FUJINON Lenses Used for Award Winning Doc War Elephants

War Elephants, a nature documentary featuring the cinematography and conservation efforts of DP Bob Poole was shot using FUJINON lenses from FUJIFILM North America Corporation, Optical Devices Division. The documentary first aired on April 22, 2012 at 8pm ET/PT on Nat Geo WILD. War Elephants also won the best documentary prize at the prestigious Sun Valley Film Festival in March.

A link to the beginning of the film can be found here: http://www.poolefilms.com/index.html

NGTV’s in-house Director of Photography Eric Cochren for War Elephants turned the cameras on Poole, whose award-winning cinematography sheds light on the dangers facing the majestic but threatened animals of the African plains. War Elephants prominently features the elephants that roam Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park. Starting in 1977, a 16-year-long civil war ravaged the country, leaving more than one million people dead and wiping out nearly 95 percent of the park’s wildlife. Elephants, poached for their ivory, were among the hardest hit — their population was reduced from more than 2,000 to just over 100. Today, peace has been restored to Mozambique, but the surviving elephants still carry the emotional scars of war.

Bob Poole’s lifework— including his efforts to document the life and death struggles of elephants against natural and manmade threats—is the central theme of War Elephants. Cochren employed an extreme telephoto HA25x16.5BERD HD Premier Series zoom lens to document Bob’s work. Throughout the film, Poole is seen shooting with his FUJINON HA25x16.5BERD and HA13x4.5BERDHD super wide-angle zoom lens. Poole also utilized his FUJINON TS-P58A external stabilizer for shots requiring image stabilization on either lens. For both Poole and Cochren, FUJINON lenses have proven to be durable and rugged in inclement weather conditions—such as the powerful winds, extreme heat, and massive sandstorms common to the African plains.

“Filming the elephants at great distances requires highly stable, high-performance optics and camera equipment,” Poole says. “My FUJINON 13x wide angle zoom establishes scenic and beauty shots, and my 25x telephoto zoom helps locate subjects and then zero in. If I’m properly set-up, balanced, and leveled, I don’t miss any priceless moments of animal behavior anymore.”

In Bob Poole’s two most recent NGTV wildlife documentaries, “Great Migrations” (November 2010) and “Africa’s Lost Eden” (March 2010), he focused on the plight of elephants at Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. Besides producing over 30 nature documentaries for NGTV, Poole is also a member of the board of Gorongosa National Park, which is entrusted with its restoration and preservation.

Bob Poole is also employing his FUJINON lenses in the production of a digital textbook available on the iPad regarding the plight of Gorongosa National Park, and he plans to produce a digital field guide for the park.

To see footage of Bob Poole on camera in War Elephants please click on the following link:
http://www.poolefilms.com/bob_on_camera.html