“Rescue Me,” the award-winning television series about New York City firefighters, relies on portable HDTV lenses from Canon USA Inc. to shoot its distinct cinema verité production style.
Canon HD lens on the set of ‘Rescue Me’
The show uses Canon’s HJ21ex7.5B and HJ11ex4.7B portable EFP lenses to shoot the film-style series. Both lenses are members of Canon’s third-generation line of eHDxs high-performance portable HD zoom lenses. Both have Canon’s “eDrive” feature, which enables users to program settings and other functions for automated repeatability via an easy-to-use LCD menu, assignable “soft” function buttons, and the rocker switch built into the lens grip.
The HJ11ex4.7B zoom lens is the widest angle-of-view portable HD production lens currently offered by Canon. It weighs 4.10 lbs. and its focal range goes from 4.7mm on the wide end all the way to 104mm with its built-in 2x extender. Canon’s HJ21ex7.5B telephoto zoom lens has the widest field of view available among Canon’s standard telephoto series of HDTV lenses. It weighs 5.81 lbs. and has a focal range extending from 7.5mm to 158mm (or 15mm to 316mm with extender).
“The Canon HD lenses we use are versatile, fast and sharp,” Tom Houghton, Director of Photography for many of the series’ episodes said. “Having high-quality glass is a must because the look and feel of ‘Rescue Me’ is quite spontaneous, which also means that the light we shoot in can be very changeable. We may be shooting in very harsh light, then flat light, and then it’s sunny, it’s cloudy, or it’s smoky. All these things lend themselves to capturing realism, and the Canon lenses always deliver a clean look that serves us very well.”
