Hello,

I am a still photographer and I shoot a great deal of tennis, 90% of it vertically.

I am shooting videos for short clips on the web for an instructional tennis site.

Forgive my ignorance, but has anyone had any experience shooting DV vertically. Obviously playblack will be a consideration, but I "should" be able to tailor my playback frame (e.g. Quick Time or Flash) to match the "portrait" mode.

I have a great deal of wasted horizontal space to get full body shots of players, particularly on the serve, which will have a contact point of between 9 & 10 feet.

This would allow me to shoot a lot tighter, as all I want to portray is the player.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Regards, Alan Van Vliet

Hi,
I think the easy way how to eliminate the vertical problems is shooting it without movements with the best conditions and than make the movements you wanted in cutting software .. Of course you will have to do it with "zoom" tools that make your pictures lower quality, but for the WEB publication it still good...

that is just idea... :)

If you can rotate the image in flash and play a "portrait" oriented image, you should be able to crop a normally filmed "landscape" oriented image to a portrait oriented one, eliminating horizontal space and thus (as I presume is your goal) end up with smaller files. The resolution of the XL1S will be more than sufficient for the web, even when you crop the image to 1/3 of its original size.

Guys,

Thanks for your thoughts. I have been experimenting with the sizing of the Quick Time Player, and just by swapping the dimensions it shows me the type of crop that I am looking for.

The only problem is the QT Player controls get cropped as well. Got to work on that one.

I'll do the same with the editing software so I can reduce the file size as well.

I'll post when I get some results.

Thanks again for your ideas.

Regards, AL