tbcass
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I never pay any attention to the types and brands of cameras used at sporting events. I have better things to do like watching the game.
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Superbowl. Few mirrorless seen, but more video cameras than ever
- Thread starter LoneTree1
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But nobody is using such antiques for cutting edge professional sports photography, so what is your point? (And in fact, Canon EF mount lenses have never used screw-drive.)
On the other hand, sport photographers are using things like the 800/5.6, 200-400/4 and 200/2 SLR lenses that Canon and Nikon offer and that, so far, no mirrorless system offers (except via adaptors) and Sony does not offer any of those options in either of its lens-mounts.
It is not that the market for still is dying, those examples are of the demand for magazines dying.read the thread title: "Superbowl. Few mirrorless seen, but more video cameras than ever"Point being?the video cameras were far bigger in both size and cost than the dslrs, including three 8K Sony UHC-8300's that retailed for about $500,000 each when they were first released.Yikes....Gigapixel to the rescue: https://gigapixel.panoramas.com/superbowl/2020/
Lots of Canon...lots and lots of Canon. (But why should this event be any different from others?)
Yeah, tons of Canon, some Nikon, and not a single Sony I could see. I may have missed one, but damn, those big honkin' DSLRs totally dominate.
i quit counting at:
video: 61, with a lot more cameras above the field.
stills: 72
the sports magazine industry cratered a long time ago, it's a video world, and sony owned pro video at the 2020 super bowl... of course video is all mirrorless.
canon showed up some glass, tho.
per that thread title, i stated: "the sports magazine industry cratered a long time ago, it's a video world... of course video is all mirrorless"
the sports market for stills is dying, does it really matter how many dslrs were there?
"MEDIA 01/23/2015 01:20 pm ET Updated Jan 23, 2015
Sports Illustrated Lays Off Entire Photography Department" https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sports-illustrated-photographers-lay-offs-magazine_n_6533142
"There’s more bad news in the photojournalism industry today: Sports Illustrated has laid off Director of Photography Brad Smith, Photo Editor Claire Bourgeois, and Photo Director John Blackmar. This comes almost exactly 1 year after the magazine laid off its entire roster of staff photographers." https://petapixel.com/2016/01/16/sports-illustrated-lays-off-3-top-photo-heads/
So, it's your contention that a strong broadcast television presence is evidence that television is thriving while still photography is dying. More than 5,000 press credentials were issued for the Super Bowl. Hundreds of professional photographers worked the build up to the game, throughout the week, and the game itself. Having what appears to be a large contingent of professionals working one event, is not a sign that profession is growing. By that standard, both television and still photography should be seen as booming career paths. Nothing could be further from the truth.read the thread title: "Superbowl. Few mirrorless seen, but more video cameras than ever"Point being?the video cameras were far bigger in both size and cost than the dslrs, including three 8K Sony UHC-8300's that retailed for about $500,000 each when they were first released.Yikes....Gigapixel to the rescue: https://gigapixel.panoramas.com/superbowl/2020/
Lots of Canon...lots and lots of Canon. (But why should this event be any different from others?)
Yeah, tons of Canon, some Nikon, and not a single Sony I could see. I may have missed one, but damn, those big honkin' DSLRs totally dominate.
i quit counting at:
video: 61, with a lot more cameras above the field.
stills: 72
the sports magazine industry cratered a long time ago, it's a video world, and sony owned pro video at the 2020 super bowl... of course video is all mirrorless.
canon showed up some glass, tho.
per that thread title, i stated: "the sports magazine industry cratered a long time ago, it's a video world... of course video is all mirrorless"
the sports market for stills is dying, does it really matter how many dslrs were there?
The National Football League is the most financially successful sports league in the US. But even the NFL is showing signs of vulnerability. In contrast to just about every other genre of television programming, viewership of NFL games on broadcast and cable channels was up 5% from the 2018-19 season. Viewership on online platforms was up 51% from the previous season. On one level, the significant growth of online viewership is a positive. But it also reveals new challenges.
As more and more sports fans cut the cable, the NFL and other sports leagues face the challenge of monetizing OTT platforms to replace lost television ad revenues. One approach is to reduce the cost of producing live, televised coverage of games. The traditional method is to bring a small army of men and women to the venue where an event is being held, run cable, setup equipment, televise the game, strike the setup and send the crew on to their next assignment. That's how it's been done for decades.
