Interactive Forum July 2023 Jannik Sinner Serve

[jimlosaltos]

Here are a pair of still photos that might add. I've posted at least one of these before, but hope they're helpful here.
These are from different serves, not the one in the video.

Look at the knee bend. Guy is 6 ft 4 in or so and the bottom of his knee cap is just about the top of his sock, what, 10- 12 inches off the ground?

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And here is the moment of impact. Jannik is fully rotated and ball is well to his left of his head -- even more so than in the serve in the video.

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[jimlosaltos]

Jim - how many frames a second is that? It's spectacular!

Jeffrey, at the risk of providing more than you're interested in, it was shot at 120 fps. But this was still photography, which I converted into video afterwards, so it's not exactly analogous.

I was experimenting with this format when I did this and some of the prior videos of Sabalenka and Medvedev. I normally don't just hold the button down and try to capture something, derisively called "spray and pray" or "press and spray". But my then-new camera is so darned good at it, so I'm testing what that's useful for.

The other "conventional" videos I shot of Sabalenka and Medvedev were shot at 4k/ 120 fps. When played back at 20 fps, it then slows down the action 6x.

With this video made from still images, I first edited the images for color, sharpness, exposure in Lightroom, then imported them to a video editor, Final Cut Pro X. There I set the "duration" that each picture is played subjectively. Long-winded but the point is I don't know exactly how much it was slowed down. I'd guess about 10-12X? So, it is more like shooting video at 200-250 fps in terms of how much the action is slowed down.

Among several differences for anyone that actually read this far: With video, one normally doesn't use shutter speeds of more than twice, the frame rate. So, 120 fps video is shot at 1/250th of a second shutter speed. Using a higher shutter speed to stop the action, results in a jerky image. With video, one usually wants a smooth, "cinematic look" that we're trained to expect. But these stills were shot at 1/2500 th of a second to freeze the action, contributing to the "stop action" look.

Seems to work for tennis with an audience that wants to see the details of a stroke. But it is a lot more work.

P.S. I also used a camera feature called "pre-capture". The camera buffers images as you hold down the shutter button. I tried to capture the moment of impact, as I might with an individual shot. When I pressed the shutter button anticipating the racket hitting the ball, the camera saved that image plus the prior 1/2 second of shots and kept taking them until I lifted my finger. Gets the moment of impact, plus shots before and after.

Sorry you asked ?

[jimlosaltos]

Jim - how many frames a second is that? It's spectacular!

Thanks a lot! Appreciate it.

More tomorrow when I'm on a real keyboard, but short version 120 frames per second. BUT those frames were shot as still images, which requires explanation. To come.

But I think it provides some good insight into Jannik's serve.

[jeffreycounts]

Jim - how many frames a second is that? It's spectacular!

[johnyandell]

Interactive Forum July 2023 Jannik Sinner Serve

Here is a gorgeous frame by frame slow motion clip of Jannik Sinner’s first serve created by Jim Fawcette. Notice the platform stance, the timing of the racket on the windup, the deep knee bend, the timing of the racket entry into the backswing, the contact point, and the full rotation of the hand arm and racket in the followthrough.

No wonder it’s a great serve! But what else do you see?

[mp4t]https://www.tennisplayer.net/members/forum/2023/July_SinnerServeDeuce_IW23.mp4[/mp4t]