Jerome Dolbert shoots with a RED Epic and Angenieux optics 'Peru's rainforests under threat'

For the production of this documentary, the director had a camera team that together weighed about twelve kilos, consisting of a RED Epic and two Angénieux Optimo Style of 16-40 and 30-76.

Jerome Dolbert had a limited budget to make a documentary about deforestation in the Peruvian rainforest. Despite this limitation, Jerome wanted the images to be top quality. With the help of 9 sponsors and a lot of motivation Jerome was able to achieve his goal and shoot for 25 days of filming in the rainforest. To do this, he moved 700 kilometers to a remote place in Peru in the Taricaya Ecological Reserve in the middle of the Amazon jungle with 80 kg. in equipment.

Dolbert collected unpublished moments such as images showing a military operation in which 1,500 soldiers entered La Pampa to destroy the equipment used for illegal gold mining. Although he could have filmed with a mini-camera to go unnoticed, he finally opted for the RED Epic with glasses Angenieux Optimo Style.

The director had a camera equipment that together weighed about twelve kilos, consisting of a RED Epic and two Angénieux Optimo Style 16-40 and 30-76 (weighing less than 2 kilos each), a 2x extender and a light tripod (around 5 kg.). Optimo Style zooms are very light and compact, making them ideal for this type of work.

If I had chosen to use prime lenses I would have needed several to cover the same range of focal lengths. "The Optimo Style lenses offer excellent quality and I was impressed by their sharpness, ease of framing and quick switching. I used them to shoot the devastated landscape of La Pampa and tree climbs. They have remarkable performance features and are so easy to use. I shot in 5K with 3:1 compression. The camera had a 512GB memory card, so I could shoot a total of 30 minutes on each one. I used an 8 TB hard drive to store the footage, obtaining a total of 15 hours of footage,” said Dolbert.

Despite a hostile environment with an average of 37º and 75% humidity, the lenses worked perfectly. "I always kept them in my bag when they weren't on the camera and we didn't have any problems with condensation or moisture on the optical system. I only had moisture on the LCD screen of the camera. We only had two hours of electricity a day in the camp, so we shot mostly in natural light. We had to go out very early in the morning to see the animals in the early morning with a very small amount of light available at that time of day. I worked in T: 2.8 and the lenses provided enough light to the camera. camera,” highlights Dolbert.

He used the 30-76mm extender to record the monkeys in the trees and the same optical setup to capture the gold miners from a distance. Instead, he mainly used the 16-40 for the scenes filmed in La Pampa.

"I really liked the smoothness of the Optimo Style lens rings, being able to easily adapt the sensor exposure as the weather conditions change. I used the camera's LCD screen to adjust the lens aperture," commented the director.