HD EC Lenses Enable Capture of Director’s Unique Vision in Low Light, Tight Spaces

LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., DATE TK – For independent filmmakers seeking cinematic artistry, the right production tools are essential. For director Brian Evans of New York-based Tri Bro Entertainment, this means shooting Get Faamous, his intentionally misspelled 24p HD dramatic comedy, exclusively with Canon High Definition Electronic Cinematography (HD-EC) FJs Series prime lenses. Abel Cine Tech, the professional film and video sales, rentals, and service company, supplied five Canon HD-EC FJs prime lenses to Get Faamous, which sought Hollywood production values amid the kinds of “guerilla” shooting conditions that often accompany independent motion pictures.

“The question going in was, ‘What can we do to get the highest quality, yet most affordable picture in HD?” Says Mitch Gross, Technical Director of Rentals at Abel Cine Tech and the DP on Get Faamous. “Canon’s HD-EC primes were the answer. They enabled us to have a very clean, sharp frame with great ‘snap’ and contrast.” The film employed the FJs5mm, FJs9mm, FJs14mm, FJs24mm, and FJs35mm HD-EC prime lenses, all of which feature traditional film-style lens feel and operation to make them instantly familiar to even the most experienced cinematographer. Shot using a Panasonic Varicam amid Manhattan’s picturesque streets and claustrophobic office cubicles, Get Faamous depended heavily on the exceptional low-light performance of the Canon FJs Prime lenses.

“The Canon HD-EC primes definitely enabled me to shoot in a variety of available lighting conditions,” Gross says. “It was both a financial necessity and a visual aesthetic to shoot in low light, and the Canon primes allowed me to shoot in situations that I really would not have been able to shoot in with other equipment. The protagonist in Get Faamous was someone who was sort of trapped in an office space, and I wanted to reproduce the true feeling of that space. The Canon primes worked great under low light in these situations, and delivered imagery that was very clean, simple, and natural.”

The high performance of Canon’s FJs prime lens series is derived in large measure from the combination of Canon’s unique High Index, Ultra Low Dispersion glass and multilayer coatings, which produces superb imagery. Canon’s FJs prime lens series features optimization of MTF at wide aperture settings and a very short MOD. In addition, Canon’s innovative Internal Focus technology employs a two-group floating optical system for highest performance. The six HD-EC prime lenses in Canon’s FJs Series (which also includes the FJs55mm) are the perfect complement to Canon’s three cine-style HD-EC Zoom lenses, which include the HJ21x7.5 KLL-SC, HJ11x4.7B KLL-SC, and HJ8x5.5B KLL-SC lenses.

Gross found that the Canon primes also brought a highly artistic presence, when desired, to the feature’s multiple low-light exterior shots. “One of the visual references that Brian Evans and I used was Woody Allen’s Manhattan, which was shot by Gordon Willis in 1979,” Gross recalls. “There was a particular scene in which a number of people were walking in the street at night, illuminated by storefronts and car headlights. Back then, they really had to blast the streets with light. We, on the other hand, had a tiny batter-powered light, but the Canon HD-EC primes still gave us exactly what we wanted for the scene. I was able to see deep and far into the shadows and sometimes I found I still wasn’t even using the lens wide-open! Being able to open the Canon primes all the way became a wonder, and I was able to see forever. I was continually surprised at how rich their imagery was under these conditions.”
The traditional film-style lens feel and operation of the Canon FJs Series prime lenses includes dual large and luminous scales for focus (marked in feet) and iris that facilitate precision control in low-light shooting environments. “I was able to very easily judge where my exposure was with the Canon primes,” Gross says. “Having them on hand became one of those things where—by eye—after a very short amount of time, you get quite used to looking at it and saying, ‘That’s where I want to be.’ ”
The compact profile of the Canon primes was also extremely beneficial to Gross during the rigors of shooting Get Faamous. The Canon FJs Series prime lenses have the most compact overall size of all presently available 2/3-inch prime lenses, in addition to a unified 95mm front diameter and magnesium alloy bodies that provide light weight and exceptional durability.

“The small size and light weight of these lenses made them very comfortable to work with,” confirms Gross. “The Canon primes only protrude a few inches out in front of the camera, and we were able to get some shots with them that we couldn’t get otherwise. For example, we had one shot that we did with the Canon FJs5mm—which is a wonderfully wide, wide lens—where the lead character is pushing a mailroom cart through the hallways. I clamped the camera right onto the front of the cart and we pulled along with the FJs5mm, which gave this sweeping view as he went past. The results were very cinematic, almost a ‘Stanley Kubrick-style’ shot.”

With Get Faamous poised to do just that for its creators when it debuts on the festival circuit in 2007, the Canon FJs Series prime lenses will have played an important role in making the production process on the film artistically intuitive. “All equipment has personalities, just like every person does, and I got to know the personalities of the Canon HD-EC prime lenses very quickly,” Gross intimates. “The personality of the Canon lenses is very neutral, clean, and simple, and the personalities of each lens in the set matched the others, so interchanging between them was transparent in the shooting process. I could just set them up and shoot without any limitations in optical performance.”

To find out more about the progress of the movie Get Faamous, lot on to director Brian Evans’ blog at http://getfamousblog.blogspot.com.

About Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Canon U.S.A., Inc. delivers consumer, business-to-business, and industrial imaging solutions. The company is listed as one of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies in America and is rated #35 on the BusinessWeek list of “Top 100 Brands.” Its parent company Canon Inc. (NYSE:CAJ) is a top patent holder of technology, ranking second overall in the U.S. in 2005, with global revenues of $31.8 billion. For more information, visit www.usa.canon.com.

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