Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

400,000 cool characters and a camera

24/06/2019

Bertie GregoryFollow Bertie : Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Instagram

Bertie Gregory, Nat Geo Wildlife Cameraman, Demands the Most Reliable Gear When Shooting in Rugged and Remote LocationsWild_Life with Bertie Gregory, the first-ever all-digital wildlife series from National Geographic, takes its young host to some of the world's most spectacular and remote wildlife destinations. For the current season, Bertie and his crew voyaged to the inhospitable Subantarctic island of South Georgia to document the remarkable recovery of the wildlife there. And once again, Bertie turned to rugged, reliable, and high-quality gear from Anton/Bauer, OConnor and Sachtler.

Kit List

Dionic XT 90

OConnor 2560 fluid head

OConnor 60L tripod

OConnor HiHat

OConnor Cine HD aluminum baby legs

Sachtler flowtech 75

Hunkered down with 400,000 penguins on a cold and rugged outcrop miles from civilisation would be an unusual day for most people - but not so for Bertie Gregory. At the age of just 22, he made history with the debut of Wild_Life with Bertie Gregory, National Geographic's first-ever all-digital wildlife series and the cornerstone of its YouTube channel.After a successful first season, in which Bertie focused on the coastal fauna of Canada's Vancouver Island, Season Two of Wild_Life premiered last October with five online, 10-minute episodes and a one-hour TV special on the Nat Geo Wild channel. Entitled Wild_Life: Resurrection Island, the latest season places Bertie on the island of South Georgia, a tiny speck in the South Atlantic ocean nearly 1,000 miles from the nearest mainland. The full five-episode series, together with a selection of bonus content, is currently available through National Geographic's online channels including natgeo.com, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

South Georgia is the holy grail of wildlife filmmaking, and it's teeming with one of the highest concentrations of wildlife on the planet. It's living proof that it's not too late to save wild places.

After a rough-and-tumble, 870-mile sea voyage aboard a 50-foot sailboat from the Falkland Islands, Bertie and his three-person Nat Geo film crew fetched up on South Georgia.For several weeks, the crew would live at anchor and spend every day on the island, getting up close and personal with macaroni penguins, wandering albatrosses, fur seals, and other remarkable wild inhabitants.Bertie's mainstay for shooting on South Georgia was a RED HELIUM 8K cine camera and Canon Cn20 50-1000mm zoom lens, supported by an OConnor 2560 fluid head and an OConnor 60L tripod. This camera-lens combo is massive and heavy, but the great thing about the Oconnor setup is that it's relatively lightweight, Bertie says. That made the whole rig a lot easier to carry around to rugged spots and then move in and set up quickly and quietly, for those times when we were sneaking up on an animal and hoping to catch it before a particular behavior finished. To film the smaller animals such as baby fur seals and penguins, Bertie used an OConnor HiHat with 150mm bowl to get the rig as low to the ground as possible. And when the unforgiving polar winds for which South Georgia is famous made simply standing up a challenge, Bertie turned to a set of OConnor Cine HD aluminum baby legs.

When you're on the end of a long and bulky lens and the wind is roaring, you need as much stability as possible - and the OConnor baby legs are built like a brick out-house.

Rock star. Bertie meets the neighbors

For the times when light weight was paramount and kit space was minimal, Bertie turned to the game-changing flowtech 75 tripod from Sachtler.Bertie relied on flowtech75 to create motion-controlled, time-lapse video, including stunning images of clouds rolling in and out of South Georgia's glacial mountain landscapes. The flowtech75 is perfect for this type of shot, since it can go very low to the ground without the use of baby legs or a high hat. That's important in time-lapse imagery, because you want to capture changes in the foreground in the frame, he explains.

Bertie captures stunning images of clouds rolling in over South Georgia's glacial mountains.

flowtech75's extremely light weight made it a welcome addition to the Wild_Life crew's gear list. Since flowtech75 is super-lightweight, we were able to take it along without really adding to our load. That's important, because when we were trekking across the island, we had to carry all our gear on our backs, Bertie comments. It also meant we could use a tripod that was really fit for purpose, instead of trying to make one of the other tripods do such a specialized job.

