Skip to main content

5 replies

Wide finish line

M mikemurrayMember
We have a weekly evening bike race that has a wide finish line, roughly 50 feet. We have been having a lot of trouble with getting the riders on the far side of the road in focus regardless of lens or focus setting. Any suggestions?

We have also been having trouble with the numbers on the far side being flared out and not visible although I think I have figured out a solution by changing the settings to manual gain control and then closing down the aperture. This requires the operator to make continual aperture adjustments as the light level drops so it is a marginal solution. If anyone has a better idea I would love to hear it.

And ... while I am on a roll, at the velodrome we have another issue. Our finish is on the east side of the track. In the evening as the sun goes down the shadow of the judges building extends over the finish line. This makes the riders in the shadow too dark while the ones in the outer lanes still in the sun are so light that details are flared and numbers are difficult to read. Once again I have accommodated for this by using manual gain control and continual aperture adjustment. Is that the only way to address this?
Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

M mikesMember
Mike 50 feet is too wide almost twice as wide as it needs to be or should be. Make the road narrower. 7 or 8 meters is plenty wide enough. I have made orgainizers narrow finishes in order to get a reasonable road width. I know there needs to be a balance for safety but there becomes a point around 8 or 9 meters where you just don't gain any improvements in safety and start to rapidly lose the ability to judge a finish.
fkpfkpMember
Wide finishes like 50 feet are tough with a single camera. You need to get further back from the road and higher. I would say that 20 feet back from the curb and 30 feet high. Then use a lense that will let you focus further out to the far edge of the road and still see the near curb. A 35mm with wide 33 setting for starters.

Follow UCI Commasaire Mike S. suggestions and narrow the finish. 30 feet is the max that I encounter.

You can use auto gain in conditions like that. Lower your brightness settings. Sometimes you might need to drop the brightness to 30. You receive a really dark image that you use the Gamma setting to brighten later.
M mikemurrayMember
Narrowing the finish is an interesting idea but technically nearly impossible to do. This race is held on Portland International Raceway http://www.portlandraceway.com/, an auto racing track which is essentially that wide all the way around. The finish stretch is that width for the entire length which is longer than a quarter mile. The only way that this could work would be to cone off a very long segment of road. This would increase the set up and tear down time fairly significantly and likely would not be accepted by the race organizers or the riders very well just to facilitate camera use since they have been racing there for 30 years or so and getting results pretty well without this need.

I guess I am not understanding the suggestion to move back since it seems that this would only exacerbate the problem we are having with focus on points far from the camera. Our current camera mounting position, roughly 18 feet up, allows us to see the entire road fairly well. There are overlaps issues but they are generally easily resolved, one way or another. The problem we are having is not width of field or overlap but all far focus.
M mikesMember
I see the race course is wide but it is still good advice to narrow the road. there is a solution there but I can't help think of one. I think that Fred is offering a solution based on depth of field the further you move back the greater your potential depth of field. But this also is more demanding for light and a very good lens as you would have to zoom a little tight. I am not sure about the choice of lens as it seems too wide an angle.
I am no photo finish guy but merely thinking out loud with a mind to what I understand about photography.
M mayhem617Member
The simplest solution I think would to buy a reverse angle camera.

When using 1 camera on normal view the further lanes seem to get washed out unless you have a good zoom lens and lighting. This is the same with our eye sight.

I know that Lynx offers a 5L300 camera that has a digital zoom over or on like 300X!!! that is the same camera that Nascar uses and they have varying finish line sizes and angles week in and week out.

Add Reply

Post

Membership Required

We're sorry. You must be signed in to continue. Sign In or Register
×
Are you sure you want to remove from your Block List?
×
Loading...
×
When you block a person, they can no longer invite you to a private message or post to your profile wall. Replies and comments they make will be collapsed/hidden by default. Finally, you'll never receive email notifications about content they create or likes they designate for your content.
Note: if you proceed, you will no longer be following .
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×