Respected for his work on automotive commercials, director of photography Dana Christiaansen recently shot commercials for both Jeep and Suzuki with Fujinon Premier PL zoom lenses, rented from Otto Nemenz International in Los Angeles.
Christiaansen is known for capturing delicate detail on the rugged terrain of challenging car and truck shoots. The Suzuki material was shot for Siltanen and Partners Advertising using the Fujinon PL-mount 14.5-45mm T2.0, 18-85mm T.20 and the 75-400mm T2.8-T3.8 zoom lenses on an ARRI ALEXA digital camera. For Jeep, via Publicis/Leo Burnett, he used the Fujinon Premier Series 18-85mm T2.0 zoom on an ARRI 435 film motion picture camera.
“I still remember the first time I looked through a Fujinon 18-85mm T2.0 lens mounted on an ARRI 435 at Otto Nemenz,” Christiaansen said. “I was amazed at the crisp image at 18mm. It was sharp from edge to edge, no softness around the perimeter of frame and no light falloff. The image just seemed to jump off the ground glass at me.”
The visual approach of the Suzuki spots made this an ideal job for a full set of Fujinon PL-mount zooms, according to Christiaansen. Christiaansen used Tiffen NDs to filter down on every shot to a T2.0 on the Fujinon 18-85mm zoom or a T2.8 on the 75-400mm zoom to defocus the background as much as possible.
During the Jeep shoot, Christiaansen again relied on the speed of the Fujinon 18-85mm by taking advantage of the Premier’s image quality at T2.0, while shooting dark, overcast exteriors.
See Fujinon at the 2011 NAB Show in Booth C7525.
