want that lets you stay under
the size limit) then create a new ISO from that -- "showname_w_pix.iso" or
some such. You can then use that ISO to burn as many copies as you want
for the parents very easily. It is actually easier to do than it was to write.
Let me know if you have a problem.

mikey

[iknowwhereitis123 Profile Private message]

Yes Mikey, I am curious about that too.

Peter, Here is a show I did on my daughters cheer team, the pictures pretty much suck, but hey, I am no photographer. I know, I know, "too many transitions, to much pan and zoom", but I am a noob and that's what noobs do, so there! (we need a smiley of a tongue sticking out)

Actually I wanted a LOT of motion. These girls never stop moving! The songs are what they danced too. The second song is the competition song. The whole thing is only 4 minutes long.

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewsho ... 2839&alb=0


Sue

[plehmann Profile Private message]

Sue,

Did you create the cheer show in Gold or Producer? Some of the transitions were intriguing and looked like they were either "home made" or at least not in Gold's stock set of transitions.

I liked the show. I preferred the first half to the second overall. The second half shots went in and out quicker than I would have liked in that I wanted to look at some of the faces longer.

Peter

[iknowwhereitis123 Profile Private message]

I only have Gold. All of the transitions are in Gold. If you think you can describe the ones you mean, maybe I can help you find them. You may be talking about the one with the red background? If so there's no transition there, only layers.

It's funny, I liked the second show better. When she sent me the music, I thought, "Holy cow! You have to be kidding me!" But I just tried to keep the pace of it with the pics. It is way to fast for my taste, but then again....the music is too. Why do I suddenly feel as if I have turned into my grandma?

Sue