Blackmagic Forum

I'm looking record local baseball matches for review and intend to mount a locked off Pocket 4K at the top of the backstop with a wide lens to catch the whole of a baseball field out along the foul lines, and I want to protect the lens and body from any stray foul balls.

Can anybody recommend any good products/solutions?

Thanks in advance

It's not clear if the protection you're looking for is also supposed to achieve the "locked off" feature or simply protection. Also is this intended to be some kind of semi-permanent mount that has to survive heat, cold, rain, humidity, condensation, etc. or only for a couple hours at a time during a game in good weather?

You could simply use an acrylic or polycarbonate box. They have slightly different impact vs scratch resistance tradeoffs but either would probably work (there are various brand names like Plexiglas, Perspex, Lexan, etc.) You could mask off parts of the box to help prevent reflections and/or use a lens hood so that the lens is pressed up against the box so as not to pick up reflections.

You could use an underwater housing but that will likely be as expensive as the camera itself. There are also special enclosures meant for security or hunting cameras but those cameras tend to be quite small compared to a BMPCC4K so it might be hard to find one of an appropriate size.

Thanks - I was wondering about Lexan etc but was concerned about image degradation? With the changeable weather in Scotland I'd worry about reflection/refraction, blooming etc taking me by surprise.

It's only to be set up during the games, and can be bagged if there's any rain forecast.

Mostly what I'd like would be a cage that provides mounting options so it can be locked off, but also provide impact protection to the camera body - I notice they generally don't cover the front of the grip.

A frame assembly that attaches to the cage via rail/rod and allows me to mount some sort of protection for the lens ring would be the other preference (rubber lens hood?). I suppose I could get some aluminium rods and put something together to cover the 3.5" length of the lens and mount ahead of that.

I imagine I can buy some pretty specialised (read: expensive) kit for this, but the budget is minimal so I'm going for the pick-and-mix approach

This is before I work out how to get two P4Ks to communicate both ways to an ATEM Mini Pro ISO - one at the backstop and the other past centre field