Looks to be an amazing piece of engineering but seriously, what's the usecase? It looks to be targeted at the amateur market ('shoot like the pros') and I just don't see the demand or workability in this space.
To pick on a few hinted at on the page:
A game of football: Leaving a camera on a tripod on the sideline while I'm focused on the game? Not in any park I've ever played in. Taking the stick from my teammates for being enough of a nerd to set this up?
Skiing: Putting a camera on a tripod, unattended, on the piste? Then get the lift up to the top so you can ski back down towards the camera? Again, I can't see this ending well for the poor old camera.
Dirt biking/other extreme sports: because people often do these alone, and so need an automated cameraman to get any filming done?
EDIT: reading some of these comments my opinion has changed, there are more compelling use cases for this than I first thought of (like letting the person who would have done the filming relax and watch the event, whilst still attending to the camera, that's a great one). This is amazing tech but the main limiting factor for now is the risk of leaving such expensive equipment unattended. When the price falls I have no doubt this will be an extremely widely used tech, as widely used as cameras themselves are now.
I think you underestimate the utility. Think of parents or family members that attend football games. They're often stuck watching the game "through the viewfinder" if they want to film it ... this frees them up to look with their eyes. You also underestimate extreme sports where you want to film a trick over a given obstacle. This would be fantastic for skateboarders. Boxers who want to film themselves during a workout, or a fight to review their form could use this for sure.
etc. etc. ... just because you don't anecdotally see the demand doesn't mean it's not there ;)
I'm surprised too that no one has mentioned the adult industry (either actual professionals or possibly among some amateurs / semi-pros). One could easily imagine this sort of ting being useful there, where quality is probably "good enough" and an actual cameraman too expensive.
Others have added that this version has a minimum range of 25 feet, which may scupper it for many, but long video lenses are available.
yea, the problem is I highly doubt it actually works well for the football use case. Think about a basketball or football game. What happens when the QB fires a pass? How does the cam know which player to follow? What about a bball fastbreak where a bunch of players are moving and only one player is moving far ahead of the others, how does it know to follow him? For boxers, and skateboarders I could see this working easily though...
When it's a football or basketball game, most people are only interested in one person - their kid. To hell with the quarterback. In a professional setting, there would be more than one camera anyway. It would make sense for each of the big deal athletes to have a tracking camera on them.
Immediate use: presentations, accurately tracking the speaker without having to hire someone to keep camera on subject the whole time. Even moreso when multiple cameras. Just need one A/V control booth person, much cheaper to buy several of these than hire several cameramen.
Think TED Talks, Apple Keynotes, anything fairly big-budget where chasing the random motions of the speaker just doesn't look on par with the money going in & out of the presentation.
Live production is ALL about reliability. A boring lights-up lights-down corporate show ALWAYS has 2 $100,000 light boards in active/hot standby even though one $50 DMX controller would do.
We always opt for wired where possible, even if wireless exists. We are paranoid about secure and safe cable runs. When wireless is necessary, we transmit on multiple frequencies with smart frequency-hopping algorithms so that if two of them get interference, the content still comes through on the third.
We have a visceral distrust of rechargeable batteries. We swap out AAs and 9-volts (only the brands we trust) obsessively. A good sound engineer is made very uncomfortable by (and thus obsessively monitors) battery-powered devices in the critical path.
In short: there's no way you're going to get respectable production companies to trust this thing. One, it flies, Two, it's battery. Three, it's RF. Under these circumstances, we proceed with EXTREME caution. We'd much rather build truss to get a camera where it needs to go, run cables to it, mat and tape them as appropriate. Automation is okay, but there is existing, battle-tested camera automation and it's not even that widespread yet.
Film production, maybe. A blown take isn't free, but it's pretty cheap. A flying camera at WWDC hitting battery starvation, motor failure, RF interference, etc. is the end of the world in that line of work.
As a parent it would be a very welcome thing to be able to watch something your kids are doing and record it at the same time without sacrificing the quality of either experience.
I think this is one of the best use cases outside of the sports market. I really dislike sitting behind a lens for lots of subtle experiences with kids, but at the same time I want a nice recording of it afterwards. It seems like this would help with that situation.
Have you ever seen the average non-professional try to work a camera to follow any kind of motion? So maybe in cases where it's likely that your camera will walk off, you leave somebody to guard the whole rig—this thing looks like it will almost certainly take a better video or series of photos than the average person.
Sure, I guess the main thing it comes down to is cost, and likelihood of the camera being stolen or damaged when left unattended.
It's fundamentally very cool and if it was cheap enough to be essentially throw away, or at least pretty easily replaceable, I think there would be a massive demand. But that won't be true for a long time.
I think you're being a bit too pessimistic. As an amateur athlete, I can definitely see the utility (albeit limited) in this. There are lots of parks in my area (I live in Ottawa... obviously this is location specific) where I could set this up and not worry about it being stolen. And I wouldn't set this up for a game, but it would be useful while practicing/training - and my teammates would not give me shit about it.
I can't comment much on the other use cases that you've gone over, but as an amateur athlete this is totally something I could use. That said, I would rather rent this than own it.
"Looks to be an amazing piece of engineering but seriously, what's the usecase? "
This product is almost a reverse example of why you can't ask people of whether they need your product (Steve Jobs examples) since they could overestimate what they would buy until it comes time to actually do so.
