WATER PRODUCTIONS CAPTURING EXTREME SPORTS ACTION IN HD
Issue: HD - April 2006

WATER PRODUCTIONS CAPTURING EXTREME SPORTS ACTION IN HD

ELMVALE, ONTARIO - A little over a year ago, Canadian sports television production company Water Productions, made significant investment in HD gear, including the addition of a Panasonic Varicam camera and a Fujinon HA18x7.6BERM HD ENG/EFP lens. The production company has been using the combination to capture sports footage in all sorts of extreme weather conditions ever since.


“The Panasonic Varicam combined with the Fujinon HA18x7.6BERM lens is unlike anything we’ve had the joy of working with before,” says Kevin Cullen, Water Productions’ owner and host of Sledsense, Personal Watercraft Television and Grassroots Racing Television. “Switching to HD was a big, yet wise investment for us. It’s changed our company completely.”


Toronto reseller Applied Electronics sold Water Productions the Fujinon lens, which has a long focal length  (137mm, 274 with a 2X extender) and a wide angle of view (64.5 degrees at 7.6mm). The HD ENG/EFP zoom lens is suitable for high definition news and remote video production, and is designed to complement 2/3-inch high definition video cameras.
Their latest adventure for Sledsence took Water Productions to the 24th Annual Grand Prix Ski-Doo de Valcourt, Canada’s premier snowmobile race. The crew captured everything from close-up interviews in the morning to 120mph snowmobile racing around the oval ice track in the afternoon. 


Prior to the trip to Valcourt, Water Productions ventured to Revelstoke, British Columbia, the “powder capital of the world,” where visibility was extremely low due to fast-falling snow.

“If we’d shot this with a DV camera, the picture would have come out all white, with only a little bit of definition. If shot with a Betacam or in Digi Beta format, there would have been some definition,” explained Cullen. “In the case of the Fujinon HA18x7.6BERM lens and Panasonic Varicam, what you see is what you get. We’ve never seen anything work like this in low light. Each time we play them back, it makes us say ‘wow.’”