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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Pocket Wizard Interference
Sam Morris, Photographer
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Henderson (Las Vegas) | NV | USA | Posted: 6:41 PM on 02.14.10 |
->> Yesterday I mounted a backboard remote for a game at San Diego State. Given that I only had 2G cards with me, I decided to only shoot it via my hand held camera during the second half and trigger it by hand during the first for fast breaks.
After I got the remote down (and bitched at by someone from stadium ops for having a gobo), I found that with the exception of a couple plays in the first half, the rest of the card was filled up with empty shots from halftime.
Apparently, they fly an RC blimp during halftime. The time stamps on the photos seemed fairly regular, so could it have been that the signal from the RC blimp triggered my PW? If it did, could I avoid this in the future by setting my PW to a different channel (I am using the 4 channel PW Plus)?
Thanks.
Oh, and on the subject of gobos, UNLV and San Diego State are the only places I have heard of that say we can't use them (so far I have gotten away with it this year at UNLV, could be someone else in charge of arena ops or they just haven't noticed it). Is there an NCAA regulation prohibiting them, or is it on an arena-by-arena basis? |
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Ryan Kelly, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Newport News | VA | USA | Posted: 8:06 PM on 02.14.10 |
->> I don't think there's an NCAA regulation against it, but athletic directors who aren't used to backboard cams on a regular basis probably get nervous about them. At the DIII university I work with we had to shoot one game without a gobo to show the coach and AD why it was necessary.
Then after that they still balked at the size, so we had to start with a small one and work our way up through the course of a few games, just to get them comfortable. It helped to ask the opinions of the players in warmups and get them to say that they didn't find it distracting. |
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John OHara, Photographer
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Petaluma | Ca | United States | Posted: 9:10 PM on 02.14.10 |
->> Sam,
How are you ? It has been a while. I fly RC airplanes . They operate on 72MHz. The pocket Wizard is on 344.04 MHz. Unless they have some strange radio stuff. This should not have caused your camera to shoot. I will be in Las Vegas for a show in September. John |
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Tom Ewart, Photographer
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Bentonville | AR | USA | Posted: 7:09 AM on 02.15.10 |
->> It's probably more likely that someone else had a pocket wizard in the place, especially since you were using the 4 channel one.
To simplify how a pocket wizard knows to fire has been explained to me that the pocket wizard transmit signal by sending out a code across the freq. to identify itself and that code would be hard to "randomly" duplicate by some device that just sends a signal across the freq. Who knows someone in some other industry may have needed a dependable wireless trigger to do something, and found the pocket wizard was and easy item to use and have put it in their device.
If you do find out the source, please let us know, I'd be interested to see what you find it out.
Back when Quantum had their first radio trigger, it was analog and anything that hit the freq would trigger the receiver--in busy places like basketball arenas it was common to get some mis triggers. In one set up I found that when the drummer hit on of his drums at an event, my strobes would fire because of the wireless system in the place. Not to say some device isn't sending a signal that would trip the pocket wizard.
And yes, I am convinced there are "ghosts in the machine" we run across in this business that are hard to explain.
I am curious if other photographers use the term "Gobo" like this? I always think of a gobo as a pattern that is inserted in a light. I always though a light blocking device for a camera was called a finger or shade. In over 20 years in the business I either haven't been paying attention, but don't recall haveing run across the term gobo used in this way.
Thanks. |
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Jon Wright, Photographer
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Wayzata | MN | USA | Posted: 8:32 AM on 02.15.10 |
| ->> The gobo term is used in the movie industry. Also, portrait photographer's use gobos both in and out of the studio. |
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Jon Eilts, Photographer, Student/Intern
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College Station | TX | USA | Posted: 10:35 AM on 02.15.10 |
->> "Oh, and on the subject of gobos, UNLV and San Diego State are the only places I have heard of that say we can't use them (so far I have gotten away with it this year at UNLV, could be someone else in charge of arena ops or they just haven't noticed it). Is there an NCAA regulation prohibiting them, or is it on an arena-by-arena basis?"
I was told by a Big 12 game supervisor that "it was a rule" and we could not have "those black things" on our cameras. Needless to say, we were up on a ladder 10 min before tipoff removing them because that is when they decided to let us know.
Since then, the school's SID had tried to follow up, but no one is responding to him. No one had been able to tell us where that rule actually is. |
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Al Goldis, Photographer
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East Lansing | MI | USA | Posted: 11:04 AM on 02.15.10 |
->> I'm not sure about the PW Plus but on the Multimax, the different "channels" use the same frequency, just with different digital codes. So changing channels would not help. Tom might be right about someone else using a Pocketwizard. I have had plenty of misfires (failing to trigger) due to RF interference, but I have never had a Pocket Wizard actually triggered by RFI.
Add Michigan State to the list of no-masking-allowed sites. Because a couple fans complained to the AD (they already had the worst seats in the house). It's really unfortunate because a polarizer helps a lot but can't eliminate all the reflections like Cinefoil. Then again Michigan State didn't allow glass remotes AT ALL for many years.
