Getty Images, the official photo agency of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), will use brand-new robotic technology developed by Mark Roberts Motion Control to extend the reach of photographers across multiple venues for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, which begin on August 5.
Remote cameras are nothing new for sports photographers.
Professionals typically mount cameras on poles in the arena, on the sidelines of stadiums, and even underwater to capture as many angles of sporting events as possible. The photographer connects a radio transmitter that communicates with a corresponding transmitter on the photographer's main handheld camera.
But once a photographer has set the angle and composition of their remote cameras, they have no ability to change the shooting angle other than the camera's focus and exposure.
MRMC, a maker of robotic camera rigs, is currently testing its fifth prototype for a robotic camera rig in collaboration with Nikon. Getty plans to have them in the hands of its photographers at about 20 Olympic venues this summer.
These new rigs will give photographers more control over remote secondary cameras, allowing them to change the vantage point, lens focal length, and even the ability to move the camera in a full 360-degree rotation.
As the action moves around a space, a photographer or remote camera operator can use MRMC software on a tablet or computer to control any aspect they want. There are many new custom presets.
The different pieces of MCMR's robotics system, dubbed POD, are connected by a single cable that powers both the rig and the camera and carries an Ethernet cable, which hardwires the camera to networked computers on site or to an internet hub to send an image to a Getty photographer.
Although Getty expects to use more than a dozen PODs at the Olympics this summer, there are no plans yet to release a consumer version.
