r/BeAmazed • u/SimRP • Jun 29 '26
Sports The reason sports broadcasts stay clear is because the lenses are spun to keep moisture off.
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u/Dockle Jun 29 '26
That’s actually pretty cool.
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Jun 29 '26
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u/joshguy1425 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
Still pretty high tech tbh. Manufacturing lenses is a delicate process, and having a lens element that can spin at a high enough RPM while still being water resistant and not distorting the picture is pretty damn impressive.
The concept is simple. The actual engineering and execution, not so much.
Edited to add the word “element” after “lens”.
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u/Ligabolzacky Jun 29 '26
this isn't the actual lens
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u/joshguy1425 Jun 29 '26
Right, but it still has to have the clarity of a lens which involves high end glass and an extremely precise mechanism.
It doesn't have to do some of the things the inner lens elements have to do like focusing and zooming, but it still has to share many of the characteristics of those lens elements i.e. clarity, consistency, and because it's spinning it has to be well balanced.
As a photographer, the difference between a cheap protective element and a quality element is huge, both in terms of the end result and in terms of cost. The cost difference mostly comes from the higher challenge in producing high quality elements.
One of those broadcast spinning deflectors runs around $2K.
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u/zer0toto Jun 30 '26
The high cost is likely not because of how high tech it is but rather a elevated oroce balance due to how rare these are. Itos niche accessory for outdoor broadcasting which is already a niche application
It has to be either spherical or flat which is not a complex grind, even if I’m not doubting it’s ground to a relatively high level of precision. otherwise mechanically it’s only a smooth running motor with smooth roller bearing to spin the disc, neither is exceptionally high tech
Besides 2k sounds expensive for us, but it’s almost free in terms of broadcasting and videography cost. We have to remember it’s attached to a camera that is multiple hundreds of K
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u/Mbyrd420 Jun 29 '26
It's not just flat glass. It's extremely high clarity/purity glass that is refined to very tight tolerances, set into a watertight mechanism that is capable of revolving at hundreds of rpms for hours without heating up, losing the seal or distorting the picture quality.
Your comment is like saying that the space shuttle was just a really big firework.
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u/joshguy1425 Jun 29 '26
"Just flat glass" is a surprisingly challenging thing to achieve. Making it is not fundamentally different than making the other high cost elements on the inside of the lens. I'd highly recommend watching a video on the process. It's fascinating and illuminating.
And it's also not just about the glass itself. It's about a spinning mechanism that is precise and balanced enough not to introduce any kind of vibration/wobble to the camera itself at 1-3000 rpm. It's about having an element that can freely spin while also preventing water ingress.
It's "niche" because it's expensive, not expensive just because it's niche. Such a product would be hugely popular among photographers and videographers if it was affordable, and the companies making them could make significantly more money if they could manufacture them in higher numbers at an accessible cost.
But they're difficult and expensive to make, which is why they're typically only used on high end productions. If they were easy to make, hobbyists and startups would make them, but they require significant manufacturing apparatus/expertise to produce.
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Jun 29 '26
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u/joshguy1425 Jun 29 '26
Extending a piece of plastic doesn't really solve the problem for photographers though.
As for the cost makeup, it's definitely a combination of both. Last time I looked at this, a replacement filter for one of these spinning rigs was something like 30% of the whole cost. Still pricey for a single piece of glass, but definitely not the whole picture.
With that said, there's a big difference between "flat" glass we all have in our windows vs. flat glass that's flat enough not to distort a $90K lens.
Even in the traditional photography world, it's not uncommon to find protective filters that run $500 or more, with some running up to $1K for larger lenses.
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u/CiroGarcia Jun 30 '26
It's not just the flat glass either. You can produce the flattest glass ever and it will still not be enough. You have to apply antireflective coatings and test chromatic aberrations due to refraction within the glass, and ensure that even if there is an effect, that it is even throughout the whole rotation, as well as isolating the spinning system from the camera to avoid shaking the sensor. The tolerances and quality levels expected of this are nothing short of extreme, and even on static lenses, getting quality glass with quality coatings that won't give you humongous flares will run you at the very least hundreds of dollars even in the "hobby" and "used" market
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u/spykid Jun 30 '26
As an engineer who designs precision optical mounts, I think the execution (manufacturing) is far more impressive than the engineering!
