"I want to solve all the problems cameramen face". Big task but not an impossible one for somebody like Daniel Sherwin. Working as a news cameraman for 19 years rest assured that he has experienced the problems cameramen face. Making his mark in the invention world with a focus motor a few years back, he is now marketing his latest product, the RD rain deflector. He has also recently sold a patent to a well-known tripod manufacturer to produce another product for the ease and convenience of the cameraman. (we can not yet disclose this new product as it is still on the drawing board).
Daniel now keeps himself busy only with his inventions and manufacturing. Fr
esh out of University after getting his Engineering degree, Daniel went straight into the news gathering business. He worked for the then Visnews and for Channel-4 (UK) covering events from Israel to Moscow, to Washington. While in Washington he fell in love with the Steadicam and bought one for himself. The gearbox of the focus motor on the Steadicam was not what he expected. The day his daughter was born, Daniel bought and set up his first workshop in the garage of his house in London. There he re-constructed the gearbox and manufactured one that he was happy to use with his new Steadicam. He then moved to Israel to help set up the new Israeli channel (Channel-2) and while working there as an executive producer a sponsor contacted him and convinced him to market his focus motor. The FNG-6 hit the market in 1998 "I sold a lot to Hollywood, but what this did for me really was that it was a transition period moving away from television into manufacturing. I learned a lot from the making of the motor, I went to the trade shows, I got to know people and people got to know me and then when I had the idea about the Rain deflector, that’s when everything started falling in place."
He left the news business and completely dedicating his time and his own money he started working towards one problem that he considered serious: raindrops on the lens. "So many years in television you learn one important thing, the power of television is the illusion that the viewer is in the action himself. When the picture is clean the viewer feels he's in it. That’s why we spend all this time and effort to make the picture clean. We get the best cameras, we get the best lenses, we get the best of everything. As long as we are not going live its OK. If you have some dirt or some rain drops on the lenses you can always cut it off in the editing, but when you are going live you have a problem. Its ridiculous, you get drops on the lens and you cannot do anything about it but stop what you are doing and wipe the lens. When I was a producer I remember sitting in the control room and I had rain drops on the lens and I could not cut to that camera until the cameraman cleaned the lens, and then the whole line up changes. That's when I knew something had to be done."
The truth is that camera rain covers have almost been perfected to protect the camera from getting wet but nothing was done to keep raindrops off the front element of the lens. By placing a rotating glass on the front of the lens and creating a motor to spin the glass at such a speed that it is not visible to the eye, the force of the rotation will bounce water off the glass giving you a clean shot. "The idea is not new, it has been used on ships for over 50 years. On the windscreen of the bridge, there would be a large round glass with a motor in the center of it and when it would rotate it would clean the windscreen faster than the wipers, so you could always see through it. That technology was always there, it was not invented, it was there to be found. The cinematographers used the same idea for over 30 years, the motor would be in the middle and they would film through the side, but the glass was big and heavy. And the biggest problem of that is when you have a big mass turning it creates a very big gyro effect. You could only have the camera on a static shot; you could not move it around. The first thing I had to think of getting rid off was the gyro effect."
A rotating piece of glass at high speeds creates an anti-force and Daniel had to find a way to overcome that problem. But before he could even consider the gyro effect he had to first understand water drops. Simple questions such as why drops stick on a vertical pieces of glass, why some drops run down and why some drops just bounce off, were questions that needed answers. With the help of the science-physics department of the University in Tel Aviv these simple questions where answered. After understanding the behavior of drops and how fast the glass had to rotate in order to get rid of the drops, he went into solving the gyro effect. By having 4 wheels moving in the opposite direction of the rotating glass the gyro effect was counter-balanced to the minimum. The size of the wheels, the weight of the wheels and the diameter and weight of the lens, all had to be calculated properly. It took 8 prototypes and much experimentation to arrive at the final product, the RD
"I was investing my own money and my own time, I did not have any competition to work against, so I allowed myself to make all the various mistakes without having to answer to anyone. I could go back to zero and take another direction even if it was costly. I had many problems to overcome, not only how to get rid of the gyro effect but how to get the glass in the rim, how to get the rubber on the wheels, how to get rid of the noise, and how to run the whole thing. There is not a single piece of electronics in here, that can get wet. I took a big risk but I know that this product is a good one and worth that risk"
Daniel spent more time and money trying to make the RD compact, practical, light and user friendly. The glass is easily removed for cleaning, the motor is small and powered by the camera battery and uses minimum power consumption. The RD can be turned on while recording without affecting the picture. The rain cover that comes with the RD as standard has been specially designed to fit around the RD and it has holders for the power cable to hold it out of the way of the cameraman. It fits internal and external focus lenses. The biggest problem faced now is the sound of the motor. Even though cut at a bare minimum it is still audible. An external microphone has to be used when the RD is on.
The applications of the RD are many. Live coverage of sports, live coverage of any event, weather reports, documentaries, even news gathering are to be benefited by a device like this. But its application is not limited to video lenses only. Daniel is expanding into fields such as medical, security and military.
For more information, pricing and dealer lists please visit www.spintec.co.il.
