About Us

We were unhappy. We were very unhappy.

We have been using professional photo finish cameras for 30 years. We are a tech company, and we have also been building software for 30 years. So naturally, we like to integrate things into our workflows.

We also do video at many horse races and horse tracks, and we always wanted to integrate photo finish more deeply into that live video workflow.

We did not want one operator who only stares at the photo finish screen. Our operator also looks at the race recordings and the video workflow. We always wanted a dashboard for that operator. Not just photo finish, but a real operator dashboard.

That dashboard should show the race name, whether the clock is running, whether the camera is armed, whether the video recording is working, and other important race-day information. One big screen. One operator dashboard.

Traditional photo finish systems say: no, this is built for one dedicated operator.

We understand that. But why should that be the only way?

On a horse race day, there is one race every half hour, maybe 12 races per day. Having one operator only stare at one monitor the entire time is a waste of money and resources.

So we do it differently. The photo finish person is integrated into the whole live video workflow.

That is the story behind why we wanted more integration.

If the photo finish operator only sees a small number running on one specific monitor, then it is hard to share resources and hard to integrate that role into the broader production.

Another thing we have is a very impatient commentator. He always wanted the race result very, very fast.

So what did we do? We gave him his own monitor, mirroring the photo finish operator’s monitor. But of course, that is not the perfect solution.

What we really wanted was a viewing monitor where he could immediately see what he needed, without seeing the entire mirrored operator screen.

Why did we want this?

Because if he sees the photo finish right away, and he knows exactly what happened in the race, he can use his own racing knowledge immediately. He enjoys having the result fast. And of course, it is also a double check. Did we make the right decision?

At the horse track, people always want very fast results. Why? Because people should continue betting. They need to get their money back quickly so they can use it for the next race instead of taking it home.

So everybody is pushing us: be faster, be faster, be faster. But also make zero mistakes.

That is not easy.

So we kept trying to become faster and faster. And then we discovered something important: it was not necessarily the photo finish decision itself that was too slow. The approval process behind it was slow.

If we speed up the whole approval process with an integrated system, then the entire result workflow becomes faster.

That is why we built the Lion Timing approval system.

Things happen. After thousands and thousands of races, yes, races have been missed. And that is very bad.

That is why we built a camera with built-in backup recording, so a missed capture is not the end of the evidence path.

Another thing that happens: sometimes the camera is set up wrong. Someone forgets something. There is a new employee who is not so experienced. The picture is too dark.

In that case, we can still save it.

With RAW recording, we can recover much more picture quality. It is useful when you want to create a beautiful image, but it is also useful when something goes wrong. Because then you can fix it later much better than if you only recorded a JPEG.

Last but not least, we were extremely unhappy with the prices.

The prices were simply too high. We had been using our cameras for so many years, even though the picture quality had become very bad, because buying a new one just did not make sense.

Yes, we really wanted a new camera. But we stayed with the old one because the new one was simply too expensive.

That frustration is also part of the story. We wanted a system that felt modern, integrated, reliable, and financially reasonable for people who actually work race days.