Why do the pictures look so distorted? Are the rowers really rowing that badly?The Schuylkill Navy uses a Lynx timing camera for all its regattas and many others on the Schuylkill. The camera is a high speed, high resolution digital camera taking a very narrow picture of the finish line. For rowing, we adjust it to about 250 frames a second. For faster sports, like auto racing, it can go up to 2,000 frames per second.
A microwave signal from the starting line starts the race clock in the Finish Lynx software. As the boats appraoch the finish line, "capture" is turned on and the images from the camera stream into the laptop. After each boat has crossed the finish line, we click on the bow of the boat and identify the bow number. The Finish Lynx software then assigns the race time.
From the Finish Lynx web site:
A FinishLynx® line-scan camera only sees a very narrow piece of the world - the finish line. It looks at the finish line many times a second and stores each of these images.
So you are seeing a sliver of space photographed 1,000 times a second, then the slivers assembled next to each other. It's not a panorama in space, but in time. It's fast and extremely accurate.
Check out the Lynx web site for a more technical explanation. Click on Products, then FinishLynx, then the "Show me the Athletics animation" bar for a good demonstration.