Polecam Theia Ultra-Wide-Angle Lens 'Within Reach' At IBC

Polecam has announced its appointment as official broadcast industry distributor of the Theia MY125M ultra-wide-angle effects lens, a stellar performer in Toshiba's Space Chair Project and the mid-summer South African international football tournament.
Polecam Founder and Managing Director Steffan Hewitt commented: "The MY125M is highly effective in sports coverage where you want to capture an entire goal mouth without visible barrel distortion. We first tested it while providing technical consultancy to Grey Advertising on a commercial for a new range of Toshiba LCD television displays.
"The results were excellent and the lenses were used during a series of balloon flights reaching 98,000 feet, the edge of space. Each lens was fitted to a Toshiba IK-HR1S camera also supplied by Polecam and mounted on a light-weight boom, capturing actual footage of an armchair suspended high above the Nevada desert.
"The system also included two nanoFlash solid-state HD recorders and an auxiliary camera with a fisheye lens pointing straight downwards. Everything hit -60 degrees Celsius at one point and still functioned faultlessly. Lenses, cameras and recorders all survived high-altitude operation in near-vacuum conditions, re-entry velocities faster than Mach 1 and 30 miles-per-hour parachute-assistted landings. 'Out of this world' is an over-used phrase, but it certainly applied to the footage achieved.
"We also supplied the same cameras and lenses to Camera Corps for integration into their Net-Cam system, capturing Frank Lampard's now historic disallowed goal which looks set to revolutionise the way in which major-league football matches are refereed. This equipment is perfect for the application."
Designed for use with 1/3 inch single-CCD or CMOS cameras of up to 5 megapixel resolution, the C-mounting MY125M captures a massive 125 degree horizontal field of view with high geometric precision and 10 cm to infinity focal depth. Aperture is manually adjustable between F1.8 and fully closed.
Polecam Camera Systems Sales Manager Nigel Paine said: "The MY125M effects lens greatly simplifies the task of capturing video content in confined spaces such as a car or in tight indoor locations. On a larger scale, it allows huge areas of a stadium to be covered from a single viewpoint without need for a pan-and-tilt unit. Barrel distortion is less than three per cent so the geometric accuracy is incomparably superior to traditional fisheye lenses."
Rated for operation across a temperature range of -20 to +60 Celsius, the MY125M weighs just 100 grammes, is 54 mm in length and 36 mm in diameter. Being a rectillinear lens, the image is top-down so the camera must be mounted upside-down or the output inverted electronically.
The Theia MY125M makes it European debut on Polecam's IBC 2010 stand, 10.C49.
(KMcA/BMcC)