The letter Captured On Film by Gino Theuma, my colleague and old friend (October 12) has prompted me to write this note of appreciation.

A lot has been said about the Department of Information exhibition. However, I feel that nothing has been said about the pioneers of the department's film unit who unfortunately have passed away.

I would like to pay tribute to Emmanuel Caruana, the first professional self-taught cameraman, and Joe Bartolo, who apart from solving a myriad of small problems in the film unit was also a cameraman and an excellent stills photographer. Mr Theuma mentioned the beginning of the ID cards photography. It was Mr Bartolo who invented one processor out of bits and pieces we had around. Mr Caruana, "Manwel" as we all dearly called him, was a cameraman of the old school where everything had to be dogmatically correct. He was indeed a man of great humour who also excelled in creating sound FX for our documentaries in the most funny way. I still laugh when I see the shot of a wedding blow torch where I needed a special effect and readily he went in front of the microphone and just by blowing through the lips, gave me the perfect effect I needed.

Just one other note about what has been said in the press regarding the film gauge we used. The DOI film unit never used Super 8 or 8 mm, but all the news reels or documentaries were shot on 16mm in colour or black and white.

Indeed, the DOI film unit was a great team that with very little did great jobs that very few appreciated.