LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y.–On-location HD-facility providers for the coverage of major league and college sports, CSP Mobile Productions has outfitted its new 53-ft. production vehicle with ten HD lenses from Canon.
HD-2, the company’s third new HD production vehicle will carry eight Canon HD lenses: one XJ100x9.3B, two XJ86X13.5B, and three XJ72x9.3B long-field HD zoom lenses; one HJ14ex4.3B wide-angle portable HD lens; and one KJ20x8.2B portable HD lens with 2x extender. HD-2 will also be equipped with two Canon HJ22ex7.6B portable HD lenses from CSP Mobile Productions’ existing inventory. Two KJ20x8.2B portable HD lenses will be carried by the company’s two other HD trucks.
Canon’s long-field HDTV zoom lenses are commonly used in sports and entertainment production. CSP uses the Canon XJ100x9.3B and XJ86x9.3B HD lenses. The lenses utilize Image Stabilizer Technology, multilayer coatings on each optical element, advanced computer-aided lightweight design, long-range zoom capabilities, and the HD optical precision.
“We run Canon HD lenses exclusively on all of our HD trucks primarily due to the reliability of the lenses themselves and Canon’s service,” noted Len Chase, president/co-owner of CSP Mobile Productions. “Our company is based in Saco, Maine and, in addition to sports, we also provide on-location HD production facilities for such clients as broadcast and cable networks, corporate communicators, pay-per-view producers and Internet content providers.”
All of these long-field HD zoom lenses also utilize Canon’s second-generation digital servo systems for ease-of-operation and tactile control of zoom, iris, and focus, precision repeatability of settings, and microcomputer compensation of lens-focus breathing (the inadvertent alteration of field-of-view when operating the focus control).
Canon’s HJ14ex4.3B portable HD zoom lens combines an extended 14 times zoom range with a minimum focal length of 4.3mm and an angular field of view of 96.3 degrees at the wide end of the 16:9 HD aspect ratio. This lens reaches to 60mm (120mm with extender), and the company’s computer-based optical design techniques and new multi-layer optical coating technologies help to ensure minimal distortion.
The KJ20x8.2B portable HD lens is Canon’s widest (8.2 mm) lens in the 20x zoom class, and it covers a range of focal lengths, when combined with its built-in 2x extender expanding its 8.2mm-164mm focal length to 16.4mm-328mm, which provides subject framing flexibility.
“We are very particular about the production equipment we order for our HD mobile trucks – including HDTV lenses – because our clients expect high-quality productions from us,” Chase stated. “We have had virtually no issues with Canon lenses in the field, and any time we have had any problems – most of which were primarily because of a dropped lens or an element that had been broken due to mishandling – Canon’s service has been phenomenal; they have made sure the issue is taken care of immediately, which is of the utmost importance in our business.”