The current trend is toward centralized broadcast suites from which equipment can be remotely controlled and operated over Gigabit networks. An entire crew can work in a suite in NYC to control cameras, run replays and generate graphics for games in Dallas or even London. You can even have the announce team in NYC. This saves on the cost of transporting entire crews from stadium to stadium, the cost of feeding them and providing hotel accommodations. It also creates to the potential for a really good replay operator to work not just the Sunday primetime game in Dallas but also the Monday Night game in London featuring the defending Super Bowl champions.
It would be naive to think broadcast and cable television are immune to the impacts of an entire generation discarding traditional news and entertainment content platforms while embracing the on-demand, user-generated content of the interWebs. Print publications are only the tip of the iceberg. In the last year, ESPN has fired a number of very high priced on-air talent and replaced them with younger, less high-priced on-air talent. ESPN execs didn't make that change because cable operators are still willing to pay a premium to include ESPN in their basic packages. They did it because overall veiwership is in decline. They've lost more than 15 million viewers in the last 7-8 years. Print was first but television is next on the hit list.
BTW, have you read the sidebar that started in this thread about whether or not mirrorless sports bodies are becoming more common at major sports events? A couple of folks were arguing about whether or not this so-called trend was reflected at the Super Bowl. That's why I posted to the link to the gigapixel image; so folks could do their best to count the DSLR and mirrorless bodies on the sideline. For some reason, somebody thought the fleet of broadcast television cameras was evidence mirrorless bodies are replacing flagship DSLRs for sports PJs. The two are unrelated.
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Bill Ferris Photography
Flagstaff, AZ
dmanthree
Forum Pro
Honestly, when you lack evidence, shift the narrative (not you, but the other guy...). FACT: I didn't see a single Sony A9 among the sideline shooters. Yes, maybe I missed one, but really, if you have to look with a microscope, what's the point? Canon and Nikon DSLRs still absolutely dominate the sidelines of pro sporting events. Period. Unless someone can prove otherwise, well, that's how it is and not likely to change for a while.
I agree that Canon and Nikon dominate there, and will likely continue to do so. And for now, their high end sports-oriented bodies are still all DSLRs, with their R and Z systems still very young and incomplete. But I can see that changing over next few years, with the big two now putting most of their product development efforts into their mirrorless systems.
Fox shot the game in 1080p HDR and upscaled to 4K for broadcast.
LoneTree1
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Makes me wonder what the downsides of actually broadcasting in 4K would be since no detail is added upscaling from HD to 4K.
dmanthree
Forum Pro
No question that mirrorless will take over. But the timing? I have no idea. I guess it depends on how soon Canon and Nikon can produce a pro body with an EVF that the pros prefer to the optical viewfinder. The AF is there, plus some, so Canon could haved left the mirror out of their latest pro body, except for the EVF.
I said sports stills, not stills, but it also applies there to some extent.It is not that the market for still is dying, those examples are of the demand for magazines dying.read the thread title: "Superbowl. Few mirrorless seen, but more video cameras than ever"Point being?the video cameras were far bigger in both size and cost than the dslrs, including three 8K Sony UHC-8300's that retailed for about $500,000 each when they were first released.Yikes....Gigapixel to the rescue: https://gigapixel.panoramas.com/superbowl/2020/
Lots of Canon...lots and lots of Canon. (But why should this event be any different from others?)
Yeah, tons of Canon, some Nikon, and not a single Sony I could see. I may have missed one, but damn, those big honkin' DSLRs totally dominate.
i quit counting at:
video: 61, with a lot more cameras above the field.
stills: 72
the sports magazine industry cratered a long time ago, it's a video world, and sony owned pro video at the 2020 super bowl... of course video is all mirrorless.
canon showed up some glass, tho.
per that thread title, i stated: "the sports magazine industry cratered a long time ago, it's a video world... of course video is all mirrorless"
the sports market for stills is dying, does it really matter how many dslrs were there?
