When it comes to extreme photography, it would be hard to get more gnarly than Steep, the new Sony Pictures Classics feature documentary about extreme big mountain skiing. Written and directed by Mark Obenhaus, and shot in High Definition and on film in Alaska, Wyoming, Canada, France and Iceland, Steep features interviews and footage from many of the sport's greatest athletes, including: Bill Briggs, Stefano De Benedetti, Doug Coombs, Eric Pehota and Glen Plake, with some truly jaw-dropping sequences of skiers attempting descents so extreme they’re almost suicidal.

To capture the extreme skiing, Obenhaus and DP Erich Roland used a variety of cameras, “including a Panasonic VariCam which shoots 720p for the HD footage, which we coupled with a Panasonic HVX, which is a much smaller, highly portable camera without interchangeable lenses, that records on a P2 card,” Obenhaus reports. “Going into this project, we hoped there’d be a seamless cutting from the HVX, which is somewhat compressed, to the VariCam, which is far bigger. And we were concerned, as the HVX was brand new at the time, and we were one of the first to use it – certainly in this kind of extreme situation. But they proved to be highly compatible, it was very easy to cut between them, and it turned out to be a very successful marriage. We could give the HVX to an alpinist climbing a sheer wall with very little gear and get some amazing shots.” For 16mm, the team used mostly high-speed versions of the Arri SR3, “and usually used two at a time,” he says. For lenses, the Arri used Canon 8-64 and 11-165 zooms. “As for the HD cameras, you can use different lenses on the VariCam but not on the HVX, on which we used two Fujinon zooms,” he adds. “We shot on Kodak and used various film stocks, including 7245 and 7250 daylight, and all the stocks and cameras performed amazingly well, given just how extreme the weather conditions were.”