Anton/Bauer's Dionic XT90 on-camera batteries were another critical element in Bertie's kit. At the time, the Dionic XTs were prototypes, so we were slightly nervous about using them in such a remote spot. After all, South Georgia is a long way from the nearest camera store, Bertie says. But the batteries worked flawlessly, and we love their nice, compact size. That makes them really easy to stack and pack what we need for a full day's shoot without taking up too much valuable space. Another key factor was the Dionic XTs' performance in cold conditions, which can seriously hamper battery life. Although South Georgia wasn't terribly cold (hovering around zero Celsius for most of the shoot), Bertie reports that the batteries performed beautifully at the undisclosed location for his next project - where the temperature would often plunge to minus 30 Celsius. No batteries work quite as long as they might in warm weather, but the performance of the Dionic batteries was pretty crazy in such a cold climate, he comments.

Bertie is currently shooting Season 3 of Wild_Life, highlighting a location that will remain under wraps until the show premi
LINK: https://www.antonbauer.com/en/applications/400-000-cool-characters-and...
See more stories from antonb

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

08/07/2026

Fox TV Stations Bypass Satellite for Live Game Show Run

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

08/07/2026

Fox Television Stations Extreme Reach and LTN Bring Live...

Collaboration demonstrates how managed IP distribution and cloud-based syndication workflows can support live television at national scale Fox Television Stati...

08/07/2026

New ARRI ALEXA 35 Live Xtreme camera seamlessly delivers up to 8x HFR via SDI for live productions

New ARRI ALEXA 35 Live Xtreme camera seamlessly delivers up to 8x HFR via SDI fo...

08/07/2026

Did You Know? Redshift for Cinema 4D: The Power of the Distance Node

Did You Know? Redshift for Cinema 4D: The Power of the Distance Node Marc Potocnik July 8, 2026 0 Comments The Did You Know? Redshift for Cinema 4D ...

08/07/2026

LARA Wizard Touchpanel gets major configuration upgrade

Lightware is introducing the biggest update yet to the LARA Wizard Touchpanel configuration experience, designed to help integrators work faster while deliverin...

08/07/2026

DMC Production Reimagines Live OB with Calrec

DMC Production has turned to Calrec in its quest to redefine outside broadcasting with a flexible approach to live production that reverse engineers the convent...

08/07/2026

FCC Probe of 'The View' Racks Up 77,611 Comments

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

08/07/2026

NAB Releases New Radio and TV Station Self-Inspection Guides

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

08/07/2026

Ross Production Services Standardizes on Clear-Com Intercom Systems

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

08/07/2026

Reel FX Animation Adopts Foundrys Flix on Doctor Dolittle...

Foundry today announced that Reel FX Animation Studios has adopted Flix to standardize their pipeline and streamline processes across departments. Flix is a vis...

08/07/2026

The right team. The right time.' How The Killings at Parrish Station stuck to their creative guns

The right team. The right time.' How The Killings at Parrish Station stuck t...

08/07/2026

Australians in Film and Screen Australia launch FUTURE VISION Forward to elevate Australian television to the global stage

Australians in Film and Screen Australia launch FUTURE VISION Forward to elevate...

08/07/2026

RT to air award-winning documentary TESTIMONY

Film follows the courageous fight for justice by survivors of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries & Mother and Baby Homes TESTIMONY airs Wednesday 22 July at 9...

08/07/2026

NVIDIA Nemotron Achieves Benchmark-Leading Performance With LangChain Deep Agents Harness

NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is offering leading performance at lower cost than top c...

07/07/2026

Open call: Apply for the Media Innovation Europe Validation Booster

Applications are now open for the Validation Booster, a six-month acceleration programme supporting journalists, media organisations, content creators, media in...

07/07/2026

HAND Issues Persistent Digital IDs to 50 Top 2026 MLB Draft Prospects

The Universal Talent Identifier (HAND) has issued HAND IDs to 50 top prospects ahead of the 2026 MLB Draft, including consensus top-ranked players Roch Cholowsk...

07/07/2026

Cisco and McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team Extend Technology Partnership

Cisco and the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team have announced an extension of their partnership, expanding the scope from networking and communications to incl...

07/07/2026

LucidLink Announces Enhanced Integration with Adobe Frame.io

LucidLink has announced a workflow integration with Adobe Frame.io that gives production teams unified access to Frame.io projects alongside supporting producti...

07/07/2026

Chyron Appoints Ahmed Magd as Middle East Sales Director

Chyron has announced the appointment of Ahmed Magd as Sales Director for the Middle East. Magd joins from previous senior commercial roles at Riedel Communicati...

07/07/2026

Leader Electronics T&M Equipment Used in Live Broadcast of Pope Leo XIVs Visit to Sagrada Famlia

Leader Electronics of Europe has announced that its PHABRIX Qx rasterizer and Le...

