
The physics of baseball as illustrated by Fox's new 5000 fps camera - jonknee
http://webusers.npl.illinois.edu/~a-nathan/pob/HighSpeedClips.html
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beefsack
They've been running high FPS cameras for Australian cricket coverage for
nearly 10 years now. It's amazing to see the difference it makes in hitting
the ball with the sweet spot of the bat, and is generally really beautiful
footage to watch.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu_bMgmd3O0>

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bbgm
Awesome stuff. Australian sports camera work, especially for cricket, has
always been ahead of the curve.

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tambourine_man
And here we are using 15MB gifs in 2012.

Great images nevertheless.

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panabee
the images are huge, but the quality is much higher than i expected for a GIF.
is there something special rendering done to preserve the quality of the
image, or is this fairly standard for animated GIFs?

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TeMPOraL
Images are actually larger (see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4681670>), but scaled down on website, so
that may make them look as if they had the quality they don't have. Though the
big versions don't look that bad either.

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callmeed
Great images.

FYI Marco Scutaro of the Giants (last 2 images) is a fun hitter to watch. He
has the highest contact rate (over 94%) in all of baseball—meaning no matter
who is pitching, he can usually swing and put the ball in play.

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sreyaNotfilc
I agree. He's kicking butt this post season. The man has great mechanics and
is just clutch (knock on wood). Now Hunter Pence. Good grief, that guy looks
atrocious at the plate.

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defen
Hunter Pence has always been a guy who made up for absolutely terrible
baseball knowledge / talent by being a beast of an athlete. I imagine we'll
see a rapid drop in his ability as he gets into his early 30s.

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jonknee
From the Wired article about the camera that is linked in the OP (which is
actually quite interesting in its own right):

[http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/10/high-speed-camera-at-
gi...](http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/10/high-speed-camera-at-
giantscardinals-game-puts-a-new-spin-on-viewing-baseball/?pid=3998)

> they [FOX] also plan to roll out another Vision Research camera for the
> World Series that shoots up to 20,000 frames per second with a 500 mm lens.

> At that speed Davies says viewers should be able to clearly see things like
> the bending of a bat when it hits the ball or the impression the bat leaves
> on the ball when it first makes contact.

The most impressive part of this to me is that they are able to do these high
fps shots without good lighting. Normally you want some really high powered
strobes to help out. But they're doing this in either daylight or even more
impressively just with the game lights. Must be some really awesome ISO
performance.

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probnotMitt
One of the coolest things for me about games that span the day/night barrier
is watching more and more cameras activate the automatic flash. I wonder if
all those camera flashes are bright enough to have an effect on these shots.

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jonknee
You mean cameras from the crowd? They have no effect other than to look cool
(opening ceremonies at the Olympics come to mind). It's mostly people not
knowing how to operate their camera or a general lack of photography
knowledge.

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nealabq
Here's an idea: An app that links all the wireless phone/cameras in an arena
and syncs the flashes. Phone buzzes, you hold it up (with everyone else), they
all flash. You could even spell out words or do the wave. Or play Conway's
Life.

Unless it's already patented.

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jonknee
Coldplay uses something similar:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_H7qdvg9xWM)

Not phone based though, which is a good thing if my experience in using phones
in high capacity crowds is typical.

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probnotMitt
This is neat, thanks. They're called Xylobands, flash in sync with the music
and are radio controlled via a transmitter and laptop that the company rents
you for your event. <http://xylobands.com/glowbands-product_info.php>

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cynwoody
At 90 mph and 5000 fps, a ball needs about 9 frames to move its own diameter.

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charonn0
The last video of the bat slowing down exactly as it contacts the ball would
make Isaac Newton proud.

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hammock
The turning radius appears to lengthen as well

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kghose
At a higher fps
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFlEIybC7rU&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFlEIybC7rU&feature=related)

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comex
Wow, talk about repetition and crappy narration almost ruining a very
interesting few clips.

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ImprovedSilence
These images are fantastic. I bet players would love to get the videos of
themselves at these kinds of camera speeds, as it could do wonders for working
on your swing. And you could finally understand why coach would always say
"don't drop your elbow!"

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byjess
I would have thought 5000fps would produce slower footage.

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jacques_chester
You can selectively "speed up" the footage by dropping or merging frames.

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karlshea
Which is actually demonstrated in the Cricket footage elsewhere on the page.

At one point a player almost catches the ball and they slow down the video
even more to show how close he was.

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jtheory
With these images in my head, this xkcd What-If is suddenly more frightening:

<http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/>

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pdeuchler
I wish this guy had been my physics professor

