Our Focus
Welcome to the first edition of ‘Our Focus’ in which we focus on a particular product or technology. In this edition we will focus on the Camball, which is possibly our ‘signature’ product.
The Camball was first conceived around 20 years ago for Fletcher Chicago who wanted a fully agile camera to go inside ice hockey goals. It needed to be very tough, as it would be hit by the puck. It also needed to be fast, to keep up with the action, and radio controlled because no cables could run across the ice. So we set about developing such a camera.
The Camball Netcam shown here had carbon - fibre and Kevlar covers and a polycarbonate lens dome protecting a fisheye lens. It panned at 180deg/sec.
Originally these were good old-fashioned standard definition (about 800x625) and 4:3 aspect ratio. They used a 3 chip camera block with a 12x lens to which we added the fisheye adaptor.
After just a couple of years, HD arrived and we upconverted all the Netcams to HD.
Here’s a shot of one inside an ice hockey goal.
At the same time we developed the Camball for normal filming and have been developing ever since. We always thought it important for it to be weatherproof and rugged as it was often used outdoors for extended periods.
The main ball changed to carbon-fibre about 2010 and with other improvements became the Camball3.
The latest development is the Camball5 4K. This has everything you can think of, totally silent, 12G bnc, 12G over fibre, control over fibre, RS485 control, IP control, full CCU, Free-D metadata, profile moves etc.
