Hasta La Ideas

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/2010/06/0skycam01.jpg” width=”468″ height=”763″ alt=”0skycam01.jpg”//div

pThe overhead A HREF=”http://www.skycam.tv/folders.asp?action=displayrecord=1″ Skycam/A is a technology widely used in sporting events, and the first time I saw one of the dizzying overhead angles capturing an American football game, I assumed they used something like a scaled-up version of the ceiling track systems used by high-end photography studios (examples below). I marveled at the imagined size of the unseen girders that would be necessary./p

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/2010/06/0skycam02.jpg” width=”468″ height=”671″ alt=”0skycam02.jpg”//div

pTurns out I was completely wrong, of course. Skycam works via a far more clever system./p

pFour tower supports are erected at the four corners of the sports venue. Connected to each of these towers is a powerful CNC winch, each in turn connected to a cable that stretches out to the center of the field. The four cables meet and connect at the camera, which weighs in the neighborhood of just 30 pounds. The cables stretching from the tower tops to the camera are not pulled horizontally taut; the camera hangs down, with the cables heading up and away from it at an angle. Additionally, each cable features an integrated fiber-optic cable which carries the camera’s HD signal back to a control room./p

pTo move the camera in a particular direction–say, due north–the northernmost winches pull their cables in, while the southernmost winches spool their cables out. To move the camera vertically up, all of the cables are spooled in. Vice-versa to let the camera drop./p

pBy simultaneously spooling and unspooling each of the four cables simultaneously, the camera pilot can get motion in any direction on all three axes, at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. The CNC does the math; the pilot, working in a control room, sets the boundaries the camera can move within (thus keeping it out of the ball’s way during certain plays where it’s likely to pop up, for instance) and guides the motion. A second person acts as the camera operator, aiming the lense and controlling the zoom so the pilot can concentrate on flying.br /
/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/design_technology_and_televised_sports_part_2_skycam_gets_fans_high_16780.asp”(more…)/a
pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fdmfZDhDOF-uvGEqlt9j61QJnFE/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fdmfZDhDOF-uvGEqlt9j61QJnFE/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/
a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fdmfZDhDOF-uvGEqlt9j61QJnFE/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/fdmfZDhDOF-uvGEqlt9j61QJnFE/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/p