"MEDIA 01/23/2015 01:20 pm ET Updated Jan 23, 2015
Sports Illustrated Lays Off Entire Photography Department" https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sports-illustrated-photographers-lay-offs-magazine_n_6533142
"There’s more bad news in the photojournalism industry today: Sports Illustrated has laid off Director of Photography Brad Smith, Photo Editor Claire Bourgeois, and Photo Director John Blackmar. This comes almost exactly 1 year after the magazine laid off its entire roster of staff photographers." https://petapixel.com/2016/01/16/sports-illustrated-lays-off-3-top-photo-heads/
magazines paid sports shooters, and with magazines gone, about the only place left to sell sports pics to is stock agencies, for pennies on the dollar.
see these pro sports photogs talking about it dying way back in 2015:
"What Killed Editorial Sports Photography?: You’ve Got To Hustle As A Sports Shooter These Days" https://www.shutterbug.com/content/...-really-got-hustle-make-living-sports-shooter
no, I said video, not television, and I said sports stills, not still photography in general.So, it's your contention that a strong broadcast television presence is evidence that television is thriving while still photography is dying.read the thread title: "Superbowl. Few mirrorless seen, but more video cameras than ever"Point being?
per that thread title, i stated: "the sports magazine industry cratered a long time ago, it's a video world... of course video is all mirrorless"
the sports market for stills is dying, does it really matter how many dslrs were there?
one example of that is this thing called "youtube", where 500+ hours of video get uploaded to it every minute, and people can make millions of $$$ every year: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-10-highest-paid-youtube-stars-of-2018-forbes/
"Globally, IP video traffic will be 82 percent of all IP traffic (both business and consumer) by 2022, up from 75 percent in 2017." Updated Feb 27, 2019 https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solut...working-index-vni/white-paper-c11-741490.html
youtube is also the biggest search engine on the planet.
and only 72 stills cameras on the field for game day...
this thread got hijacked with claims that the super bowl itself was shot with dslrs only... that has nothing to do with game week, and it was not true, as I indicated with the 61 or so mirrorless video cameras that were on the field, that had a collective net worth that far exceeded that of dslrs.
do you see a trend there...
see above.
"sports PJs"? read my other post on the death of that.
but do feel free to show us any of those pro sports PJ's who are making millions off it, like people are doing with video.
they uprezzed it because there was too much pixel shift with shooting the main cameras at 4kp60, but they did shoot at 4k and 8k with some of the cameras.
they streamed it at 4k, that everyone can get with a decent internet connection, but there aren't many options for broadcasting 4k over the air, although it's coming: https://www.tomsguide.com/reference/atsc-30-explained
the 4k streaming p.q. looked pretty good on my 65" oled screen.
"The big question everyone asks every year is how many cameras? Fox Sports will deploy 70 manned and robotic cameras for the game, along with 30+ lock-off and POV units. In addition, there will be 20+ end-zone and end-line pylon cameras and a wireless line-to-gain camera following every first down from ground level. Also look for shots from two Skycams and seven wireless handhelds, including multiple Steadicams and multiple MōVI gimbal Steadicam digital cinema cameras.
Also, eight 4K and three 8K cameras (Sony UHC-8300’s used in their first NFL postseason game ever) will be in the mix. They will be used for zoom and replay functions: the 4K cameras at the high end zone and down the line, the 8K cameras exclusively on the sidelines and benches. Two of the 8K cameras will provide up to 12X zoom replays; the third will shoot the entire field. The 4K cameras will allow 6X zoom replays.
If you think a Super Bowl deserves a super amount of super-slow-motion cameras, this will be the Super Bowl for you. Fox is going to deploy 22 super-slo-mos around the field.
As for audio, 72 field mics will be used. and two submixes will be created.
Along with the super-slow-motion cameras will be a number of other specialty systems. On the ground, all corners will be covered by more than 20 cameras within the end-zone pylons and the traveling pylon, which sits on the first-down marker for every play on both sides of the field. In the air, Skycam is back with a twist: one on the field and the uniquely positioned high Skycam. The latter is attached to the iconic spires of Hard Rock Stadium, making it the first Skycam that actually flies above the roof of a stadium. In addition, a two-point Flycam will be outside the stadium to attract fans from outside to the Fox Sports Game Day Fan Plaza set inside the stadium." https://www.sportsvideo.org/2020/01/28/super-bowl-liv-inside-the-numbers/
that's somewhere around 165 video cameras? versus only 72 still cameras...
dmanthree
Forum Pro
During the game, sure. But after the game is over, and you log on to this site, well...
sybersitizen
Forum Pro
Now I'm curious about fact checking the appearance of two sets of 'twins' in that photo:
Don't believe everything you see.
