KEY POINTS:
Burglars have stolen movie cameras worth $1.4 million during a 90-second raid on a fully-alarmed equipment hire company.
The state of the art equipment was taken from Panavision's Richmond Rd premises at about 6.40am on Sunday, despite the company having a monitored alarm system and other security measures in place.
Company managing director Peter Parnham said the stolen gear was taken in nine aluminium camera cases and included three 35mm movie cameras and two sets of lenses.
Mr Parnham said despite the gear's value it would be worthless to most people as it required a crew of three who knew how the cameras were assembled and worked.
Very few people outside the industry had that knowledge, he said.
Most of the gear has Panavision etched on to it or the brand names ARRI and Zeiss and police want to hear from anyone who has been approached by people trying to sell it.
Mr Parnham said he was surprised at the speed of the burglary, , especially considering the building was alarmed and police arrived within minutes.
Security would be upgraded at the store.
The company is not the first to have camera gear stolen this year.
In July, freelance cameraman Geoff Mackley, who has made headlines chasing storms, tornadoes and major news events around the world, was also hit by thieves.
Someone broke into his assistant's car in Owairaka and stole a $40,000 Panasonic AJD 800 Broadcast TV camera which was never recovered.
That followed a theft in January when a Christchurch cameraman, who did not want to be identified, had $68,000 worth of gear stolen from a staff member's car.
After reading publicity about the stolen gear, the cheeky thieves left a ransom note in the cameraman's office saying he could retrieve his gear for $1600 - a move not condoned by police but which resulted in the camera's return.
Anyone with information about the Panavision theft is asked to contact Detective Constable Martyn Hughes at the Avondale CIB on 820 5625.
