CANON LENSES AND
SERVICE SCORE AGAIN IN WORLD CUP 2006
Top quality levels in both SD and HD maintained
by dedicated Canon staff
The World Cup, Germany, 2006.
Football’s greatest tournament, contested
by the world’s great footballing nations.
Vast crowds filled the superb German stadiums:
but their numbers were miniscule by comparison
to the millions watching at a distance -
whether on big screens in city centres everywhere,
in bars throughout the world, or simply
in the millions of homes tuned in to every
game. And it was to these audiences that
Canon technology and dedication made a big
World Cup difference.
The Canon lenses at the Cup
Host Broadcast Services, HBS,
produced the television and radio signals
for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. They contracted
6 Outside broadcast companies who all together
deployed 7 OB vans to cover the outside
broadcasts over 12 venues. These included
two trucks from UK company Visions and one
from the French company VCF, who used for
the most part Canon HD zoom lenses XJ86x9.3.
But many individual broadcasters
contracted additional facility companies
to add enriched pictures to the HBS feed,
including the Dutch Outside Broadcast, the
German TVN and many more, all of whom make
much use of Canon lenses. The end result:
of the lenses used in the World Cup the
majority – well over 200 – came
from Canon.
Great lenses – with
great service
What came to Germany with
the Canon lenses was a unique standard of
service. To make sure the lenses performed
superbly every time and got all those special
shots, Canon deployed two dedicated German
service centres to give advice, maintain
hard-worked lenses and solve problems.
The service shop was open
from 9am to 6pm every day: even more importantly
a team of 5 Canon technicians drove up and
down Germany to ensure that 2 were present
at every match, and offering a 24-hour emergency
service back-up. We reckon they did more
miles than most of the football teams –
on and off the pitch included!
Getting super slow-mo fast
One unique difference Canon helped make
to this World Cup was to capture the very
detailed slow-motion shots, which were replayed
immediately during the broadcasts, often
exposing trickery that even the referees
failed to spot. They were shot with the
new ‘Hi-Motion’ high speed camera
from ARRI, an HD camera that can shoot 920x1080
in 300 f/ps. The camera uses B4 broadcast
lenses and was equipped with an XJ86x zoom
lens.
“We tested the Canon
XJ100x and the XJ86x on this camera before
the Cup, and were satisfied that this was
the high quality lens we needed to zoom
into the action - or foul play - on the
field” – Andy Hayford - Digital
High-Speed Project Manager.
Capturing the beauties – human and
otherwise…
HBS asked TVN to equip 14
teams of HBS camera staff with cameras and
Canon lenses to travel through Germany and
shoot images of the people and activities
around the stadiums - and the beauties of
each host city. 24 Canon lenses were used,
mostly the J17ex7.7, but also the J11ex4.5
for the wide-angle shots, and the J22ex7.6
for shooting more telecine.
TVN also had their OB trucks
shooting the matches for German and Japanese
TV in both SD and HD. Again, they used 100%
Canon lenses: the big box lenses XJ25 and
XJ86x were the main choice in the stadiums.
So Canon proved once again
at the World Cup, just as they had at the
Turin Winter Olympics, at Athens 2004 and
at many other major world sporting events,
that the winning technology and service
comes from Canon.
SOME CANON SERVICE WINNERS
FROM THE WORLD CUP
• Service stories highlighted
