Paul R Johnson |
June 29th, 2009 02:53 PM |
The outside broadcast boys deserve credit they never get. I've done a few OBs, when they were short and somebody recommended me - but most of my work is indoors. What really impressed me is the way these chaps can do golf and cricket (and I guess this applies to baseball too) and follow the tiny balls in the air. Even with the superb Vinten heads, the skill to do that is impressive. Next time you are out and about try to follow a ball like they do. I know nothing about baseball - it looks like our childrens rounders - but in cricket and baseball, somebody launches a ball at somebody else with a bat, and it goes ...... anywhere! predicting which way it will go and not letting it drop out of shot is amazing.
They do have things like shot boxes, so they can always repeat a zoom setting by pressing a button, but keeping that tiny moving ball in shot is really, really difficult. Although I'm used to box type lenses, I'm rubbish at it. I do do some sport fairly regularly, but I usually end up on the touchline at football matches (soccer) with a conventional size camera, and that tends to spend most time on wide angles, rather than being up in the stands with a big lens. The big problem is that nobody has time nowadays to give you time to practice, so they tend to look at my name, and assign me work they know I can do, not what I might be able to do.
I really want to be the bloke on the big cherry picker at the golf!
|