Scene Change is one of Australia’s leading AV hire and production companies. They provide AV for events and conferences also operating in-house in a number of Australia’s best venues. Recently the company had a requirement for new, high quality 4K lenses and for that they turned to FUJIFILM and chose the FUJINON UA107.
Scene Change Director John Dinh explained, “Most of our work is via event professionals who enjoy the quality, reliability and continuity we can deliver. We do video, audio, lighting, staging and other event technical services. That’s our specialty and we focus on what we do really well so when we choose a piece of kit, especially a lens, it has to be the best available.”
Scene Change’s business is built around new technology, without having to fit in with legacy gear. By Dinh’s own admission they, “choose only the very best equipment possible as the crew need the best kit to do their jobs and because our professional clients demand that level of quality too.”
He added, “We were starting to shoot in rooms where our standard lenses didn’t have the zoom range, we were also working on shows where 77x box lenses were part of the technical spec and looking at pricing it made more business sense to futureproof and go with the FUJINON 107s. That lens also gave us a lot of flexibility with the focal length.”
The UA107’s flexibility was a key selling point for Dinh, amongst others, as he continued, “It not only gives us the flexibility on camera positions and shots, but is a compact package that just works. We also needed to futureproof as at some stage we would move in to a 4K environment and the lens as everyone knows, the lens you use is one of the key components to the 4K chain.”
Since acquiring the UA107s Dinh has had a great deal of positive feedback as he explained, “Clients love the image quality and the tightness of shot we can get with the UA107 lenses. Also some of the medical work that we do requires the highest level of clarity and sharpness which the UA107 lens delivers flawlessly.”
Scene Change typically use the UA107 lenses in a corporate environment where the camera position is often last thought of so their operators are usually at the back of the room.
Dinh added, “As a result of being at the back of the room the lens has to have a powerful zoom and be of excellent quality, which the UA107 has and is. Most of our work is corporate events such as staff meetings or sales events. We’ve also dipped our toe in to a bit of touring performance work. We need to get various shots ranging from someone speaking at a lectern, being part of a panel or talent on stage performing and we mainly shoot in ballrooms and venues like the ICC theatre and the expo halls at MCEC where again, the lens has to perform brilliantly every time.”
Part of John Dinh’s decision to buy the UA107s was the lens and its quality but he also wanted to make mention of the role of the team at FUJIFILM Australia played concluding, “We’ve had a really good relationship with the team at FUJIFILM Australia and knew if we purchased the UA107s the service and support we would get would be excellent. We also know that there are a lot of the UA107s available in the market to sub hire when if we needed to, so as a result of all of these factors buying UA107s was a no brainer and we didn’t even really look at any competitors.”