The vast majority of video cameras in the gigapixel are either Fox cameras used for the television broadcast or NFL Films cameras. The broadcast TV cameras have no ability to make internal recordings. The above photo of the Sony camera, ids of a broadcast TV camera that has no internal video recording capability. The NFL films cameras can, of course, make internal recordings.no, I said video, not television, and I said sports stills, not still photography in general.So, it's your contention that a strong broadcast television presence is evidence that television is thriving while still photography is dying.read the thread title: "Superbowl. Few mirrorless seen, but more video cameras than ever"Point being?
per that thread title, i stated: "the sports magazine industry cratered a long time ago, it's a video world... of course video is all mirrorless"
the sports market for stills is dying, does it really matter how many dslrs were there?
The broadcast rights held by Fox would have limited any other entity's ability to make video recordings of the actual game.
So, two entities (Fox and NFL Films) account for probably 90% of all the video cameras at the venue. The freelance photogs on the sidelines sold their work to news organizations around the globe.
Television's presence at the Super Bowl (and other major sports events) has dwarfed still photography in terms of both cost and infrastructure for decades. Take Olympics coverage as an example. To extrapolate anything about the current state of television or print from just the Super Bowl would be premature.
And no major cable or broadcast network has figured out how to make YouTube a significant revenue generator. It's not that individuals don't make money online. Of course, they do. But there is no easy, obvious path for print or broadcast media to make the transition to online without giving up a substantial portion of their current revenue stream. YouTube may be great for the Northrups but ESPN is still struggling to crack that nut.
Did you take the DSLR comment out of context? If it was said in the context of still photography of the event, it's s close to accurate statement. There were a ton of Canon DSLRs present, some Nikon DSLRs too, but no Sony A9s that I saw. Most of the photogs were wearing 2-3 cameras and a few appeared to have smaller mirrorless bodies with wide angle lenses to compliment the DSLRs & long primes or zooms.
Anyway, I can't imagine someone seriously saying DSLRs were used as broadcast cameras. If the statement was made as an observation of the still camera photographers along the sidelines, that would make sense. To counter that by bringing up the broadcast TV presence would be a total non sequitur.
Yup, a totally dead profession. That's why they're along the sidelines of every professional sports event, most collegiate sports events and even major high school events.
Not one of the video camera operators working the Super Bowl makes "millions." Not. One. They're mostly freelancers, If they're lucky, they make $1,000 for working the Super Bowl. They might make $750 for a regular season game. The folks who haven't gotten with a major network as a regular member of a crew might earn $500 for a game.
Unions for freelance crew have gained a bit of strength in recent years, but it's a hard working profession with minimal safety net. It is a real challenge to live that lifestyle and raise a family.
Ha...making millions. That's rich
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Bill Ferris Photography
Flagstaff, AZ
dmanthree
Forum Pro
It's a stitched photo. The guy moved between shots. Totally normal when shooting and stitching multiple exposures.
Nothing changes. The still shooters used Canon and Nikon, and not a single MILC could be seen. Maybe I missed one or two, but I didn't see any.
Nothing changes. The still shooters used Canon and Nikon, and not a single MILC could be seen. Maybe I missed one or two, but I didn't see any.
There is only 1 sports capable mirrorless camera out there and it does not have the support system that Canon and Nikon have, so there will not be many at this sort of event.
sybersitizen
Forum Pro
Yes, we know, and clearly two guys moved between shots. We can assume dozens of other people also moved between shots, but I haven't seen evidence of them moving.It's a stitched photo. The guy moved between shots.Now I'm curious about fact checking the appearance of two sets of 'twins' in that photo:
Don't believe everything you see.
Totally normal? Not at all. More often the result is a mess with body parts missing or doubled or partially transparent. This is a perfect simulation of two sets of twins ... and I find it way more interesting than the brand names of cameras on the sidelines.
Why were only these two guys duplicated among that group? Why is the duplication so perfect? It's as if someone intentionally created a deception. And if someone did intentionally create that deception, what other deceptions might there be in the photo?
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You have uncovered the OVF Global Conspiracy to hide the death of the DSLR! You are truly on of the EVluminatiYes, we know, and clearly two guys moved between shots. We can assume dozens of other people also moved between shots, but I haven't seen evidence of them moving.It's a stitched photo. The guy moved between shots.Now I'm curious about fact checking the appearance of two sets of 'twins' in that photo:
Don't believe everything you see.
Totally normal? Not at all. More often the result is a mess with body parts missing or doubled or partially transparent. This is a perfect simulation of two sets of twins ... and I find it way more interesting than the brand names of cameras on the sidelines.
Why were only these two guys duplicated among that group? Why is the duplication so perfect? It's as if someone intentionally created a deception. And if someone did intentionally create that deception, what other deceptions might there be in the photo?
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