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u/shifty_coder Jun 29 '26
The lens doesn’t spin. A protective cover that mounts over the lens and aperture spins.
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u/joshguy1425 Jun 30 '26
Correct. I should have written “lens element” instead of just lens.
The point is that the spinning element becomes an extension of the main lens and must be optically similar in terms of quality, which makes it difficult/expensive to make.
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u/sequesteredhoneyfall Jun 30 '26
Redditors foaming at the mouth to correct you when you know MUCH more about this than them. A tale as old as time.
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u/LefsaMadMuppet Jun 30 '26
So I went down another rabbit hole with spinning discs, discflo disc pumps probably shows it best in their YouTube videos, but they are bladeless pumps, that can pump water, sludge, mud, etc. surface tension and flow physics.
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u/LefsaMadMuppet Jun 30 '26
Ships do it as well, and if you look a dedicated snowplow locomotives you'll see the circular windows as well.
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u/Comfortable_History8 Jun 30 '26
Ships, cnc machine enclosures, basically anything that needs reliable visibility in terrible conditions that wipers would smear or skip across. They’re called a “clear view screen”
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u/LefsaMadMuppet Jun 30 '26
Cool,, never thought about cnc machines and the like, but makes sense. Thanks.
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u/Appropriate-Farmer16 Jun 29 '26
It’s cool, but why doesn’t the NFL use this for those overhead cameras? Those are always showing drops when it rains or snows.
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u/Hashtagbarkeep Jun 30 '26
Would imagine having a high speed spinning item on a high speed moving camera would act like a gyroscope
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u/Dockle Jun 29 '26
Maybe they didn’t know about it. Could be we’ll see them next season because of this post
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u/Spekingur Jun 29 '26
Nice. I need to do this to my cars windshield.
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u/MartianLM Jun 29 '26
I need it for my motorbike crash helmet visor!
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u/motophiliac Jun 30 '26
Turn your head sideways in each direction for a second.
If the visor's clean, the water should bead rather than coat it, and the sidewind will blow it off.
It's a pain, but it works well enough.
Or, get a helmet that spins really quickly around your head.
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Jun 29 '26
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u/yourhomeland Jun 29 '26
It helps when you focus on solutions rather than focus on problems
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u/joshguy1425 Jun 29 '26
When building products, 95% of finding the right solution if focusing on the problem. Falling in love with the problem. Knowing the problem inside and out, upside down and sideways.
I think I get what you're saying though, i.e. a solution oriented mindset vs. a non-solution oriented mindset gets real work done.
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u/yourhomeland Jun 29 '26
A lot of people focus so much on the problem and its implications that they don’t even consider that there might be a viable solution.
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u/joshguy1425 Jun 29 '26
Yeah, that's completely fair. And I agree with you that focusing on finding solutions is the right way to go about this.
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u/AlbertTheHorse Jun 29 '26
I hate AI voiceover
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u/ieremias77 Jun 29 '26
Same. Gave it a downvote just for that.
I know sometimes it's English language learners self-conscious about their accent or grammar, but that stuff doesn't bother me in the least, especially compared with AI.
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Jun 29 '26
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u/sobuffalo Jun 30 '26
Same for me but I did use one doing a shoot on the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls.
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u/mdruckus Jun 30 '26
Well, Discovery Channel uses this for shows like Deadliest Catch along with a lot wildlife documentaries. I’m sure some broadcasters somewhere use these for sports.
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u/sobuffalo Jun 30 '26
Well, the headline says “The reason…” when we all can agree that’s not “the reason” they stay dry.
I’m well aware shows like that use them, I even mentioned I used one for a shoot at Niagara Falls for ESPN, not discovery. But sports lenses and mobile/ENG style lenses are much different and those spinners are not common at all like OP makes it seem.
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u/trilla517 Jun 29 '26
Yeah. I work vfx I work with camera guys, I've done stuff for fox, ESPN I've never seen this.
