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MillimeterZooming Jets
Apr 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman
A one-hour, HD-acquired special for Discovery's Military Channel, Red Flag, challenged filmmakers from Evergreen Films, Pacific Palisades, Calif., with figuring out ways to capture high-quality imagery of military jets taking off, engaging in maneuvers, and landing at Nellis Air Force Base, near Las Vegas.
For Red Flag, filmmakers capturing footage of military jets found a new use for Fujinon’s PFA technology.
Filmmakers used a Sony HDW-F900 HD camera for the job, and they employed Fujinon's XA101×8.9BESM HD zoom lens to capture close shots of pilots in the cockpit and glowing jet afterburns at night. Fujinon rolled out the lens in 2003 as a tool aimed at shooting broadcast sporting events. Red Flag offered Fujinon an opportunity to experiment with widening the product's reach.
Fujinon supplied director Pierre de Lespinois and his DP, Jim O'Keefe, with a prototype of the company's new Precision Focus Assist (PFA) technology. Fujinon first unveiled the PFA system at NAB 2004. At press time, the company was planning to have a product version ready for market before mid-year, according to Chuck Lee, Fujinon's HD technology manager.
O'Keefe says the ability to stabilize the large lens — about 50lbs. — with extreme telephoto reach capabilities (8.9-1,800mm) was crucial in conditions in which “jets were zooming past us all over the place.”
“It's a large [box-style] lens — you can't put it on your shoulder,” says O'Keefe. “It's a challenging procedure to set it up. But once it is set up, it has lots of flexibility, and it was very stable. I was panning 180 degrees as planes flew past me at 400mph, and I was able to get in tight on the cockpit and on the afterburn better than I ever thought possible.
“We shot inside the afterburn — a beautiful red, full-frame, rippling off the back end of the jet, distorting and creating aberrations on the Las Vegas skyline,” says O'Keefe. “It was really beautiful, and I don't think we could have shot it that clearly without this kind of technology.”
