Freeman invited the crew to make creative suggestions. At the time, IMAX cameras weighed and had specifications that were deemed "basic", dismaying the filmmakers, who wanted To Fly! to be an IMAX game-changer. They were worried about damaging the only camera available to them, and wanted to minimize the need for retakes. Ferguson and fellow IMAX co-founders, Bill Shaw and Robert Kerr, proposed creating three new cameras with better specifications. MacGillivray said the cameras would also be used for American Years, a 50-minute epic IMAX film for the temporary Philadelphia '76 theater, also a Bicentennial celebration. Ferguson granted the proposal. While filming To Fly!, one scene required the use of a second camera that was attached to a parachute, which failed to deploy, destroying the camera. It took three months to test the cameras and other equipment. To make the film bright, colorful, and naturalistic, production used the Eastman Color Negative 5254 tungsten 65 mm film stock and a standard Tiffen 85 photographic filter. They reasoned the short duration on the costly film stock. To give the film a dramatic look, they used multiple light sources to emphasize the subject. Because of the IMAX screen's large dimensions and where the perceived center of the frame would be for audiences, many unconventional filming techniques were implemented. Extreme long shots were treated as wide-angle shots, while the latter were treated as normal shots. Movement was condensed to ease the switching between an extreme long shot to medium close-up, and a wide-angle lens was used to further expand the film's view. According to MacGillivray, "Plenty of headroom is needed in all closeups (in IMAX [screens, it will look like] the medium closeup) so the audience can establish comfortable eye-contact". Camera lenses were also carefully chosen. A scene with a vertical view of New York City used a 30mm fisheye lens, giving it edge curvature and image distortion. Lenses specifically built for Hasselblad cameras were modified, with their focal lengths changed, shutters removed, and mounts modified to fit the IMAX cameras. The crew had no zoom lenses available that would make filming easier; they used the first IMAX zoom lens in the later film Behold Hawaii (1983). Many shots in the film were time-consuming: a 35-second shot of the Blue Angels flying over the Colorado River and Yuma Desert took over four months to choreograph. Camera mounts were designed by the United States Navy