Cameras Spreading Everywhere

Cameras are a godsend to teachers. Let’s face it, we can lecture about something and have students read textbooks about it but a picture speaks a thousand words.

With the rise of miniature cameras you can pretty much capture anything you want. With the advent of cell phones, you can live stream this to the world. I predicted we would see this in sporting events pretty soon.

Well, sure enough…

H/T New York Times

While it is still early in the experiment, it appears many professional riders, who generally are particular about adding anything to their bikes, are enthusiastic about doubling up as camera operators.

It would seem to make sense to live stream this but experiments with that seem to indicate at least for a long event like this people would rather watch an edited video.

Julien Goupil, the media director for the Tour, said that the organization experimented with live transmissions from a bike using a dedicated motorcycle to capture the signal at a small race in the Netherlands last year. On the whole, Goupil said, the result wasn’t as good as the edited product.

“If nothing is happening, the picture is nothing,” he said. “We need to make something sexy.”

Fascinating stuff. I still think streaming video could work for some sports. Now what will really be cool is a set of cameras capturing a full 360 degrees, coupled with a VR headset like Oculus Rift. It would seem like you are really on the bike. That however is a few more years off.

Here’s a video explaining how the cameras are setup and some actual footage.