The camera pod has been custom-built to meet our requirements (see photo). It has been designed to carry either a stills format camera or DVCAM.

Currently we operate an Olympus E20P digital SLR for stills work.

For DVCAM work we mount a Sony DSR-PD150P. This is a professional quality digital recording camera; it incorporates three 1/3-inch CCDs with 450,000 pixels (effective 400,000 pixels). The 1/3-inch size contributes to the high sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio; these CCDs are capable of both interlace scan and progressive scan, which is useful for recording still images or shooting a moving subject and exporting a frame of the image as a still picture to a PC for processing.

The DSR is primarily used for documentary-style footage and all functions are controlled remotely by the cameraman (effectively up to 1000m line-of-sight). All up weight, including batteries, is approx 3.5kg - well within the overall load capacity limits.