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Jun 30 '26
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u/trilla517 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
They use tarps to cover the camera, but when they change cameras they just wipe them down. They do have lens covers that are more water repellent, but I haven't seen any that spin like that.
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u/Charming-Weather-148 Jun 29 '26
Talk to your rental supply house?
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u/soundman1024 Jun 30 '26
I’ve never seen these. I’ve been looking at raw NFL camera feeds from CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, NFLN, Prime, and Netflix every year since 2012.
The shots are clear because the main cameras are covered and the others are clear because the camera ops have dry cloths and runners bring more when needed. Not because of this thing.
It’s a cool demo, but it rarely makes sense for American football. The handheld cameras don’t want the extra weight - the clothes are super easy in comparison. Same for Steadicam and gimbals. SkyCam doesn’t want the risk, weight, or power consumption. If the insurance company would let them, they might do it there.
The place it might actually make sense is on the cart camera where the power and bulk are okay and the lens is kinda tough to get to. But no one wants to put extra glass in front of a $150,000 lens. You just want that thing singing perfection all day long. And that may be why I’ve never arm it there.
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u/Charming-Weather-148 Jun 30 '26
We use them regularly (when necessary) in single camera production, rarely for natural weather, despite being in Vancouver, BC, but for heavy rain effect shots. Granted, the cams aren't rolling for hours on end. As a fellow sound person, they are not our best friend, but not nearly as much of an issue for sports.
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u/MarcioMakaveli Jun 29 '26
Nice! I was thinking about that many times.
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u/ArtyWhy8 Jun 29 '26
Same, I never understood how they didn’t have issues. I figured they just had some kind of special hood. This is way better than I imagined!
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Jun 29 '26
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u/Sad-Concentrate168 Jun 29 '26
There are many sports the rest of the world play which happen in rain tbf
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Jun 30 '26
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u/Stevenwave Jun 30 '26
Aussie Rules footy. It's our Winter sport for half the country.
The major stadiums are designed so that rain flows to the outside. Some games used to be a mudbath up until about the 90s.
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u/hurtfulproduct Jun 29 '26
Don’t many ships also have the same thing on some of the bridge windows for the same reason?
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u/jzzsxm Jun 29 '26
In Formula 1, on the cameras installed in the car, there's actually a spool of clear plastic film over the lens. Whenever it gets dirty it just spools new plastic in front of the lens, and you'll see the dirty portion wipe down.
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u/JazzlikeDiamond558 Jun 29 '26
This is, like, thousand years old thing, from the ship's windows.
There, you even have a heated double chamber, so it does not get frozen, even if the odds are against it.
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u/wileybot Jun 29 '26
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u/JazzlikeDiamond558 Jun 29 '26
This, yes.
But it is expensive as hell (in industrial version), prone to breakdowns even today (because of salty sea moisture) and pita to repair if you don't have an Electrotechnical laboratory at hand.
But it is a blessing if it works when you need it.
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u/Aware-Donut-8633 Jun 29 '26
I’m in the sports broadcasting industry and our equipment still doesn’t even use color sometimes in our viewfinder. I wish we had this kind of budget for better equipment. This is from the perspective of NBA, soccer, and college football in Oregon.
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u/TopClassroom387 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
I can't find a link to this story...
I remember watching a documentary in the early 1990's about a UK Television Show called Londons Burning. It's about a Fire Brigade unit and in the documentary they talked about how they developed a mechanism to keep the water off the camera lenses - exactly as described about, perhaps not as slick as this, but it is 30+ years later.
Edit: Found the documentary in YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGKXE5B3DqU Go to 11:40
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u/ZDTreefur Jun 29 '26
Does it make a zoingzoingbriiiiing sound effect while doing it, like a clowns bowtie?
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u/OwnerByDane Jun 29 '26
Yes, and they've been used on ocean-going ships for decades as a product called Cler-View Screens. They work great.
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u/Caridor Jun 29 '26
Not the ones in the world cup coverage this year. There have been plenty of times where there's raindrops on the lens
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u/SuperOil5764 Jun 29 '26
Annoyingly they aren't using these in the world cup games, very annoying when they have the tech but don't use it.
