Sporting Event Photography

PrimaryCanary

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Dear Forum,

I recently was hired to professionally cover my first sporting event. It was a high school district wrestling tournament (for those of you not familiar, this is an event where every school assigned to a "district" bring their wrestler's to compete against each other to determine who is "best" in his/her respective weight class). There were 10 schools all together and well over 200 wrestlers. I did my best to prepare for the event. I invested in a Mitsubishi dye-sub printer that made 5x7 prints on the spot, I had a monitor to display a slide show of the images I had captured throughout the day, I had my marketing set-up, including business cards, sample prints, flyers, etc. All in all, I think everything went smooth for this being my first big event.

Some background:
I shoot with Canon equipment (EOS 20D is my main body)

Now my questions are these:

1.) Is there any good software out there (isn't this a silly question?) that will produce slide shows for RAW images? I used Bridge CS3, but it started crapping out on me when I had 1,000 images rolling. I shoot in RAW due to lighting restraints, I use a 580 EX II flash, but sometimes the images need slight tweaking due to indoor lighting problems. If I shoot in jpg I loose a lot of leeway. I can't easily convert to jpg on the fly because there are 125-200 shots coming in at a time. That'd take way too long to convert.

2.) Does anyone else shoot events and offer prints on the spot? Would you be willing to share your setup details with me? I had one monitor displaying a slide show because my laptop can only use 2 screens simultaneously. This seemed to work until the slide show took well over a 1/2 hour to complete. Parents would be watching and "oooo-ing and ahhhhing" and then either the mom or father would walk up and the other would say "You just missed it, so and so was just on there" and they would have to wait for it to loop. Does anyone know of a way to run more than 1 monitor from a laptop? Say perhaps 5 or 6 each displaying it's own slide show (ie. monitor 1 would be at image 1, monitor 2 on image 80, monitor 3 on image 150, etc)

3.) Has anyone dabbled with the WFT-E2 wireless transmitter for Canon? Will it work with my 20D? and if so, is it worth it?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Primary Canary
 
Here's a bit...

1) Adobe Lightroom - reads RAW amazingly, and no converting, and is EXCELLENT for displaying pictures on the spot.

2) I sell photos on the spot, but have had the same problem you've had. Maybe you could get 2 computers, and hook them up to a Network Storage drive...you can buy a hard drive that has an ethernet connection...put your photos on there, and then both computers can access the pictures. So, you could have LightRoom on PC 1 displaying a slideshow with an overlay of the Filename (IMG_2385) - which LR can do automatically :). That would be hooked up to a VGA port replicator, shipping the signal to multiple monitors. Oooohing and aaaahing could take place, and purchasers could write downt he image numbers as they see the photos scroll across...then they'd just fill out a form that has their info, and what IMG numbers they want to purchase.

Then on PC 2 you would be able to access and print those images.

3) The WFT-e2 only hooks up to a couple of 1D models... it won't work on your 20D. With a 40D, you could get the WFT-E3A.
 
I think the only advice i could give is to check out The Strobist for some tips on improving your location lighting. I know he has a whole section on shooting basketball and with some modifications that could be used for wrestling. I guess the only problem might be using fixed overhead lighting with multiple wrestling mats and chancing locations all the time but it is worth a look. Here's the link http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/ you will have to do some digging to find the basketball lesson. Also I used to do this with another guy who had a franchise from Kodak. Kodak provided all the software and printer and I am not sure what all else but htis might be an avenue to see if you can find the display software he used. Also he would print sheets of smaller sized images of the players and use them fir purchase of small items and for identification of the players and order larger prints later.
 
If you want to have all those programs open and be able to display on 6 screens your going to have a very very very good computer, it probably just quit out on you because it was handling so many things and changing programs probably wont make up for any lack of power on the computer side.
 
If you want to have all those programs open and be able to display on 6 screens your going to have a very very very good computer, it probably just quit out on you because it was handling so many things and changing programs probably wont make up for any lack of power on the computer side.

I don't think you're going to have this problem.

Most computers nowadays can handle LR just fine. Also, running 6 monitors displaying the same thing won't require any more power from the computer than running 1 monitor. Use a VGA splitter box (you can get an 8-port for less than $80 now) to take signal from the computer, and multiply it to 8 ports.
 

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