ELi5 How a cameraman at a sports event able to track a fast moving ball with such a great focus on it?
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I’ve worked as a camera man for both sports and other forms of TV and Film. One thing I can say, is a good director in the production truck will cover a lot of mistakes made by camera men, and even the best camera men aren’t shooting things perfectly for an entire event, which is fine, because the the director of the broadcast should only be taking a shot if it’s good, and they’ll get off of a a shot and back to something more generic if the camera guy loses the action.
As for focus, the lenses on a sports broadcast camera, and a lens on a camera used in film are very different.
The broadcast camera is usually a zoom lens, and the more you zoom out, the longer your focal range gets, which means everything in that range will look in focus, and once you’ve got focus for the area you’re covering, and your camera is locked down in one spot, you’re not going to be adjusting for focus a whole lot.
In some sports, like Hockey, when you’re controlling the hard camera that’s locked on a wide shot above center ice, and the puck is moving around real fast, the first few minutes of it, you’re gonna be pretty stressed trying to follow the puck, but after a few minutes you’re gonna start learning to read the actions of the players, and you shoot accordingly.
For the cameras at ice level with tighter shots shooting one specific area of the ice, honestly, you’re gonna follow the action just like everyone else, but the the broadcast isn’t going to use your shot unless you’ve actually got something good in your zone anyway.
There are also tools, like inverting the black and white on your viewfinder that will help in some sports, so rather than following a small black dot, you’re following a bright white dot, or vice versa.
Worked with people who make NFL TV programmes, the cameras they were using 4 years ago were 4k cameras. The camera operator has a screen with a mark which shows the centre of the frame – operator just has to keep the ball in the cross.
There’s an additional rectangle with dotted lines which shows the 10% border of the HD image, The operator tries to keep the ball in that box.
There’s another operator who can move the actual HD box if that’s needed too.
The actual lenses will have image stabilisation features that ensure the image is focused as the camera tracks the action
Cameraman here.
For soccer, it really comes from practice, I can’t explain it otherwise.
Your first attempts will be awful, but with time you’ll learn to know what’s gonna happen a split second before it actually happens.
You can’t see the ball in the viewfinder, but you can recognize patterns and postures the player adopt when playing the ball.
A good trick is to stay wide when you’re still working, and leave the details to the other colleagues who will have one task at a time.
A whole lot of skill and practice. Those camera operators are some of the best in the business and are amazing to watch at work.
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