Any thoughts on using digital video to get great sports screen captures?

Alaskan Rover

My forte, if you will, has always been single-shot photography...trying to capture the essence of both the light and the moment with some fluidity.

With sports, that has always been more difficult, and becomes more of a game of chance than anything. I've had my camera set-up just the right way often, and yet had missed that great sports shot by not being fast enough on the trigger.

I can't help noticing that the new high-quality digital video cameras are getting better and better and yet at the same time cheaper and cheaper...so much so that they are now in the realm of affordability of 'regular' folk. One would've had to have paid $45,000 to get the same quality digital video that one can now get for an affordable price. Screen shots from these videos have in turn gotten crisper and higher quality.

So I am wondering: Is it "cheating" to use screen shots from high-end video in sports photography? I realize that a high-end digital SLR camera/lens will still give an overall better image...but what's the point if you miss the shot??

Heretofore, I've been a die-hard traditionalist when it comes to photography...but I am certainly willing to step outside that subset if it means that I can capture more great sports moments.

What's your take?

Alaskan Rover

Bump....

As there are some sales of fairly decent video equipment going on now through the end of August, I am trying to find if anyone has had any luck with getting fairly photographically decent frame-captures in action sports photography WITHOUT going for a top-line, high-brow $50,000 digital video. If I had that kind of money to spend, I'd buy a decent Austin-Healy Mk 3000 roadster, instead...or a 'runner' 1963 Jaguar E-Type roadster.

Just wondering if anybody has found any 'moderately'-priced video camera that works decently for sports frame-captures.

beetle8

My opinion would be that you will have less than desireable results.

The first issue would be shutter speed, if you are thinking 5D or 7D or the like you'll have control over shutter speed but I'm not sure even with those how fast they will allow you to set the shutter speed. Assuming you are shooting at 60fps traditionally for video reasons you'd want to be at 1/125 SS I know you can bump higher than that with the 7D I'm just not sure if there is a limit. If you are refering to a camera where you won't have control over the shutter speed during recording than it's safe to assume that the camera will stick with the 180 shutter rule and at 60 fps your shutter speed will be around 1/125, and at 30fps 1/60. Now if you try to pull a still of an action sport out of that you will undoubtedly be looking at a lot of motion blur. No biggie when it comes to video because you don't notice it, and you may get some great results if panning with a perpendicular subject. But not so desireable for most other shots.

There will be the issue of resolution, if you are shooting 1080p that gives you a 2mp image for a still, if you don't need to do any editing or cropping than you may be able to pull a decent 8x10 out of that. I would imagine that the particular cameras compression habits and codec will also affect this.

I did recently hear that Canon is trying to tackle this very thing though, so maybe wait it out. As technology excelerates things we scoffed at years ago are happening today.

My personal opinion would be that the person who takes their time to practice photography and dial in their timing is going to get a better shot 99% of the time, over trying to pull a still out of video.

Alaskan Rover

Thanks, Beetle8!

My thoughts pretty much concur with yours...that the real "art" of action photography is settingv up the shot. I also like the feeling of success when luck, some experience, decent equipment, and some more luck all meet at the same place resulting in that 'once in a life-time' sports shot. Sorta like getting a hole-in-one.

So I guess, while video imaging will continue to improve, and there WILL come a day when a screen capture might be indistinguishable from a SLR shot, the integrity and dare I say honesty of sports photography will continue to depend less upon equipment, and more upon one's intuition, luck, and experience....and that is EXACTLY the way it should be.

But, boy...sometime in the future when new vid technology comes to the fore, it sure would be tempting to frame-by-frame a whole game's footage looking for that 'perfect shot' screen-capture. If tech DOES happen to lead that way, I can't automatically say I won't be tempted by that fruit!

beetle8

I didn't mention luck once, if you feel you're going to need to rely on that much luck you may be better off sitting through 2 hours of video capture to pull out your choice stills.

I checked my 7d and it appears as though you may be able to capture video with a shutter speed up to 1/4000 of a second, this will obviously result in horrible video viewing but the higher SS will reduce the motion blur.