Live From Paris 2024: Canon Broadcast Lens Support Team Helps Clients Battle Elements

Live From Paris 2024: Canon Broadcast Lens Support Team Helps Clients Battle Elements A service office in Paris and a robust team' at the Games are ready for anything By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Tuesday, July 30, 2024 - 4:23 am

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Canon is once again on hand for the Olympics Games and ready to service everything from broadcast or still lenses to cameras. And one advantage of the Games' being in Paris? There is a Canon professional service location in town.

The Canon support team: Front row: (from left) Gong BinBin (China), Sidonie Renault (France), Kim Jeongmin (South Korea), Hisashi Yamamoto (Japan)

Middle Row: (from left) World Team Leader Roy Voortman (Netherlands), Andrew Ng (UK), Josh Stoner (U.S.)

Back Row: (from left) Daniubo Navarro (U.S.), Taka Tomogawa (UK), Tomoya Kurokawa (Japan)

Explains Canon Senior Product Specialist Josh Stoner, We have a full-service facility. If something breaks, we can move it back there for repairs, and we have loaner gear staged there. It's located in the center of all the venue clusters so it's very convenient for anyone to come into.

That office is located at Centre d'Affairs Equilibre; for Canon Broadcast Lens support, call +33 6 78 51 66 94. The office is coming in handy. Broadcasters are primarily working at the IBC; the still photographers are mainly at the MPC, about a 25-minute ride away. That has required the Canon team to be more proactive in planning equipment support but can pose a challenge for clients, who may go to one location or the other expecting a different type of support. But Canon is in both locations, as well as at the office, to ensure that equipment needs are met.

We got in [prior to the start of the Games], says Stoner. We were just making the rounds as we normally do, first waiting for the Games to start and then paying a lot of attention to the Opening Ceremonies. Now that the Games have started, the constant fires have started to pop up.

Before the Games started, the biggest challenge for the team - comprising professionals the U.S., Europe, and Asia - was that, because the Olympic buses weren't running yet, they had to rely on the Metro. The Metro is great, he notes, but taking a tool case and supplies on the Metro isn't always easy. That probably was the biggest challenge leading up to this.

In terms of maintenance tips, the hot weather that is descending on Paris brings up the usual issue of lens fogging. If you know the lens is going to be cool [in air-conditioning] and then hot, leave your gear outside but covered, Stoner advises. If you do get the fogging, put some desiccant and a plastic bag around it and just let it warm up in the sun. That should help. It's not going to fully fix it, but it'll make it usable.

With OBS all-in on 4K production, he hasn't seen any standard HD Canon lenses in the field: It has all been 4K UHD lenses at the big events. I haven't been to some of the smaller ones, but I feel like we've already transitioned out of HD for the most part.

Although it's early days, keeping up morale and making sure the team is executing on all cylinders remains the daily challenge. Our team has been doing great, Stoner says. There is nothing to be disappointed about. We're handling all the requests that are coming in and dispersing the workload over the whole team. It's nice to have such a robust team here that no one's getting burned out.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2024/07/30/live-from-paris-2024-canon-broa...
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