CBS Sports Golf Cameraman Pushed to Limits To Capture Swarming Drones for 60 Minutes

Sunday night’s 60 Minutes report on swarming drones required some sharp camera work. After all, the drones not only are moving fast but measure less than a foot and can zig and zag with a nimbleness that would make a hummingbird jealous. In fact, it took more than a year to figure out how to capture them in action. The solution? A couple of camera operators from CBS Sports, a Sony HDC-4300 camera, and a Phantom camera. Read on to check out the behind-the-scenes report.

Rudy Niedermeyer tapped into his golf-coverage skills to capture Perdix swarming drones in flight for a report for “60 Minutes.”

The Perdix drone is self-directed, so the flight trajectory is different from that of a golf ball, says producer Mary Walsh. “It flies in an unpredictable way, and even the technicians can’t control where they’re going.”

CBS Sports golf camera operator Rudy Niedermeyer used a special camera for the shoot. CBS News operations guru Frank Governale worked with the 60 Minutes team to acquire the Sony HDC-4300, a new 4K camera that allowed Niedermeyer to shoot 480 frames per second. It’s currently in use at the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB World Series, and The Masters golf tournament, according to Sony. The camera is attached by cable to a server and allows footage to be slowed down so that TV viewers can see, for example, a golf ball as it soars to the fairway.

Niedermeyer made repeated attempts to shoot one to eight Perdix drones in flight, applying the techniques he uses for capturing a golf ball: start wide, get comfortable with the shot, then zoom in tighter, tighter, tighter.

Click here to read (and watch) the entire behind-the-scenes report.