Padel is booming and everyone wants their matches filmed, but the court fights you: it is small, enclosed in glass and mesh, and half the action happens at the net two metres from where you would love to stand. Here is how to get usable footage with a phone and a cheap mount.
Position: outside the glass, behind one baseline
The best standard position is outside the court, directly behind the glass at one end, elevated if possible. You get one team close, one far, but every rally is visible and the ball stays in frame. Many clubs now have camera mounts or hooks at exactly this spot because of installed court cameras. Ask before you drill or clamp anything.
A fence mount (a £10 phone clamp with a hook) on the mesh above the glass works well. Centre it. A lopsided angle makes every rally look wrong and ruins any chance of decent automated editing later.
Settings for padel specifically
- •1080p at 60fps. Padel points are slower than squash but the smashes still deserve the frame rate.
- •Outdoors, lock exposure for the court, not the sky. Bright sky behind the court will silhouette the players if you let auto exposure choose.
- •If your phone has an ultra-wide lens, use it from behind the glass. The court is 20 x 10 metres and a standard lens crops the corners from that distance.
- •Wind is your audio enemy outdoors. Accept it or use a cheap deadcat cover. Nobody watches padel for the commentary anyway.
Club etiquette (this matters more than settings)
- •Ask everyone on court before you film. Four people, one camera, no surprises.
- •Never mount anything inside the court enclosure. A phone meeting a smash at 120 km/h loses.
- •Balls leave the court constantly. Keep tripods and bags well behind walkways.
- •If the neighbouring court is playing, keep your setup inside your own court's footprint.
Getting highlights without the editing evening
A padel match runs 60 to 90 minutes and the best points are maybe ten of them. CourtEdit's racket sports pipeline is built for this: upload the full recording and the AI detects rallies and trims the dead time between points, so you get a tight match cut and shareable highlights without scrubbing through an hour of footage yourself. Padel support is on the roadmap, and the waitlist hears first when it opens.