Blog / Production Stories / Large Sensor Cinematography Amis Productions takes the ME20 to sea Large Sensor Cinematography The capabilities of the Canon ME20F-SH for capturing extraordinary video in extreme low light conditions has caught the attention of producers working on projects outside of wildlife filming. Amis Productions, a specialist in helicopter and boat filming, sought out the camera for a segment in BBC One show, “Our Lives” documenting an attempt by a dozen ordinary people to take on the longest sea rowing race in the world, across the Irish Sea from Arklow in the Republic of Ireland to Aberystwyth, West Wales. “We’re always on the look out for new storytelling tools and the ME20 seemed ideal for what we wanted to achieve,” explains Amis’ Managing Director, Simon Aldridge. The rowers – eight women and four men, including three grannies, a fire officer, a police inspector, and a vet are shown training for the marathon, including man-over-board and distress flare drills with the New Quay life boat, competing indoors on rowing machines and undergoing fitness tests, and raising money for charities. The race itself is over 100 miles of open sea that can take over a day to cross. Programme producers Small World Productions and director Justyn Jones commissioned Amis to help shoot the action on board the vessel as it raced through the night. We’re always on the look out for new storytelling tools and the ME20 seemed ideal for what we wanted to achieve Simon Aldridge, Managing Director Amis Productions “We read the case studies of working with the ME20 published by VMI and knew it was favoured by natural history producers but it seemed ideal for our purposes,” Aldridge says. “We might have gone for the Sony A7S but from reading the reviews it didn’t seem quite right for our purposes. For example, we wanted SDI out not HDMI.” Amis ran some tests at VMI and quickly realised that the ME20 can capture images at night that look almost as if they are shot in daylight. “One the one hand, that was terrific since we knew we could get great pictures but we also needed to retain the fact the race is actually taking place at night,” Aldridge says. “With the lens not quite wide open we found we needed around 30dB of gain to get a good balance of seeing an image while preserving the nighttime feel. Remarkably this setup gave very little visible noise/grain too.” They originally planned to use a PL mount 6 x 120 Fujinon lens but this would not have covered the full frame of the ME20 sensor so opted for a Zeiss 70-200mm instead, mounted on a Ronin 2 Gimbal. The camera was operated with a crew of two on board the boat (they also shot sequences during the day from a DJI Inspire 2 drone). “The Producers are super pleased with how the images turned out,” Aldridge says. So too were Amis Productions which used the ME20 straight away on their next project, the Giraglia Cup for producer IMG.This elite sailing race has become one of the biggest competitions in the Mediterranean with over 200 boats from 10 different nations. The course starts in St Tropez with boats racing out to the Giraglia rock on the northern tip of Corsica before returning to Monaco or Genoa. “We’ve traditionally tracked the race by helicopter and chase boat but we’ve never managed to capture action at the rock at night”, Aldridge says. “IMG is at the forefront of quality and it’s why they wanted to use the ME20. They loved the footage we were able to show them of the rowers on the Irish Sea and they invited us to go for it.” One difference between the two events were the night time conditions. The night of the Irish Sea crossing was virtually pitch black but for the Giraglia there was a full moon. Nonetheless, Amis augmented the camera, which was rigged onto a vertical sail pole, with a small LED panel. “We used very slight illumination because it does help to pull things out from the background. The pictures we got, particularly of moonlight on the water, were beautiful.”