07/07/2026

eCLUTCH Secures EMEA and MENA Broadcast Rights for Esports World Cup 2026

eCLUTCH has announced it has acquired broadcast rights to the Esports World Cup 2026 for EMEA and MENA, covering the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, Sweden, a...

07/07/2026

Riedel and ARRI Support Cinematic Live Production at Eurovision Song Contest 2026

Riedel Communications and ARRI supported ORF's host broadcast of the Eurovis...

07/07/2026

ARRI Releases ALEXA 35 Live Xtreme With High-Frame-Rate SDI Output for Live Production

ARRI has announced the ALEXA 35 Live Xtreme, a camera that adds high frame rate ...

07/07/2026

IBC 2026: LiveU To Exhibit With LU900Q, Sony Integration, EcoSystem Expansion

LiveU will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 7.C24), showcasing the LU900Q Intelligent Production Unit, expanded Sony collaboration, and additions to its open IP-video...

07/07/2026

Peacock Advances Spanish-Language World Cup Streaming With Visin de Campo, Dolby Vision, Real-Time Highlights

Telemundo's coverage is packaged with Multiview, Catch Up with Key Plays, in...

07/07/2026

Australian Rugby League Commission Secures $5.3 Billion Media Rights Deal with Foxtel, Nine, and Sky NZ

The Australian Rugby League Commission (ARLC) has announced a seven-year media r...

07/07/2026

BYUtv Partners With Big 12 for Football Media Days Production

Produced onsite at The Star in Frisco, TX, live coverage of the two-day event airs on ESPN platforms The season for Football Media Days is here, and the Big 12...

07/07/2026

Rogers To Become 100% Owner of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment

Rogers Communications Inc. has announced an agreement to acquire the remaining 25% ownership stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) from Kilmer Spo...

07/07/2026

Mobile TV Groups Nick Garvin on Success of MTVG Production Platform at New Mountain Media Center

End-to-end broadcast solution includes fleet of mobile units, Cloud Control, and...

07/07/2026

SVG Executive Perspectives 2026: Industry Leaders Discuss Biz and Tech Trends for the Year Ahead

Sports-production-tech experts sound off on the state of the industry...

07/07/2026

Mix Buddy instrument mixer from Heritage Audio

New mixer aimed squarely at instrument-level sources Heritage Audio have clearly been busy recently, as alongside their all-new Tubestrip, they've also ...

07/07/2026

Heritage Audio unveil the Tubestrip

New channel strip combines popular hardware designs The latest arrival to the Heritage Audio line-up brings together a selection of their praised hardware d...

07/07/2026

Clear-Com Powers Ross Production Services Mobile Productions

eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......

07/07/2026

New Nielsen data shows Kiwis' wellbeing is shaped by fitness, finance and mental health

New Kessler 10 data now available in Nielsen CMI gives brands a deeper view of h...

07/07/2026

Vitamin brands boost ad spend by 27% as 11.8 million Australians turn to supplements

New Nielsen Ad Intel and CMV data reveals rising competition in Australia's ...

07/07/2026

DAS Disputes Wiegels 3.0 EAS Limitations

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

07/07/2026

LiveU to Showcase Q Era Innovations at 2026 IBC Show

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

07/07/2026

LucidLink Unifies Adobe Frame.io, Enterprise Storage

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

07/07/2026

ARRI Introduces ALEXA 35 Live Xtreme Camera

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

07/07/2026

Riedel and ARRI Bring Cinematic Live Production to the Eu...

Riedel Communications and ARRI played a key role in one of the most technically ambitious Eurovision Song Contest productions to date. For the first time in the...

07/07/2026

Berklee Valencia Honors Eric Whitacre at the 2026 Commencement Ceremony

Berklee Valencia Honors Eric Whitacre at the 2026 Commencement Ceremony The Grammy-winning composer was celebrated alongside this years cohort of masters degr...

07/07/2026

Disagreements Abound Over the Adequacy of C-Band Replacements

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

07/07/2026

Cameras Become More Connected to Production Workflows

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

07/07/2026

NFL on TV: Time to Move the Regulatory Goal Posts?

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

07/07/2026

Building a Future-Ready Facility for Tomorrow's Broadcasters

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

07/07/2026

Rewriting the Control Room: How Broadcasters Are Going Remote

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

07/07/2026

Fincons Group appoints Andrea Fravega as Global BU Media...

The appointment will drive growth and innovation across the Media Business Unit Fincons Group, a leading IT business consultancy and systems integrator company...