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04-27-2013, 11:24 PM   #1
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After-sunset video of softball game with 03 fish eye?

Haven't done it yet but the fish eye arrived today and that's the 2nd idea that popped into my head, right after - how the heck do you focus thing The other evening I used the Q+06 to take some well exposed and sharp video clips of my daughter's softball game. The 06 is so small that it easily fit through the chain-link fence of the field (the umpire was un-bribable that night and would not let any parents past the fence) so it was not hard to record some interesting action footage. But now that I have the fish eye, I am thinking to mount the Q on the fence, with the fish eye sticking through just a wee bit to the left or right of the home plate, so the umpire, plate, catcher, ball, and the pitcher are all visible. I wonder if the video could be any good, i.e. with at least the pitcher recognizable and such. I worry that the distance of the camera to the home plate would make everything appear so far away as to be unusable.. I would love to mount the camera on the umpire's hat but dream on.. I also wonder how I should set the focus in the mount-to-the-fence set up as I hear the 03 can be focused past infinity and should be kept at 3/4 of the scale to the far end for infinity focus. Has anyone tried this maybe?

04-28-2013, 09:13 PM   #2
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I find with the 03 the focus peaking function is very helpful.
Try it in the day first if you can so you can figure out the focus preset, and also give you an idea of how far away the other players will look.
I haven't tried any late night video myself, only evening photos with slower shutter speed.
Won't hurt to try it to see how it goes. You may want to be sure an errant softball doesn't smash your gear though.
04-29-2013, 12:21 AM   #3
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I will definitely give a good try. Good point about the errant softball danger, there are a lot of those flying around, although I'll admit that's one reason I am using the Q instead of more expensive gear. Will report back in a few days.
05-03-2013, 11:58 PM   #4
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I tried the set up during an evening practice. Placed the camera a bit to the right of the home plate, mounted to a metal fence pole, with the fish eye poking through the fence onto the field.

My impressions:

- the field of view is amazing, just right for reliving the game with your kid later
- the point of view (behind the umpire) is probably the most interesting one to take but the space between the fence and the umpire initially feels a lot like "wasted space" in the video
- watch out for the front element.. I scratched off some of the lens coating by accidentally touching the fence.. so far no effect on IQ that I can tell
- focusing is not trivial, especially once the video starts rolling; tried setting focus and then starting the video but the focus ring moves so easily, had to readjust focus while the video was recording, not an easy task even with good light
- the video quality, under artificial lighting only was OK for a family memory album but nothing close in IQ to what you can get with the 06 long zoom

Overall, the only major issue for me was focusing the lens under video conditions. The LCD just doesn't work that great for that purpose and using the marks on the lens is mostly guesswork, maybe it will get better with practice. I tried two different VF attachments, one a $100 one and the other a $30 unit and they would be great if only the glass did not introduce so much "pixelation" of the LCD image. I guess I need more practice with this lens.

05-04-2013, 01:21 AM   #5
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Thanks for the report. If you can maybe post a short segment of video so we can check it out, some folks may have suggestions.
05-06-2013, 07:43 AM   #6
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Well, it looks better on my pc screen.. I think exporting it after trimming changed the resolution a bit. Anyway, here is the
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