Which camera being used for Soccer World Cup in Germany?

[Karl Heiner]

Originally Posted by Stephan Ahonen

I take it you're referring to this shot: http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/...aid=189149&d=1

Notice his feet are sitting on the ground, he's just kicking himself around. The hands are too busy zooming and focusing to bother with yet another control.

One unusual thing I noticed is all these european camera operators have their lens controls backwards. All the camera ops I know control zoom with the right hand and focus with the left. I'm curious as to how the europeans came to do it their way, especially since on older lenses with crank-operated zoom (that's right, no servo zoom, just a big crank. You'd be suprised at how many trucks still don't have servo zooms, and a lot of operators prefer it that way!) the cables for the zoom and focus enter the lens in a way that you would need to awkwardly cross the cables over each other to do it the "european" way.

It also doesn't make sense because if you're running handheld you're pretty much are forced to zoom with your right hand and focus with your left, so if you switch between handheld and hard cameras a lot I can't imagine it would be very easy to adapt.

hello stephan, there was a close up shot during this morning soccer game, and the camera operator did moved the camera+seat motorized, and not with his feet.
which brings me back to my org question, how do they operate this, by hand/ foot?

greetings

[Stephan Ahonen]

It would have to be his feet, having to take a hand off of zoom or focus to move the chair around would be unacceptable.

[Karl Heiner]

i am actually suprised we're not having a camera operator here who would know.....wow

greetings

[Stephan Ahonen]

The camera operators who would know are probably too busy shooting the World Cup to come and post here. =D

All I know is I've been shooting professional sports for quite a while now and I've never seen one of those.

[Joe Lawry]

All the turrets that i've seen in use when working at rugby games here in NZ are controlled by the operators feet... so im guessing those would be the same. The operators need full control over where their glass is pointing so having something that was mechanical and could break down would be far to unreliable i'd say.

[Karl Heiner]

just found this picture.

http://img.stern.de/_content/56/55/5...li_ddp_500.jpg

http://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/unter...es/565547.html

did email espn, several times, but they do not answer.

greetings

[Karl Heiner]

here is an other one

http://www.morgenpost.de/images/2006...63_scaleUp.jpg

greetings