My first reaction was "this is cool I have to have one!" and I thought of one case in particular where I was trying to film my car accelerating (a 911) but couldn't get my wife to come with me and besides she wouldn't do a good job anyway. But then I thought "well is filming that event important enough to get involved with this product at that price point and do I really need another practically single use gadget to have to deal with and learn to use?" I still haven't even bought a quadracopter with video (new dji 4 model) and it's not for price reasons. In the end I am thinking "ok so I will have all of this cool video then what do I do with the video exactly?" It's not that I wouldn't enjoy using these types of things but I have toys that I don't have the time to play with right now.
Skiing: Putting a camera on a tripod, unattended, on the piste? Then get the lift up to the top so you can ski back down towards the camera? Again, I can't see this ending well for the poor old camera.
On the other hand, this represents a great business opportunity for ski resorts. The ski resort has a few soloshots mounted near the snowboarding rail park, and $5 lets you wear a tracking armband for 5 minutes. Drop it in the bucket at the end of your run, get an ID number which will allow you to download your footage at the end of the day.
In fact, if a ski resort wanted throw a ton of money at this problem, they could put soloshots along the entire mountain, and you rent an armband for an entire run down the mountain. That would however require sophisticated software on their end to collate all of the camera feeds and stitch together a single video file of your run down the mountain.
That is brilliant. But nothing says they have to stitch the video for you. Giving you access to all your clips would be enough, specially if there is some footage overlap. You might want to transition from one clip to the next in a unique way.
The problem I see with that setup though would be deciding which person to follow when two trackers are competing for camera time. I imagine the base has some sort of logic to make that decision but it would suck to be the person that keeps getting missed because you are always right behind someone that the base gave a higher priority.
One of the cool features is outside of the band tracking: you can upload a file to the Soloshot to do some awesome timelapse panning. Useful for a lot of situations including celestial or just those generally gorgeous long pans.
I agree. It's very neat, but I can't see where the users will be.
Most outdoor events, I wouldn't leave a camera on a tripod alone.
I thought it might be useful for people who make Youtube videos: these people usually work alone and it's a hassle to get actors sometimes--but in these situations, we have the tech for cheaper to already control the camera from a little far away with more control so I can't see that really having a lot of user base either.
Seems like there are a lot of use cases for this. Take a backcountry ski outfit. Set a few of these up on your trails. Sell videos to people you charter. A ski resort could even use them instead of hiring people to go out and take videos/pictures. Also, there are loads of people who go surfing alone on remote beaches.
If you look at the success of GoPro, drones, etc. then this seems like a definite winner.
When I was younger and studying martial arts extensively, I would have killed for something like this. Mirrors only get you so far, and I only had so many patient friends who would sit around and film me so I could work on my technique.
I can see it having similar utility for people studying dance (solo, ballroom, etc.)
> A game of football: Leaving a camera on a tripod on the sideline while I'm focused on the game? Not in any park I've ever played in. Taking the stick from my teammates for being enough of a nerd to set this up?
If it's affordable, I can see this being big with parents and coaches of youth athletes. Go to a children's soccer game (or ice hockey here in Canada) and see how many parents have their cameras out, but would rather be relaxing on their lawn chair than making sure they are catching all the action.
A lot of people for training also like to be able to record themselves and see what they need to work on. Often times you're alone training in a field or something and it could be nice to have the camera follow you.
Now that is a good point. You could still have someone sitting near the tripod, but now they don't have to be paying attention to the camera-- they can enjoy the moment.
When I lived in the US I used to run the camera to record basketball games of our women's team every now and then. AFAIK pretty much all high school teams do it for analysis. Instantly gets better with this (assuming it can track well enough, the examples with bad scrolling tend to be focused on following a single person)
I agree that its uses are probably more practically limited than the demo videos show. However, event photography and videography are pretty big sub-markets.
I meant this to be a bit tongue in cheek, of course this wouldn't actually happen in any serious way or matter if it did, but suppose it hints at a broader point that tech needs to be inconspicuous to have mass, everyday appeal.
I'll admit, setting up an automated camera tripod rig at a non-professional sport event would make me feel a bit awkward.. and dare I say pretentious. That's just me, I only take part in really amateur level sport where this would be the case. I can totally see lots of more serious/competitive athletes going for this.
To pick on a few hinted at on the page:
A game of football: Leaving a camera on a tripod on the sideline while I'm focused on the game? Not in any park I've ever played in. Taking the stick from my teammates for being enough of a nerd to set this up?
Skiing: Putting a camera on a tripod, unattended, on the piste? Then get the lift up to the top so you can ski back down towards the camera? Again, I can't see this ending well for the poor old camera.
Dirt biking/other extreme sports: because people often do these alone, and so need an automated cameraman to get any filming done?
EDIT: reading some of these comments my opinion has changed, there are more compelling use cases for this than I first thought of (like letting the person who would have done the filming relax and watch the event, whilst still attending to the camera, that's a great one). This is amazing tech but the main limiting factor for now is the risk of leaving such expensive equipment unattended. When the price falls I have no doubt this will be an extremely widely used tech, as widely used as cameras themselves are now.