Capturing car photos at check-in

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Jeff Piazza
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Capturing car photos at check-in

Post by Jeff Piazza »

We just had our pack race on Saturday. One new thing we tried this year was having a photo stand and getting pictures of each of the cars as they checked in.

Two desk lamps, a tripod, and an ordinary digital camera yielded good results. We had pre-printed tags with the boys' names, rank, and car number, and included the tag in the picture for identification. (The tag then accompanied the car in the impound area, and really helped cut down the amount of time it took to locate the cars for each heat.)

The pictures were transferred to a laptop with a projector. We ran a slideshow through the whole event, right next to the station where the People's Choice ballots were being collected.

Here's an example photo, showing this year's pack champion (ahem).


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PWD_addict
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Re: Capturing car photos at check-in

Post by PWD_addict »

Nice idea. Nice pic. Oh, and congrats on the Pack Championship!!!
mbb
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Re: Capturing car photos at check-in

Post by mbb »

Is that sticker on top the car #? If so I congratulate you for using your head. The mentally challenged that run our derby insist on putting the stickers on the bottom for some insane reason. It makes finding cars, and setting them up on the track correctly very confusing.

Of course I am a proponent that ONLY the boy should ever touch his car to race it, then you go by name and little stickers arent needed.

The pack uses boy scouts to do it sometimes, and I have witnessed cars dropped, even if only a few inches while setting and replacing them, and seen wheels spun by the boy scouts, etc. I have even heard of malicious intent to spin graphite out of wheels of a kid someone didnt like.
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Darin McGrew
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Re: Capturing car photos at check-in

Post by Darin McGrew »

mbb wrote:The mentally challenged that run our derby insist on putting the stickers on the bottom for some insane reason.
Well, one advantage of putting the stickers on the bottom of the car is that the stickers are more likely to stick. We try to put the stickers on the top front of the cars, but some designs use materials that the stickers won't stick to. Our backup plan (usually after the sticker falls off during the race :-)) is to put the car's number on the bottom.
Jeff Piazza
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Re: Capturing car photos at check-in

Post by Jeff Piazza »

Our process this year was stickers on both top and bottom, the latter mainly to help identify the car in case the top sticker were to fall off. None did, but we'd have just affixed a new top sticker if one had.

I tried to arrange the process so that the car got a tag, then photographed, then stickered, for a slightly better picture, but I didn't have quite enough hands or a long enough table for all those stations.
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