Have you heard that the swimmers in Greece will have to swim in a pool with no roof. The "jokers" in Greece, despite having 8 years to prepare for the games, have said that they do not have enough time to finish the roof on the Olympic pool.
It will be 104' approx in August at midday. The water will be too warm for fast times and the glare of the sun will make filming for TV difficult.
Apparently, they are looking at moving heats ( apt word for them ) to early morning or late evening, after the finals !
What effect will this have on results, especially for swimmers who are doing multiple events ( like Phelps ) ?
:mad:
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Former Member
Originally posted by knelson
I don't quite get the bit about it being difficult to get a good picture on TV with no roof. What, they've never filmed an outdoor sporting event on TV?
I do this for a living, and I can tell you that if there's direct sunlight on that pool it will look like ass.
The problem is contrast. Television cameras, even HDTV cameras, do not handle contrast very well. If you have extremely bright and dark areas in the frame, you have to make a choice whether to expose for the bright areas or the dark areas. If you expose for the dark areas, or shadows, the bright areas will "blow out," appearing to glow white hot. If you expose for the bright areas, you won't be able to see any detail in the shadows; they'll just appear black.
Generally there's a limit to how much brightness a television signal can take, so you usually expose the picture for the bright areas and let the shadows go dark. Because swimming pools are generally light-colored, the pool will be very bright. When shooting a swimmer against that bright background, the swimmers will appear very dark. It's like taking a picture of someone indoors, standing against a window.
Other sports have problems with this, but it's not quite as bad. In a football stadium, you have the players against a dark background, so the contrast is not as bad. The players themselves are the brightest thing in the picture. Furthermore, green absorbs light by nature (that's why plants are green). You'll have contrast problems in direct sunlight where you can't see the details in the shadows, such that an instant replay of a fumble in a shadow, for example, may be difficult to see; but imagine how bad it would look if the players played on a white field.
The tarp thing will likely fix the contrast problem, because it will hopefully put a shadow over the entire pool and diffuse the light. It doesn't sound as though it will help much with the heat, though.
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Former Member
Originally posted by knelson
I don't quite get the bit about it being difficult to get a good picture on TV with no roof. What, they've never filmed an outdoor sporting event on TV?
I do this for a living, and I can tell you that if there's direct sunlight on that pool it will look like ass.
The problem is contrast. Television cameras, even HDTV cameras, do not handle contrast very well. If you have extremely bright and dark areas in the frame, you have to make a choice whether to expose for the bright areas or the dark areas. If you expose for the dark areas, or shadows, the bright areas will "blow out," appearing to glow white hot. If you expose for the bright areas, you won't be able to see any detail in the shadows; they'll just appear black.
Generally there's a limit to how much brightness a television signal can take, so you usually expose the picture for the bright areas and let the shadows go dark. Because swimming pools are generally light-colored, the pool will be very bright. When shooting a swimmer against that bright background, the swimmers will appear very dark. It's like taking a picture of someone indoors, standing against a window.
Other sports have problems with this, but it's not quite as bad. In a football stadium, you have the players against a dark background, so the contrast is not as bad. The players themselves are the brightest thing in the picture. Furthermore, green absorbs light by nature (that's why plants are green). You'll have contrast problems in direct sunlight where you can't see the details in the shadows, such that an instant replay of a fumble in a shadow, for example, may be difficult to see; but imagine how bad it would look if the players played on a white field.
The tarp thing will likely fix the contrast problem, because it will hopefully put a shadow over the entire pool and diffuse the light. It doesn't sound as though it will help much with the heat, though.