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u/Acetone5050 Jun 29 '26
Pretty sure that what's spinning is a clear piece outside the lens rather than the lens itself.
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u/ryandoesdabs Jun 29 '26
AkTcHuAlLy it’s not part of the lens technically. It is a lens attachment. It’s pretty broadly used tech in places where a clear window is needed. I recently saw this on a CNC machine so the cooling fluid could be cleared away. Cool stuff. Nice post, OP!
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u/dupo_pracz Jun 29 '26
I absolutely hate these Ai videos, yes the video is true but shit is just mass produced with same voice
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u/Charming-Weather-148 Jun 29 '26
Just so we're clear (wink), it's not the lens that spins, but a specialized filter that is fitted in front of the lens.
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u/UntillTheEnd Jun 29 '26
Dang learnned something new tday never once thought about that while watching sports in hostile weather.
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u/Cake-Over Jun 29 '26
Ships and railroad engines have that circular window that does the same thing.
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u/StargasmSargasm Jun 29 '26
Yeah...yeah, I work in this field, for 20+ years, no one really uses these
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u/cqxray Jun 29 '26
They use the same thing in ships’ bridges so they can see through any heavy seas. The spinning disk is bigger, more like the diameter of desktop monitor.
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u/HonestDust873 Jun 30 '26
Shits been circulating since before COVID. 😅 This is considered old technology already. Feels like the Internet is really dead now.
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u/unreqistered Jun 30 '26
we have a similar mechanism to enable us to look inside our cnc enclosures
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Jun 30 '26
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u/pigeonholedpoetry Jun 30 '26
For some reason I never even thought about this being an issue. Pretty awesome.
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u/wont-stop-mi Jun 30 '26
Fuck this is probably the coolest post I have ever seen on this sub. That is amazing. Physics, yeah bitch!
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u/Thurid Jun 30 '26
I saw the same tech in my uncle's ship when he and fam sailed his cargo ship from England and docked in Toronto.
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u/Cr3dentialz Jun 30 '26
As someone who works pro sports broadcasts for a living.. these are absolutely not common at all.
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u/Most-Round-4132 Jun 30 '26
they need to figure out a cost effective way to do this for motorcycle visors
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u/RoosterResident402 Jun 30 '26
Wow when iPhone will adopt this function? If they do it I'd love it!!
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u/marcelcravan Jun 30 '26
The version of this, that we use in Europe, is called Schulz Sprayoff Micro, if anyone wants to check it. Once I forgot to order it for a rainy day when we were shooting outside and I got yelled.
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u/Secret-Teaching-3549 Jun 30 '26
Since this dumb AI misinformation seems to be making the rounds now, I'll say it again.
It's not the only reason. Are your eyes covered in raindrops when you're standing under an awning or holding an umbrella? Then why can't you see perfectly into the distance during a heavy downpour? Yes, the spinning lens helps keep it clean, but the reason the images are still perfectly clear is primarily due to advanced digital filtering techniques, the fact that the camera is able to zoom in and focus on a single point on the field, and that the camera lens has a much wider aperture than your eyes. Same reason why this pillar seems to magically disappear when focusing on the people behind it.
This site is as bad as facebook at promoting misleading information.
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u/Kcboom1 Jun 30 '26
This is what the round window in front of the captains chair on boats/ships do too.
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u/Red1800 Jun 30 '26
I have never once thought of this or how even when a weather reporter is in a tropical storm. That's really cool
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u/IMKGI Jun 30 '26
The second and bigger reason is that the water droplets are so close to the lens that they're so far out of focus that you're unable to see them -> how regular photography in storming rain works (the bigger the front glass element and the longer the focal lengh, stronger the effect -> a 600mm lens makes water on the lens completely invisible while on a phone lens it becomes unusable)
Lens hoods also help a lot
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u/DiscombobulatedSun54 Jun 30 '26
Some ship windshields are this way, and some lighthouses have the same setup so that the glass stays clear even in a driving storm.
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u/Chris_Ghoste Aug 01 '26
Nice! Can they make some for cars? In addition to the camera, a centrifugal wiper?
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u/qualityvote2 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
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