GEAR PTZs
ON THE MOVE Panasonic’s PTZs are now seen as a novel alternative to traditional set-ups
talking about a lot today is robotics: the rails, the dollies, the totems, everything that will help our customers create more exciting pictures. AI is on everyone’s lips – it’s a keyword popping up all the time. How do you do auto-tracking? I want these cameras moving around on their own, we want to have the director select the streams.” Peak PTZ popularity during the pandemic provoked the development of a huge variety of cameras, as Mat Recardo, technical services supervisor at distributor CVP, points out. “We have over 200 PTZ cameras on our website. Since the pandemic, we’ve seen that people have got used to the idea of PTZs as an alternative or addition. Even if they have traditional camera set-ups, they’re now bolting on some PTZ cameras to augment what they’re producing, to give them the extra shots they couldn’t budget for.” Education, Recardo confirms, became a big deal at the same time. “They thought ‘hang on, if you take the pandemic away we’ve only got an 80- seat arena, we can get far more than that on a stream.’ They can have the same experience; they can interact and we can reach more people.” Recardo also suggests that maturity is beginning to allow what were once high-end features to trickle down to the mass market. “We’re starting to see more vendors putting some sort of automated tracking in their products. It’s been in the realms of the big, expensive options, but we’re now starting to see it on the Marshall range, which are conference cameras, not broadcast so much. There’s also a stepping up of lenses, with better optics and bigger chips. “Global shutters are starting to appear on smaller regular cameras, so we will
start to see something appearing on higher-end PTZs,” Recardo hints, with a particular interest in the big-chip camera that keeps coming up in any discussion of PTZ options. “The FR7 is an example of where you can’t put a camera operator, but need to get shots you can intercut with the operated locations. Let’s say you need a camera somewhere you can’t put an operator. You are restricted on the lens choices to a degree – you can’t put it miles away and stick a giant lens on it – but it matches the FX6 shots you’re creating with conventional methods.” It’s not only Sony, though, which has brought big-screen pictures to PTZ cameras. “The likes of Canon, who are new to PTZ, have made cameras forever, and they’ve really put the design effort
into the PTZs,” Recardo confirms. “Earlier this year they announced auto-tracking you can bolt on, which looks very good. The CR-N100, 300, 500, 700 – they go up in sensor spec, connectivity and price, but the beauty of things like the Canon CR-N700 is that if you’re putting it beside a C300 Mark III or a C500, you’re going to get similar colour – it’s Canon colour, Canon sensor spec. You can be doing conventional production and stitching it together with PTZ without much hassle.” As Recardo puts it, combining those factors – and making it all available on the end of a simple network cable – will create a lot of convenience. “A customer came to us for an NDI Tricaster demo. They‘d got very into NDI, covering high-end motorsport – Le Mans – and were paying thousands a day to have an SDI cable in a pit garage. They told me: ‘all we get is a fixed wide angle, we set the camera up and pay them for the privilege.’" “When they stick an NDI PTZ up there, they pay less and can pan around and look at things in the garage. It’s way more for less cash – and they can offer their client far more,” he concludes.
GLOBAL SHUTTERS are starting to appear ON REGULAR CAMERAS”
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