Thoroughbred Racing Productions Taps New FUJINON 4K Lenses for New OB Fleet

Thoroughbred Racing Productions (TRP) produces over 2500 hours of live HD thoroughbred racing outside broadcasts each year. The company provides exclusive production services to the Victorian Racing Industry, producing broadcasts for more than 525 thoroughbred race meetings conducted throughout the state. These broadcasts are provided for free-to-air and pay TV channels in both Australia and overseas, to on-course patrons and importantly the stipendiary stewards who manage the integrity of racing. That means delivering premium sports vision that not only captures the spectacular excitement of thoroughbred racing but also the finer detail. In pursuit of that finer detail TRP recently purchased some high quality FUJINON 4K lenses for their new OB fleet.

“We have been in the process of upgrading the high-definition OB fleet Sony built for us 13 years ago which started with the replacement of our main metro unit in 2019 and were given the approval to replace the country racing units in March 2020,” says TRP Engineering and Technical Operations Manager, Charles Cole. “As the new main metro unit was a big hit with our operators, the design of the country units became a cookie cutter of the main unit but a scaled down version. As we are using the highest quality equipment in these new units, it was a natural progression to purchase the best lenses from FUJINON.”

As the two country units travel from one end of Victoria to the other and are the backbone of the racing production for more than 400 race meetings, TRP require them to a high quality, robust and reliable facility.

“To that end FUJINON lenses have proven to be of exceptional quality and highly reliable so we purchased multiple UA46x and UA24x 4K lenses which met our needs perfectly,” adds Cole. “The UA46x lenses provide the versatility to produce race production and stewards’ integrity video that meets all requirements whether requiring the tight or the wide end of the zoom range. The UA24x are the workhorse lenses around the mounting yard or in the studio.”

Typically the main race cover and the stewards’ tower cameras use the UA46x lenses and depending on the positioning of the camera and track a 2x extender may also be used. All other cameras, mounting yard, return to scale, low down, studio and hostings all use the UA24x lenses.

“With over 2500 hours of live television production each year TRP need to be confident that we can deliver the pictures and sound to our stakeholders that they expect and FUJINON lenses are a key component of that delivery,” concludes Cole. “Finally, I would consider FUJIFILM Australia as a partner rather than a supplier to TRP, as they are very responsive to our needs and have supported us with factory backing whenever required. The maintenance and repair service FUJIFILM Australia provide is second to none.”