John Lucas
Dick and Barbara. Here is a very crude sketch of the Boom Arm. I talked to Mike tonight and he has drawings and photos he's going to send me. He's also working on an improvement and may have it done by next week to bring to the club meeting.
I certainly agree with Lyle. The camera should be mobile and that's what Mike is trying to do. The problem with holding the camera or even holding a tripod close to the demonstrator is that it's hard to stay out of everyones way and still get the video. This boom arm should help that. Mike and I discussed several options for improving the videos and will look into it over the next few months. As everyone knows, video of demonstrators is a tough job and quite often done poorly due to either neglect by the person running the camera, the quality of the equipment, or all of the above. We are going to try and work on that so that next years TAW symposium will have some sort of system so that everyone in the room can see the monitors and the camera can be placed in such a way to give the best view.
Mike and I also discussed ways of training camera operators. We think that if you the system up at club meetings and have people run the cameras who will be volunteer operators at the symposium, they can practice under a much less tense atmosphere. We can then discuss with them ways of doing it better.
Anyway I'll talk about that later. Here's the sketch. You push on the top lever and it moves the top of the camera platform forward so that the camera tilts down. Pull back and the camera tilts up. You know how a demonstrator leans over when turning the inside of a bowl and gets his or her arm in the photo so you can't see in. With this system I simply moved the boom arm to the right and in closer. Tilted the camera down and had a perfect image of the tool doing the cutting. To do this with a camera on a regular tripod I would be blocking the view of most of the right side of the room.
I'll post the photos and drawings after Mike sends them to me.