I don't remember seeing anything in the rule book so if it is an NCAA rule, I think it would have to have been added within the last couple years. |
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Joel Kowsky, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Columbia/Morris | MO/IL | United States | Posted: 11:31 AM on 02.15.10 |
->> Jon,
I heard the same thing up here a Mizzou a few years ago concerning gobos. It doesn't really matter though, we can't do backboard remotes at our arena. I was under the impression that it was a conference policy to not allow backboard remotes after the mishap up here two season's ago... |
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David Welker, Photographer, Student/Intern
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Springfield | MO | USA | Posted: 12:48 PM on 02.15.10 |
| ->> Up until this year we had been able to do backboard remotes with Gobos at Missouri State. Unfortunately, this year, they apparently said that we cannot put Gobos taped to the backboard glass. So the rules down here have changed slightly as well. |
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Thom Kendall, Photographer, Assistant
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Sunderland | MA | USA | Posted: 8:39 AM on 02.16.10 |
->> Joel,
Say more about "the mishap" two seasons ago... |
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Thom Kendall, Photographer, Assistant
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Sunderland | MA | USA | Posted: 8:46 AM on 02.16.10 |
| ->> On the subject of terminology...Is it not more technically accurate to call "those black things" flags? |
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Sam Morris, Photographer
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Henderson (Las Vegas) | NV | USA | Posted: 1:42 PM on 02.16.10 |
->> Tom,
There was one other photographer who was using a PW for an overhead remote and we coordinated channels so we wouldn't mess each other up. It appears from the time stamps on the photos that the camera started shooting continuously until the buffer filled and then kept firing as fast as the buffer cleared.
If the frequencies are that far apart and nobody else was firing a PW, was it just a gremlin? |
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George Bridges, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 1:46 PM on 02.16.10 |
| ->> It may not be a problem with the actual radios but could be a short in the cables or the like. |
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Mike Isler, Photographer, Assistant
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New York | NY | US | Posted: 2:15 PM on 02.16.10 |
->> >> I'm not sure about the PW Plus but on the Multimax, the different "channels" use the same frequency, just with different digital codes.
Al, on the MultiMAX, channels 1-16 share the same frequency but simply transmit a different digital code. However, channels 17-32 are on different radio frequencies (ranging from 346.5Mhz to 354.0Mhz on the US/FCC model), as well as having different digital codes. |
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Joel Kowsky, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Columbia/Morris | MO/IL | United States | Posted: 2:34 PM on 02.16.10 |
->> Thom,
I wasn't at the game and don't know who the photographer was, but he set up a backboard remote that wasn't properly secured. The whole thing, magic arm and camera fell during the game. I think as a safety cable he had used the camera strap too, which is never good. If it hadn't been secured with the camera strap it would have fallen to the floor.
They had to stop the game for a few minutes while he went and took it down off the backboard. |
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Joel Hawksley, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Kent | OH | USA | Posted: 2:57 PM on 02.16.10 |
->> Joel,
Are remote setups authorized by the athletic department at Mizzou? We try to keep things in check here at OU to prevent that from happening. We require cable safeties on EVERYTHING above the floor. |
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Al Goldis, Photographer
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East Lansing | MI | USA | Posted: 8:33 PM on 02.16.10 |
| ->> Mike, thanks for the correction. I guess I'm living in the past; thinking of the Classic 16 channel version. |
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Sam Morris, Photographer
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Henderson (Las Vegas) | NV | USA | Posted: 10:19 PM on 02.16.10 |
->> George, it could be a short, but what is bugging me is why would it start shooting at the same time as the RC blimp? I tried today and wasn't able to get the same PW/camera to start firing with my little RC helicopter (I know it could be a totally different frequency). Same batteries and everything. I had the camera set up two hours before the game, so it was asleep before the start of the game when they also fly the RC blimp. Then it only went crazy at halftime when, I assume (I wasn't out on the floor so I don't know exactly when they started flying the thing) the blimp started flying. It's perplexing because there is circumstantial evidence, but given that people with much more knowledge of RF than I have say they operate on totally different frequencies. And Derrick Tuskan, a local photographer at the game who hangs remotes, was also baffled.
On the issue of safety cables, you can never have too many. Each arm is cabled through the clamp, the camera is cabled, the PW is cabled through the straps and I take up all the slack on the cables so if something fails, it won't fall more than a couple inches and there won't be much force applied to the cables. Plus, everything that can move is checked 3x to make sure that it is stable, and when going up on the catwalk for an overhead, everything that can move is removed before I go up, which includes lens hoods, my phone, my credential, and when focusing my glasses. The last thing I want to do, next to hurting someone, is screw up access for anyone else. |
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George Bridges, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 10:25 PM on 02.16.10 |
->> Sam,
An easy test is to take your wizards to the next game and set the receiver the exact same way. Ask the blimp operator to hit his radio and see what happens. |
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Sam Morris, Photographer
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Henderson (Las Vegas) | NV | USA | Posted: 11:43 PM on 02.16.10 |
| ->> George, as much as I'd love to, I don't think the Las Vegas Sun would pay for me go to the next San Diego State home game to figure it out. I may try it because after some recent family trips there, I'm really starting to like San Diego. |
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