New Panasonic AG-AF101 In First Broadcast Production

A recent broadcast production commissioned by Al Jazeera is the first to adopt the new Panasonic AG-AF101 Four Thirds camera.
The production was filmed on location in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the largest and poorest countries on the planet. Shooting a documentary in the Great Lakes region of Africa requires robust, agile camera equipment that can capture the beauty of the environment.
Fiona Lloyd-Davies of Studio 9 Films was commissioned to undertake the production that tells the story of how a group of women raped and abused during the conflict are re-building their lives. Studio 9 Films selected the Panasonic AG-AF101 because of its light weight, large sensor size and solid state storage.
The producer said: "With no tape mechanism and no moving parts, the camera worked faultlessly in all conditions, delivering excellent results. This is a beautiful part of the world and I wanted a camera that could do it justice. Not only did the 101 bring out the vivid colours of the people and their environment, but its four thirds chip allowed me to adjust the depth of field to great effect."
Commissioning broadcaster Al Jazeera had followed the development of the Panasonic AG-AF101 and were keen to see it in use. One aspect of the camera that did not comply with its technical requirements was its native recording format. In order to circumvent this issue, rental specialist VMI equipped the camera with a nanoFlash HD unit from Convergent Design. Able to Record to MXF or QuickTime format using CompactFlash cards, the nanoFlash was mounted to the camera HD-SDI's connector. The resulting 50mbs broadcast-compliant files was downloaded daily onto two separate rugged drives.
The camera simultaneously recorded AVCHD onto SD cards. Not only did this give the security of a high resolution back-up but it also ensured that the nanoFlash was in perfect sync with the camera, being set up to record when the time code changed on the HD-SDI output. When the camera recorded, Lloyd-Davies could be confident that the nanoFlash was recording.
The nanoFlash was powered by the main Anton/Bauer camera battery pack rather than a discreet power supply to ensure that Lloyd-Davies could no start shooting only to discover later that the nanoFlash had run out of power.
Lloyd-Davies concluded: "This is a new camcorder with a third party recording device. With limited technical support available in Eastern Congo, we needed to know that it would be fool proof. VMI carried out full testing before we hired the unit and gave us an excellent grounding in operating the equipment and getting the workflow right."
Lloyd-Davies is back in the Congo for a second shoot in May, together with a Panasonic AF101.
(KMcA)