Coors Field Vertigo
DIY Camera Enclosure follow up.
Cameras and mounts are working great! We have noticed that due to the nature of these wide angle lenses, there is a small amount of lens flare from the stadium lights during a night game. To remedy this I headed back to the hardware store and got a 2” to 1-3/4” coupler. The narrower end will slide into the “barrel” of the camera enclosure, and offer an additional 1” of overhang that should block the light.
After painting the pieces Coors Field green, I purchased an O-ring that would make a seal between camera enclosure and the new coupler. Because the camera itself needs to be able to be removed via the front of the tube, this coupler couldn’t simply be glued in place. I needed the o-ring to provide just enough resistance to hold the coupler in place while keeping the front of the camera tube open if removal was necessary.
I tested the whole process on a spare piece of PVC in the shop to make sure it worked before heading over to the Coors Field bullpen to install.
My only concern is that the home bullpen camera has an 89 degree lens on it. This lens may prove too wide, and may end up showing the sides of my new coupler. If that is the case, I’ll have to modify the profile of the lip with a hand saw so that the picture is unaffected.
Cheap DIY POV all-weather camera enclosure part 2.
Opening day has come and gone, and I’ve got some photos of these cameras mounted in the bullpen. The home bullpen camera has a wide angle lens that gets a nice shot of both the pitchers warming up as well as the stadium in the background. The visitor bullpen camera has a narrower lens which frames just the pitching mounds.
We cored some holes in the cinder-block wall to the service tunnel underneath the stadium and pulled the camera control cables through conduit to camera control units mounted high in the cable trough. From there we used an existing 12 strand single-mode fiber run to send both video to the truck and camera control (iris, color correction) back to the camera from the truck (via RS-485 to fiber converters).
The shots look great and so far they’re used quite frequently in the Root Sports broadcasts. Watch for them next time you take in a Rockies game on TV.
