Aerial filming company, Helicopter Filming Services, has flown its TITAN Ultra-heavy lift drone with the Sony Venice camera and the Fujinon Premista 28-100 zoom lens, the first time a lens of this size has been flown on a drone for use in aerial cinematography.
HFS Aerial Director of Photography, Jeremy Braben (Assoc. BSC) said: “Our original impetus for developing the TITAN was to be able to respond to requests from a couple of legendary cinematographers and VFX Supervisors to fly large format digital or 35mm film packages. Now, we have adapted the TITAN to enable it to fly a greater choice of lenses – including large zoom lenses.”
Marc Cartrall, Head of Cine Market Development at Fujunon UK, adds, “"The main premise of a zoom lens is to be as practical as possible without sacrificing image quality. While developing the Premista large format lenses, they had to be compact and lightweight while still covering the right focal lengths to maximise the benefits of using a zoom. By redesigning the lens from scratch, rather than adapting an existing design, we met the criteria we aimed for – providing the same amazing image quality and lack of breathing that you would expect from prime lenses. We are delighted it can be used by DoPs from the air, thanks to HFS’s painstakingly-constructed technology."
Braben continues, "TITAN has industry-leading triple redundancy on flight controls, double redundancy on power supply, and ballistic recovery. We have engineered this performance and capacity into a size of aircraft that still allows us to deploy and operate easily on any production that requires substantial flight durations.”
Staff Reporter
Share this story
