Epic-X for football highlights

[John Snelson]

Hey everyone,

I will have a Red Epic with Canon mount this year for shooting football highlights from the sidelines. Here is my thought on setup without having much knowledge of the Epic so far.

Canon 70-200mm lens with follow focus on a monopod. (tripods are not allowed on the sidelines)
Shoot 4K (will get me a little closer to the action via crop) resolution at 120 fps
90 degree shutter angle? (Im not sure on this but prefer the crisp look rather than having motion blur)
I should be okay in avoiding slow motion flicker as long as I am 120 fps and below correct?

Also, storage will be a challenge during a 4 hour football game. What compression will be optimal for me considering I will probably need to offload at halftime (or quarters?)

Any advice for me is much appreciated. Cannot wait to use Epic this football season.

 

[Andrew Gentle]

Why not shoot 2K and save the mag space instead of cropping down on 4K? The result will be identical and you can bump up your frame rate if you want slower stuff.

Also, flicker will be more related to your exposure time. 90 degrees at 120 fps will be 1/480 s exposure time. That could cause flicker, I would recommend testing it with the same lighting before you need to rely on it.

 

[BigLu]

Hi John
FOOTBALL, its one of the best things i love to shoot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqOxpm7nfhs

I choose RC between 10 to 1 and 12 to 1
Frame rates always high between 60fps and 96fps sometimes 200 and around there.
Shutters 90 and upwards of 240 for sharper images.
5K HD as often as possible due to being able to re frame, following the players and or ball loosely allows for fixing the frame and stabilization, i love this capability.

I run with a 24-70 canon and 100-400 canon.
If you are in SoCal id be happy to run the field with you one day.

Best of luck in your shooting and if theres anything i can do to help let me know.

Luis

 

[David Battistella]

Hi josh,

Welcome to reduser!

big considerations for you.

1. You need More media to capture slow motion because you are capturing five times more data per second at 120fps.
2. With fast drives and verified backups a 64gb card takes up to 40 minutes to back up.
3. Do the math. 1x 64gb card gets you about 15 minutes at 8:1 4k so at 5x speed you will get about three minutes of the first quarter on the first card.

If I was going into you shoot I would most likely consider

-a slower nikon 18-300 zoom, because you need that kind of rage for what you are filming. Most stadiums will be bright enough at night but you loose 1 stop of light with each off speed.

48fps -1 stop
72fps -2 stops
96fps -3 stops
120fps-4 stops

personally, I think if you are going for that NFL films look you never have to go past 72fps, and 120 might be too slow and eat too much light. Ideally you want to stay at an fstop of about 8 in order to get the dot needed to cover the high speed action. At 120fps at 2.8 or less it will be a challenge to keep sharp focus on this sized sensor.

About 10-20 64 gb cards. You will eat through media in this kind of scenario. Minimum maybe 4x64 and a 128 as the last resort.

Consider 2 copy stations instead of one.

you be shooting much faster than you can cycle.

Hire an assistant to run cards and manage the data.

Get a bomb evf or some kind of viewfinder equivalent.


Good luck with your filming. I love football,I know this should be great fun for you.

David

 

[Eric Santiago]

Hi John
FOOTBALL, its one of the best things i love to shoot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqOxpm7nfhs

Nice work BigLu

Have you ever used a 70-200?

Curious as to how that fares against 100-400.

 

[BigLu]

Davids info and breakdown is absolutely fantastic.

If it helps I have averaged 530 - 600+ GB of footage per game.
I walk around with 5 x 128gb SSD cards. Downloading 2 cards at half time. I didnt make backups I just didnt erase my cards till i got home and made backups.
This year my goal is to roll with only 1 512 card and 1 128 card.

Eric Yes i have used and own the 70-200 IS 2. " my favorite lens for most shooting " I do not receive too many flares with my longer lenses.
Likely due to angle of lights in the background up too high.
I prefer my 70-200 for a few reasons. I like the image better and under the right conditions i can push 2.8 and get some very nice shots.
However the additional 200mm the 400 zoom gives me, far outweighs in value of the shots being able to get up close on the players faces for those personal shots of seeing whom they are in that mask.

Thats how i get closeups from the sidelines.
They are kinda far away.

Thanks

 

[Jamie_Guy]

Hello Everyone, thanks for the feedback. I work with John at Colorado. We are super excited about the Epic. As far as Cards go we will be getting 2 - 256gb Red Mags. We are also considering and Canon Lens extender for the 70-200 glass. Any issues with the 2x extender vIII and the Epic? I thought I had seen Tom Lowe use that sometimes, maybe the version II?

We want to have the best footage we can that is why we want to shoot at 4k, plus all of the flexibility that comes with it, no need to explain that here

Nice work BigLu.

 

[Eric Haase]

Why not shoot 2K and save the mag space instead of cropping down on 4K? The result will be identical and you can bump up your frame rate if you want slower stuff.

.

Do not shoot 2K. friends don't let friends shoot 2k. It will be considerably softer than 4K, even when scaled down to 1080. Shooting 2K is just cropping in on the sensor. You will see less definition and more apparent noise.

 

[John Snelson]

Thanks for the responses. I believe I will shoot 4K HD at 96 fps during games. I will just need to find a shutter angle that is flicker free, but still sharp enough.

 

[Marcello Altieri]

You can decide the shutter angle few minutes before just testing it out and playing back...you should notice when the picture is flickering! 3k is still acceptable but 2k is softer then my iPad camera...