Penguin cams

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FreeFlow
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Joined: Mar 1 2012
I have been watching the new BBC series about penguins with the much touted penguin cams. Call me pedantic if you will, but it appears that the actual disguised penguin cams are rather much a gimmick. 99% of the footage that is being shown has either been shot by a "real" camera, or the shots are of the penguin cams moving their heads, waddling along etc again taken by normal cameras.
 
If they are getting so much better footage with the normal cameras, as well as not seemingly having any problems inserting those bigger normal cameras into the colonies, what then is the purpose/advantage of the gimmicky penguin cams?!
John Willett
John Willett's picture
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Joined: Jun 1 2001
Re: Penguin cams
I, too, have been watching this.
 
But there are lots of "penguin cams" and the photo of a penguin cam may have been taken by another penguin cam.
 
So it's not easy to be sure if there was a man at the other end of the camera or whether it was a remote-controlled camera hidden inside a dummy penguin.

John
 
A picture tells a thousand words, but sound tells a thousand pictures.

tom hardwick
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Joined: Apr 8 1999
Re: Penguin cams
I'm wondering about battery life and so on with the little egg-cam.  Obviously humans have to recharge the eggs or replace the batteries and collect the SD cards and so on.  Or are these things all done remotely these days?  There's too much trickery going on for me - making a feature of the way the footage was collected rather than making us wonder how such shots were obtained.
 
tom.
col lamb
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Joined: Jan 2 2010
Re: Penguin cams
In answer to.................what then is the purpose/advantage of the gimmicky penguin cams?!.......................viewers

Col Lamb Lancashire UK ASUS P6X58D-E MOBO, 3.3GHz hex core i7 CPU, 12GB RAM, nVidia GTX580 GPU, W7 64bit, 500Gb boot, 1Tb RAID (Mirror) Store, 500Gb RAID (stripped), Edius 6.05, CS 5.5