Ikegami cameras give new bite to Jaguars football

By Andrew Lippe

The Jacksonville Jaguars in-stadium production is using five Ikegami HL-65W full-digital broadcast cameras and a tapeless Ikegami DNS-33W Editcam3 camcorder at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. Adam Lane, senior producer for the Jacksonville Jaguars, says the cameras were added to help the Jaguars infrastructure go fully digital.

“The HL-65s are used to capture in stadium action and then send it to our Daktronics Jumbroton,” explains Lane. The cameras operate in 16:9 mode and help eradicate previous scoreboard issues.

“In instant replays players’ feet would be cut off and it would be hard to distinguish if their feet were out of bounds,” adds Lane. The 16:9 aspect ratio also allows fans to more easily see the sidelines on the scoreboard. The Jaguars operate a digital control room based on a Ross Video production switcher to deliver vibrant and clearer pictures from the cameras to the board.

The Jaguars also are going tapeless with a DNS-33W Editcam3. The camera is a wireless camera and is used to shoot sponsored elements as well as locker room interviews. The DNS-33W Editcam3 has a portable FieldPak that can easily be dropped in an Avid nonlinear editing system (the camera was originally designed by both Ikegami and Avid).

“We were used to transferring Beta tapes,” says Lane. “Now the plug and play lets us drop footage into the Avid.”