Have you ever turned the TV on to an in-progress football game, and everything looks normal, but then the broadcast cuts to a closeup of someone on the sideline, and you're surprised to learn that it's actually pouring rain?

It cuts back to the wide shot of the field for the next play, and now you know it's raining hard, but you still can't tell. Why is that?

Well, it's all about the cameras.

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Raindrops: too small on wide shots

Rain is just hard to capture on video, in general. In filmmaking, scenes shot during torrential downpours may look like it's just foggy or drizzling, and it's all because of frame rates. Check out this blog post from WeVideo, which explains it in detail.

You might be thinking about iconic rain scenes in some of your favorite movies and wondering why you could see the rain. Well, it was probably artificially created. And it was probably set at night, because daytime rain is even harder to capture on camera.

StudioBinder, however, may have put it best: "Raindrops are small and nearly transparent, and at a standard shutter speed they blur into nothing."

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So when you're watching the wide shot of live action on a football field, you're seeing footage filmed from a "hard cam." They are shooting from so far away from the field, and with their camera settings, the rain is just too small and see-through to register on camera.

You'll usually only notice rain during closeup shots of players and coaches on the sidelines, because those cameras are much closer to their subjects, meaning they use a different focal length. When they track a player against the dark backdrop of the crowd or the night sky — especially right in front of a stadium light — the rain suddenly becomes highly visible.

Camera angles and lens spinners

Another way you can see rain during the broadcast is when the raindrops actually get on the camera lenses. This can have a huge negative impact on the viewing experience, but networks combat it in different ways, so it doesn't happen often.

Hard cams are positioned high up in the stadium, usually on the same tier as the press box or upper deck. They sit under protective hoods and are pointed downward, toward the field, which usually prevents the rain from getting on the lenses.

Sometimes, though, it's too windy.

In this 2024 game in Baltimore, the wind was so strong it was blowing the rain onto the camera lenses so much that crew members weren't able to keep up with wiping them fast enough.

At field level, cameras get these motorized deflector kits to keep the rain off. They move incredibly fast, over 3,000 rpm, making them invisible to the camera lens and human eye. See how it works in this video.