A "new" toy

For the past few years I have wanted to put a remote camera behind the backboard for a high school basketball game. It's not a new idea by any means--if look at the major sports magazines (e.g. Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine), they routinely use backboard camera for their coverage of college and pro basketball. I had gathered all of the equipment I needed make this work and verified with our publisher that, if I went to the trouble of rigging all of this up, I would be covered by our company's liability insurance if something went wrong and any of the rigging fell. The trouble for me was that neither of the high school gyms I shoot in had anything behind the backboards that I could easily clamp the camera onto.

Fortunately Middle Park High School here in Granby had been working on a new gym during the last year. A few weeks ago when I took a peak at it as it neared completion I was thrilled to see they had installed a completely different type of support system for the backboards which would allow me to attach my camera without too much trouble and the light in the gym was significantly brighter than the old gym (this would allow me to shoot available light and not have to figure out how to rig the camera to work with the strobes I normally use--it's a long story and I won't get into it now, maybe another time when I solve that problem). I immediately checked with the school's athletic director to see if he had any issues with what I was hoping to do. He gave me the go ahead.

The school was scheduled to play its first games in the new gym last week, so I wanted to give this a try right away. The day before the game I went in to check the exposure, options on exactly where to place the camera and, most importantly, see if there was a ladder I could use. Luckily one of the contractors still finishing up some work on the gym had a 12-foot ladder he was happy to let me use. One of the issues with doing a remote of this type is that it needs to be in place before the players start warming up and, because this was my first attempt, I wanted to have enough time to make sure everything was working and be able to deal with any problems, which meant getting to the gym early enough before the first game, which was a JV game scheduled to tip-off at 4:00, so I was there at 2:45, even though I wouldn't really be using the camera until the varsity girls game at 5:30 and varsity boys at 7:00.

I think it took me about 45 minutes to get everything set up and secure, and to where I felt comfortable that I might be able to make a decent image. I checked and re-checked the focus, exposure and framing until I finally said, "If it doesn't work this time, there is always the next game," and climbed down from the ladder and got ready to shoot the games. I would occasionally fire the remote during the JV game to make sure it was working and felt like I was keeping one eye on it to make sure it wasn't coming loose or about to fall.

I used the remote some during the girls game, but the action didn't really fit with where it was set up. The action in the boys game was much more dynamic and there were several times where I felt I might have captured what I was after, but I wouldn't know until the game was over when I climbed back up the ladder to retrieve the camera.

A shot from this angle is really a crap shoot. There are a lot of factors which have to come together to make the image work and fortunately I believe I was able to capture at least one good frame from my first attempt:
This photo was made with a Canon 20D, 16-35/2.8 set at 16mm, exposure was 1/500 at 2.8, ISO 1600.

Middle Park faces their county rivals, West Grand, on Tuesday and I hope to try the set-up again. For the next 24 hours I will debate in my head what I may do differently this time, do I set the camera for vertical again, or do I try horizontal? should I raise it up a little higher?

Goo, goo, g'joob.