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Lou Reda Productions, West Easton, PA

It was HD-Day for high-definition video, when Lou Reda Productions recently employed two Sony HVR-Z1U camcorders to aid in a new documentary the company produced on battles fought in the Pacific during World War II.

According the company namesake and founder, Lou Reda Productions has been producing independent and government films and videos for nearly 35 years. The company has produced numerous historic films to date, as well as several documentaries featured at U.S. monuments and museums, including the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum, home to the USS Midway, as well as the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.

The new Sony HDV™ camcorders captured the action for the company's latest three-hour documentary that was scheduled to air on The History Channel on July 24.

With roughly 20 staff members, Reda explains that his company makes about 20 documentaries a year, all with a military/historic focus. The company's executive producer, Lou Reda, is an ex-Navy seaman who developed a flare for cameras and TV production in his early years in the service. Reda served in the U.S. Navy from 1943-1946.

"I started out as a deep-sea diver and then became a performer, singing with bands all over the world," he said. At 80, he doesn't plan on retiring anytime soon, and he's no stranger to new technologies: "We just started using the Sony Z1 cameras and they're great. They're really flexible, and you can move around a lot with them," he said.

The HVR-Z1U HDV 1080i camcorder can record HDV, DVCAM™, and DV images at 60i, 50i, and CineFrame at 25 or 24 frames per second in either SD or HD mode. It's replete with three Super HAD™, 1/3-inch, 16:9 native CCDs, a 12X optical zoom lens from Carl Zeiss, and Sony's new 14-bit A/D with Digital Extended Processor - designed to enable more light to reach each pixel in the imager and improve the signal-to-noise ratio and sensiti.

Serving Reda Production's need for flexibility, the camera offers switchable 60/50 capability, balanced audio XLR input connectors, color correction, SMPTE timecodes with user presets, and CineFrame™ and CinemaTone™ gamma functions for cinema-type recordings.

Through his filmmaking, Reda says he is reaching out to the average viewer, whom he refers to as "brown baggers." "A brown bagger is 98 percent of the country. It's people who pack a lunch and go to work every day. If I can satisfy the brown baggers in this country, then I know I've really accomplished something," Reda said.

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