A lens for every story

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With optical innovation at its core, Panavision’s lens rental inventory offers new advancements while continuing to support legacy lenses.

“An artist might use airbrush or acrylic or oil or spray paint, and the people who make those products don’t decide what art is going to be made with them,” says Charlie Todman, technical marketing director for Panavision UK. “In the same way, our job is to provide cinematographers with as many different lenses as possible so they can choose what’s right for a particular project.”

With that focus, Panavision has released approximately 30 proprietary lens series since the company began making cinema lenses in the mid-1950s — not to mention countless special optics, custom focal lengths and prototype lenses that remain part of the company’s rental inventory alongside a vast assortment of lenses from most third-party manufacturers.

Among the most recent additions to Panavision’s inventory of proprietary lenses are the Ultra Panatar II 1.3x-squeeze anamorphics, VA spherical primes and Array Lenses. Exhibited at this year’s BSC Expo, the high-performance Array Lenses are precision-matched and calibrated specifically for use with Panavision’s camera-array baseplates, providing a streamlined solution for capturing background plates for VFX or LED volumes. The VAs and Ultra Panatar IIs, meanwhile, offer large-format coverage while also delivering excellent performance on 35mm-format cameras.

Cinematographer Jomo Fray worked with VA primes for director RaMell Ross’ feature Nickel Boys, which was meticulously crafted with a first-person visual language. Fray shares, “The optical qualities of the VAs were like nothing I had seen before. They were so unique that they instantly pulled me in — they have a distinctly three-dimensional quality that felt incredibly immersive to us. They are also fast and surprisingly lightweight, which were both important given our space restrictions with so many of our point-of-view builds.”

Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau ASC plans a shot with a 65mm Ultra Panatar II lens on set for *Captain America: Brave New World*

Bringing projects to life

Alice Brooks ASC was the first to put a set of prototype Ultra Panatar IIs through their paces when she reteamed with director Jon M. Chu for the feature Wicked and its upcoming sequel, Wicked: For Good. “The lenses are so beautiful,” Brooks says, highlighting their unique character. “I love the imperfections, and they weren’t obvious. They were very subtle, making our world feel a little different.”

The 1.3x squeeze of the Ultra Panatar IIs harks back to Panavision’s very first series of camera lenses, the APO Panatar prism anamorphics, which featured a 1.25x squeeze and were designed for 65mm film capture. With credits that include such classics as Ben-Hur (1959), the APO Panatars were refurbished for writer-director Quentin Tarantino and cinematographer Robert Richardson ASC’s use on the 2015 release The Hateful Eight. More recently, cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski chose to pair the APO Panatars — supplemented by select focal lengths of Ultra Panatar 1.3x anamorphics and H Series spherical primes — with the ARRI Alexa 35 camera for director Mimi Cave’s feature Holland. “Wherever the focus fell was so sharp,” he says of the vintage anamorphic optics. “The eyes were amazing, but then the skin was so soft.”

When prepping Captain America: Brave New World with director Julius Onah, cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau ASC landed on a lens package that mixed multiple anamorphic squeezes with spherical lenses as well as vintage and modern glass. He explains, “Panavision [2x-squeeze] C Series anamorphic lenses were chosen for their unique vintage character, adding a nostalgic and grounded feel to the film’s aesthetic. VA primes were used for shots we couldn’t achieve with the C Series, such as super wide-angle, close focus or fast T1.4-stop shots. We also shot a portion of the film for IMAX with Ultra Panatar II lenses in a 1.90:1 aspect ratio.”

Both Morgenthau and Pogorzelski collaborated with Panavision’s Special Optics team for select customisations within their chosen lens packages. “It’s so cool to be able to make these adjustments,” Pogorzelski says. Between Panavision’s ability to customise lenses and the tremendous variety of proprietary and third-party lenses in the company’s rental inventory, “You can really bring the project to life,” Pogorzelski adds. “There are so many lenses to choose from. The vault seems infinite. Let’s keep looking.”