What the Big Boys shoot with
 

I don't even know if this belongs here but it's a pretty cool video.

Don't know if it's been posted before but this guy has a great job.

Fenway HD Camera - Sony HDC-910 - Canon 75x on Vimeo

Garrett

Yeah, I bookmarked a while ago.. it's really neat stuff.

Just for fun, I priced out some of this gear... it can be yours for a cool couple hundred grand or so...

What was surprising to me is that the cam head sensor was still only 2/3". I guess I had assumed, for no real reason, that it would be bigger.

Tom (in the video) is running what's called a "hard" or studio camera. It's owned by the company that provided the production truck for the broadcast. He's making day rate to work the game (probably $400-500 - still a fun job though and it requires skill). And yes it's a 2/3 in chip camera since there aren't chips made any larger than that and 2/3 inch chips have been industry standard for many years.

So, I guess you haven't heard of RED, Sony F35 or Arri D20 or Panavision Genesis...

Those aren't standard cameras in the broadcast industry.

It shouldn't be surprising that it's 2/3". If it had a 35mm frame size then not only would his lens need to be twice the size, he would also have such a narrow depth of field on the long end that he could never pull focus.

Wow! that's what i call a zoom!

Sony HDC-910 Camera: $94,000
Canon 75x HD lens: $90,000
Cardboard and Tape Sunshade: Priceless

Those are Digital Cinema camera systems. Not what we're talking about here.

You see these everywhere nowadays. SNL, The Tonight Show, Sporting events, and maybe the Olympics.

They're much more scarce in Canada compared to the US. And some even skip Sony and go for Ikegami.

Around here (The Netherlands) Thomson Grass Valley camera's for use in multicam situations are quite popular as well, both SD and HD.

Very nice camera, and good explanation.

F35
 

I know I seen some Sony F35's at the China Olympics, but probably not for television broadcast.

hmm, seeing this makes me think it would be fun to do a similar "expose" of my shooting setup on a feature or TV show...

Interesting.............
 

The one thing he raved about is the one thing not mentioned by anyone........

The Vinten head!

Not the camera, nor the lens, spectacular tho' they are, but the head.

The other "did I miss that bit" - the OIS "on tripod" system.

The "Way to Go" if only one of the manufacturers can get their heads (er, yeah) 'round it.

Vinten are working on it, but currently only for this sort of high end end system, this their latest piece of genius:

Vinten | Vector 950 Active Pan and Tilt Head | www.vinten.com

No mistake, the first manufacturer to figure out how to connect this sort of system to any other manufacturers cameras/ lenses, at the consumer level, is going to clean up big time!

Back to the video - sounds like the job from hell to me, quite frankly.

Hate sport, hate humping big gear up stairs and hate being out in the elements - guess I'd be a shoe in then!

Interesting video nontheless, just goes to show what you can do with not a lot of time or resources.


CS

I'd pay my monthly internet bill to see that.

I'd like to see that as well, Charles.

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!

Wow- I would kill for that zoom range!

Chris, I realise my earlier post could have been worded better and I apologise if it looked like a put-down, that wasn't my intention.

My point is, they are all cameras that have chips larger than 2/3rds and there'll be a whole bunch more of them this time next year.

As for them being Digital Cinema camera systems, yes that's their prime usage, but the camera doesn't know what it's shooting and I think over the coming couple of years we will all get used to seeing web-movies, TV shows and pretty much everything else shot on cameras with sensors larger than 2/3rds" and yes, that will mean a lot of missed focus and over use of shallow DOF.

Technology has always been used for applications outside of its targeted use, who'd have guessed you'd see a time slice on live golf? But that's what they did. And didn't they used to shoot the NFL on 35mm?

Anyhow apologies if I came across as rude:)

Don't forget the one featured a couple of months back on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, during this installment of Lick It for Ten. I don't imagine it was worth quite two hundred thousand dollars after that.

Thanks for the link, Garrett, I hadn't seen this video before; "hard" cameras, he says? I'd always wondered what those things were called. It was fascinating to get some detail on the features and operation of such fancy schmancy equipment.

Charles, that makes me one more to add to the list of people who want to see you put together a similar fly-on-the-wall bit.

I think they shot on 16mm film when NFL films first got started (and for years after).