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Sony Twilight Football in Australia

By David Hague

A few weeks ago, Sony did an almost simultaneous launch of a swag of new cameras, compacts and camcorders in far-flung and remote places around the globe. 'Almost' simultaneous because of time zone differences and far flung, because the Australian leg was held about as far from most centres of population as you can get - the Pinnacles in the desert sands 300Km (200 miles approx) north of Perth in Western Australia. Perth is widely accepted as the most remote capital city (in this case the capital of Western Australia) in the world.

Canberra, the country's capital, and Sydney, the tourist centre are over 4000Km to the east! Between them is well, not much. Oh of course Ayres Rock, now called Uluru it's aboriginal name, is bang in the middle, but the rest is mostly desert.So why was the location picked for the launch as against the bright lights and civilisation of the Sydney Opera House, the charms of the Great Barrier Reef or the mystery of Uluru even?

Quite simple; the light. In conjunction with these launches - others were in a bull ring in Spain, Venice on a canal, in England at ancient Camelot, in the Iguazu Falls in Argentina and more - was a theme of Twilight Soccer. Teams selected from the most promising players from the UK, Italy, South Africa, Australia, and other countries who won competitions (as did spectators to attend certain matches) played a knockout series of soccer in the twilight at these iconic locations.

Sony HDR XR520  with GPS.

The pitches used were not full sized, but the same as used for indoor soccer, as were the rules. The idea was for the invited journalists to be shown and experience the new Exmor R CMOS sensors released in selected cameras and judge for themselves - hence the twilight matches.

Sony's soccer match in the Pinnacles

And the results I have to say are exceptional. I had a play with both the latest Sony alphas and their top of the range HandyCam as was more than suitably impressed. The HandyCam (XDR HR 520) as well as excellent low light also has GPS mapping built in, superb anti-shake capabilities and even a 12Mp still camera.The capabilities of the camcorder were tested by mounting it on a Hague car mount bolted to the headrest of my Monaro (Pontiac GTO to our US friends) for the last 150Kms. The footage was better than any I have ever managed from a camcorder on this mount. Battery life was an issue, expiring after about two hours, but I am assured by Sony this is not normal so further tests are under way.

As the sun set behind the sand dunes ridging along one side of the natural amphitheatre set up for the match, the last orange rays highlighted the tops of the ancient stones - and there are thousands of them - giving a surreal atmosphere to the whole area. This was the moment for which the location had been picked, and thankfully the weather had been kind.The soccer match itself, two halves of 20 minutes was frenetic, the UK time finally arising above their protagonists to take out the match. The series overall was taken out by Australia at a match versus South Africa at the Aquila Game Reserve.

David Hague comes from a photographic family with both his father and older brother having been professional photographers. David's experiences include writing and directing the suite of training videotapes for Microsoft for Office and Windows, training tapes for Filemaker Pro and Autocad Lite and numerous TV commercials, documentaries and corporate videos. He was for 3 years the Managing Editor of Australian Video Camera Publications and is now publishing and editing AusCam magazine and PC Update. He has a bent for fishing and motor sport and is an unashamed Aussie who makes a killer Home Brew. David lives in the south west of Western Australia among the dolphins and pelicans of Mandurah, 45 minutes south of the capital, Perth.

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