The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has acquired a complement of Fujinon HD lenses for its newly constructed 42ft HD production truck based in Salt Lake City.
The truck, with a chassis built by Sunberry, OH-based Gerling and Associates and technology integrated by Santa Clara, CA-based Diversified Systems, is equipped with a new lens package that includes two XA72x9.3BESM telephoto lenses, three HA22x7.3BERD ENG-style lenses and one HA13x4.5BERD wide-angle ENG/EFP with 2x range extender. The six Fujinon lenses are mounted on Sony HDC-1500 HD cameras.
Adding a truck to the church’s broadcast equipment inventory was considered for several years, said LDS chief engineer Sean McFarland. The project began in earnest at the end of first quarter last year, and the truck rolled out at the end of October 2008. Since then, it has been used for live addresses by church leaders broadcast to worldwide audiences and to record musical events with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and concerts from Brigham Young University.
In addition to serving as a remote production unit, the truck can serve as an additional control room at the Church’s Salt Lake campus to handle overflow productions. It also was designed to provide multicamera 4:4:4 cinema production capability.
The LDS mobile production truck will operate in North America, providing production services for the church and its related organizations. It will be on display at the NAB Show next month in Las Vegas.
