First time setting up a clock-cam
I’ve been waiting a long time to set up a remote camera on top of the shot-clock at a basketball game. The first time I had ever heard of the possibility of setting one up was from photographer Matt Brown during last years Sports Shooter Academy. I have put remote cameras behind the backboard, on the post, in the catwalks and on the floor, but had never thought of putting one on the shot-clock. I wanted to try my first one during SSA but we didn’t get there early enough for the arena crew to lower the hoop. It wasn’t until earlier this year during UCI’s Midnight Magic that I made my next attempt to set one up. I got there 4 hours early and had all my equipment. I thought I was ready. Then I encountered a big problem: lagging the cameras to all fire at the same time on one set of strobes. My plan was to have three remote cameras all fire at the same time on one set of strobes. I should have practiced this on an earlier day because I was forced to choose not to set up the clock-cam. Even more recently UCI played Oregon State. I attempted to set one up for that game but arriving 2 hours early turned out to be too late.
This time I got there 3 hours early, directly after the women’s team was done using the court for their practice. I only had my one camera and three Pocket Wizards. I used my 17-40mm. I shot @ 17mm/f8/250/ISO 250. I set my strobes to receive on channel 1. Set my camera to receive on channel 10 and transmit on channel 1, using the relay mode on the PW. Then I had the last PW in my had set to transmit on channel 10. Even with the hoop lowered all the way, its difficult to see through the viewfinder because of how high the shot-clock is. Pre-focusing is hard too. I wanted to pre-focus about 2 feet below the rim but with the hoop lowered all the way, the ground is only 1 foot away. I made sure the zoom and focusing rings were taped down and then safety cabled everything. I also had the camera running off d/c because the camera needed to stay on for about 4 hours.
Anyways, here are the photos.
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