January Jam The Remote Project

January Jam “The Remote Project”

The January Jam is an annual Men’s Invitational Basketball Tournament hosted by Valley Center High School in Valley Center, Kansas. Bracket play is held on Thursday and Friday with fun competitions and the final games played on Saturday. One of the annual competitions held on Saturday morning is the Slam Dunk Contest.

Phil Zivnuska no stranger to this forum set up a remote camera for this event January 24th, 2009. Please be sure and check out his thread here.

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=635488

I have always wanted to setup a remote camera and this year I finally decided I would speak with the new AD at VCHS on the possibility of setting one up behind the backboard. I spoke with the AD well in advance of the event (first football game of the season) and I mentioned it a couple more time prior to the event. I must say he was very accommodating and was just as excited, as I was to do something different. I almost backed out of the deal, a couple of days before the event until he told me he had the janitors clean the glass for me so I then felt obligated to follow through with the project.

I arrived at the gym at 7:00 am Saturday morning to get started with the setup. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to set everything up and tinker with things before the competitions started.

The setup was pretty typical for any backboard remote. I used 3 Monfrotto Super Clamps, 2 Monfrotto Magic Arms, 2 safety cables fabricated from materials available at Home Depot. The safety cables are 3/32 in diameter with a vinyl coating around the outer diameter of the cable.

For the camera body I used my Canon 1D MKIV and the newest version of the Canon 16-35mm 2.8 lens. For triggering I used the PW Plus III attached to my 1D X with the 70-200mm 2.8 USM II IS. I thought this might help me with capturing the peak action vs. just guessing by holding the Pocket Wizard transmitter in my hand and firing blind.

The plan was to remove the remote camera after the Slam Dunk contest, but after discussion with the AD and permission from the coaches that had teams playing in the tournament we were fortunate enough to be able to leave the remote setup in place for the remainder of the games.

Note: Phil used his PW Plus II to fire the remote camera by hand during the last two games and in my opinion he did an excellent job in capturing peak action shooting basically shooting blind.

The setup worked relatively well for my first remote, however next time I will do a better job with the GOBO and will spend a little more effort with getting the focus a little further away from the rim and closer to where the contestants face would end up during the dunk. I also think getting the camera up a little higher and aiming it down a little more might produce better results.

I need to do some research, but I believe with the PW Plus III transceivers I can use the exact same setup, but use the relay mode to fire the remote camera and strobes from the hand held Pocket Wizard. If anyone has experience with this I would love to hear from you.

So all in all the remote camera was a lot of work, but it was fun and the images while not perfect I believe are a good start for a first time remote setup.

I would like to say one last thing. If you plan on trying something like this in the future, start building a good relationship with the AD and administration now. It sure makes things much easier in the end. Keeping a positive attitude is key and I can’t stress how important this simple task can be when working with event organizers.

I had a great time shooting with Phil and xochi2 everyone was running around doing their own thing. We all had to coordinate on who was shooting the remote camera who was shooting with strobes, who was shooting ambient. On top of all that there was another local that decided to setup strobes. This was the first time I had ever seen him setup strobes so we had to work around that a little and I am sure the three of us shooting together all had a few blown out images.

Anyway it was a great amount of fun and I am looking forward to more remote camera work.

Now on with a few images from the remote camera setup, Slam Dunk contest and through the glass remote camera shots from the last two games played Saturday evening.

1.

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Love the two dunk shots! And thanks for the set up shots. Do you know what they cleaned the glass with?

rdalrt,

I am not sure, but I will certainly ask the question at the next game. I appreciate you taking the time to look at the January Jam threads. This project was a lot of fun and it was exciting to finally see the images captured by the other two GWC's.

The focus looks to be off in all of these, unfortunately.

It appears that the focus is on the front of the rim. Maybe try focussing a little bit lower next time.

Mark, what were your camera settings for the 1D MkIV remote?

skier14 wrote in post #16685513
The focus looks to be off in all of these, unfortunately.

It appears that the focus is on the front of the rim. Maybe try focussing a little bit lower next time.

it looks like it was focused on the ring and not just below it ...oh well next I suppose

Really great start. Always some learning curve in something new but you have a great start. I'm sure the boys are stoked about these pictures.