Ian Stone obituary

Ian Stone in 1969 filming for Bird’s-Eye View Photograph: none

My friend Ian Stone, who has died aged 89, was among the first BBC cameramen to evolve a fresh style of documentary filming in the 1960s and 70s, using lighter-weight cameras, sometimes hand-held, and filming in natural light. He shot notable documentaries for strands including Panorama, The World About Us, 40 Minutes and Horizon. He worked at the BBC for 30 years.

So successful was Ian that Clive James wrote in the Observer that a 1977 observational Panorama programme, shot in a school, must have been set up, because it was so steady and sharp – “otherwise the cameraman must have been the greatest since Raoul Coutard”. Ian had shot the whole unrehearsed film with a hand-held Eclair camera; Clive James apologised.