TeeUp
Filming guide

How to film a swing TeeUp can read

TeeUp scores what it can clearly see. This is the setup — height, distance, angle, frame rate, and light — that gives it the best chance of a clean read. It works the same way whether you're using TeeUp or not: this is just what body-pose tracking needs.

Phone height: hip to hand height

Prop the phone so the lens sits somewhere between your hip and your hands at address — roughly belt-buckle to belt-buckle height off the ground. Ground-level or head-height shots distort the body proportions the pose model relies on, especially for hip and shoulder turn.

Distance: whole body and the club, in frame

Back up far enough that your whole body and the entire club — including the follow-through, when your hands finish high — stay inside the frame for the whole swing. As a starting point:

  • Face-on: about 3 meters (10 feet) from the golfer.
  • Down-the-line: about 4 meters (13 feet) behind the golfer, along the target line.

If a hand, a foot, or the clubhead at the top of the backswing is cropped out of frame in a few test shots, back up more.

Camera angle: exactly face-on, or straight down the target line

TeeUp scores two camera positions and no others: face-on (the camera looking straight at your chest, perpendicular to the target line) and down-the-line (the camera behind you, looking straight down the target line toward the target). Both are shown below.

Target Target line Face-on ~3 m

Face-on

Camera perpendicular to the target line, framing your whole body and full swing arc.

Target Down-the-line ~4 m

Down-the-line

Camera behind you, on the target line, looking straight down it toward the target.

A three-quarter angle — anywhere between those two positions — looks natural to the eye, but it foreshortens your limbs and hides joints behind your body from the camera's point of view. The pose model can't recover angles or turn amounts it can't see, so TeeUp marks those swings "Not scored" rather than guess.

Frame rate: just record in TeeUp

TeeUp's own Record tab films at the fastest frame rate your iPhone offers (240 fps on recent models) automatically, and plays it back at normal speed — no Slo-mo mode, no settings. Videos you import from the Camera app work too; at the default 30 fps the timing is a little coarser.

Lighting: even light, no backlight

Shoot with the light in front of or beside you, not behind you. A bright sky, window, or floodlight directly behind the golfer silhouettes the body, and a silhouette has no visible joints to track. Overcast daylight or a well-lit indoor bay both work well.

Hold it still: tripod or a solid lean

A small tripod or phone clip is worth the $15. If you don't have one, lean the phone against a golf bag, bucket, or range-basket stand so it doesn't move or tilt mid-swing. Handheld filming almost always drifts during the swing, which the pose model reads as camera motion, not body motion.

What breaks detection

  • Baggy or very loose clothing that hides the outline of your joints
  • Other people walking through the frame, or standing close behind you
  • Panning, zooming, or tilting the camera during the swing
  • A three-quarter or angled view instead of face-on or down-the-line
  • Heavy backlight that silhouettes the golfer
  • Cropping out a hand, foot, or the clubhead at the top or finish

Get the setup right and TeeUp has what it needs. Get any one of these wrong and it will tell you — "Not scored" — rather than hand you a number it made up.