26 SHOOT STORY LENSES FOR AERIAL CINEMATOGRAPHY
FUJINON JOINS AERIAL FAVOURITES
standard. The Fujinon lenses are relatively new and there aren’t many in rental houses that’s for sure, they’re quite difficult to find.” Jeremy’s experience with the Fujinon’s answered specific shot needs from the film’s producers. “I can’t really go in to detail about the night sequence where we used the 18-85mm Fujinon lens,” he says, “but we were over the centre of London so we were doing wide vistas and we were also doing slightly tighter establishers. The lens range is perfect for this type of sequence even though we didn’t need to go in super tight, but during the day we did, we had to pick up as much close detail as we could and the Fujinon 25-300mm gave us that little edge. We still had full coverage so there was no vignetting problems while using the ARRI ALEXA Mini camera. The day shooting was similar. We covered mostly cars travelling, motorbikes, moving targets that kind of thing. We used the Shotover F1 for both lenses, which is one of the smaller stabilised gimbals. “As an aerial cinematographer my criteria for a lens are much less about the creative aspects of the lens itself, and more about the function and
HFS MD Jeremy Braben knows what gear helps him get the shots that keep productions coming back to him. Recently he’s been using two Fujinon cine zooms but for different reasons: “The most recent project we used our Fujinon cine lenses on was a movie called The Good Liar , which is still in production so I can’t talk about it much. Interestingly the Fujinon lenses were specifically chosen because of the speed, we used the HK18-85 because of its T2 stop and its clarity of shooting at night so, of course, we mostly employed it on the night shoots for that movie.” But HFS was also using the ZK25- 300mm 12x zoom. “During the day we used the 12x ZK25-300mm. What we were doing was to swap between the two for the daytime and the night-time. The rig assemblies for both were quite standard even though they’re quite big pieces of glass. If I recommend we use the Fujinons because we need that extra 50mm or something, no cinematographers have complained about it. So they are accepted in the same vein as the Angenieux now and you could call those lenses the industry
performance I want from that lens. In our aerial world it is predominantly the zoom lenses which affect us, and the prime concern is a zoom which covers both a nice wide but has the power of a longer zoom range. Inevitably there is a compromise. The lens of the moment for me is this 12x Fujinon Cabrio 25-300mm. It retains the wide end of 25mm for 4K whilst giving just a bit more on the long end without the weight and size penalty of the Angenieux Optimo 28-340mm. The T stop of 3.5 is decent enough for this size of lens, and is consistent throughout the range of the lens, until about 275mm when it loses about half a stop through to 300mm and retaining its sharpness and detail.”
ABOVE Vikings and The Good Liar have been recent uses of the Fujinon cine zooms.
BELOW Fujinon’s ZK25-300mm and HK18-85mm getting ready to fly.
DEFINITION AUGUST 2018
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