On Assignment

Yes it is Christmas Eve and I’m flying with Santa again on my way home to the padres in the 503. 

Since I have to wait for my now 40 mins delayed flight out of the ever inefficient ORD, I thought I’d throw up some festive Red Wings hockey shots from last night.

Santa girls

Datsyuk celebrates his goal in the second

My fav Red Wing trying to score

Also of interest from last night’s game was my education upon how SI got their Red Wings playoff shots from a seemingly impossible angle:

SI did this shot from a really cool angle

It seems those crafty, and influential, photogs from SI got the Joe Louis Arena management to cut a hole in the Zamboni door to the ice rink, slap a piece of glass over the hole, and that’s how the above photo was taken, with a remotely mounted camera:

Cut hole, install glass, perfect mount location!

So simple, yet so utterly exclusive because only SI could get something like that done… i’m hoping maybe i can get access to that some day to try a few shots.

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So, I finally got a remote trigger cable for my Canon G10 this week and thought i’d try it at basketball… mounted somewhere!

Not much to it other than hooking up the trigger cable (PocketWizard CM-E3-P Pre-Trigger Motor Cord), plugging the cable into a PocketWizard receiver, and taping the thing up on the post! Yep, just a couple pieces of gaffer’s tape held that thing up nicely. No clamps or nothing…

I set the G10 on fully manual, turned off the flash, continuous drive, and the autofocus on normally. I set the review time to 0, and turned off the LCD live-view display to save battery power. Camera set to ISO 1600, f/2.8 fully wide, and 1/500 speed.

Results?

• Response may be too slow to catch peak action… though that could probably be trained with practice.
• Image quality at ISO 1600 is pretty bad. I couldn’t send any of them to AP… (click on one of these below to see larger version). This makes sense since point-and-shoots like these, even at 14mpx are still built around tiny CMOS sensors that really couldn’t be pushed very far… i’ll try it with a much lower ISO next time… although that may make it impossible for me to shoot indoor sports with this setup.
• Field of view however is excellent and i think the autofocus was okay.

Scott Gavin was curious enough to get a closer look

Not so great quality-wise

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With no home Michigan football game last Saturday, I was able to attend for the first time Michigan’s high school state cross country finals, held annually at Michigan International Speedway. It was my first time at MIS and I definitely caught the NASCAR bug (not as a fan–but as a photog).

Stephen Walker of Midland Dow sprints towards the finish line to claim first place, Saturday, November 1, 2008 during the Division 1 State Boys Cross Country Finals, at Michigan International Speedway, in Brooklyn, Mich. TONY DING/Special to the Free Press

Rochester’s Megan Goethals crosses the finish line first in the Division 1 Finals.

Runners sprint towards the finish in the Division 2 Boys Finals

Megan Goethals of Rochester leads Shannon Osika of Waterford Mott and third place finisher Rebecca Addison of Grand Haven into the final stretch of their Division 1 Finals.

Shannon Osika of Waterford Mott finishes second in Division 1.

Runners sprint towards the finish line in front of the MIS grandstands in the Division 1 Boys Finals.

The photogs were trucked around in two 15-person transport vans from the woods back to the finish-line. We took to the banked curves (opposite NASCAR direction) 8 times…topping 80ish mph…

Jackson Citizen-Patriot photographer Erik Holladay, left, and my other van-mates hang on for dear life…

We never did make a move on that first van…

I got tired of shooting from the ground, so i snuck up to the (very high) press box above MIS.

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Just a quick update that the second part of my photoshoot with Andy has now been uploaded to my online magazine: misterding.com

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So I recently cleaned out the empty room in my basement and built a bare-bones (and dirty cheap) home studio. The walls were already white, the floor is a nice dull painted concrete surface, and there are lots of power plugs on every side of the wall. Only downside is the relatively low ceiling, 7 ft, so I know I’m going to be limited to small projects…

To try it out, my buddy Andrés Cacciamani (who’s a natural talent) graciously agreed to model and help me stretch the new studio’s muscles…no pun intended =p.

Look out for a full gallery feature of Andy’s talents soon on my other little site: MISTERDING.COM

(more…)

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