Afghanistan Sand comes to the Service Department
Jerry Vienneau has been bringing his cameras to Alnoor at Videoscope for ten years, whenever he needs service. But this time, he brought something new with his high definition Sony HDW-700.
In October, 2006, Jerry headed to Afghanistan to spend a month with the front line Canadian troops of the 8th Platoon, Charles Company, shooting a documentary about their daily lives. Panjwai Province had seen almost no rain for four years. Jerry describes the dust at Kandahar airfield as "moon dust, like talcum." To protect his camera, Jerry cleaned it with compressed air each time he took out a tape. But he began to get RF warnings, and what looked like a "honeycomb effect" in his viewfinder. Finally he had to finish the shoot with a DV camera. So when he got home, he came to see Alnoor. Based on the shooting conditions, Alnoor immediately suspected a video head fault. "When he showed me the video head drum through the microscope it looked like a desert in there," says Jerry. With a complete drum replacement and appropriate adjustments, Jerry and his HDW-700 were ready for a shoot in Louisiana | 
