Academy Award Winning Lenses By Panavision

What do movies, medicine, the military and mass communications have in common? They all depend on "Optics by ELCAN" and the world-renowned optical expertise at ELCAN Optical Technologies in Midland. Customers that are leaders in their industry often turn to ELCAN to solve optical, and lens challenges that other lens suppliers have refused to attempt. This was the case with Panavision.

In order to maintain uncompromising quality control and industry leadership – no piece of Panavision equipment is for sale. All state-of-the-art camera systems and lenses are rented to production companies around the world. On return, every lens, optical component, and piece of equipment is put through a rigorous service check – a camera or lens may be completely stripped apart and rebuilt to be certain it's in the finest working order. Equipment updates and modifications are also done at the same time to ensure each and every lens, optical component, and piece of equipment is to Panavision's exacting standards.

To push the envelope of cinematographical excellence to the next level, Panavision developed a "wish list" set of specifications for a revolutionary new lens system in 1983. Panavision's optical lens supplier at the time found the specifications and tolerances to be too tight and refused to even try. Panavision then approached ELCAN with their vision for a new standard of visual experience through their new lens and optical designs.

Major motion pictures are filmed with lenses of multiple focal lengths to accommodate the Directors' need for a variety of camera shots (telephoto, close ups and wide angle). Different cinematographical lenses in use at the time produced noticeable color aberrations across the focal length spectrum. Each lens change the Director requested necessitated the use of filters or extensive post-production to correct for the change in lenses. This cost, time and extra labor, interfered with the creative filmmaking process.

Panavision's challenge to ELCAN Optical Technologies was to develop a series of lenses with exceptional sharpness & contrast, even field illumination and negligible veiling glare, ghosting or distortion and importantly, that were color-matched across the entire series.

ELCAN started their lens solution by selecting a new high-performance glass material that was risky, but offered huge advantages. This new glass was critical for the novel optical design that Panavision wanted to try. ELCAN then utilized a new multi-coating technique to control the color aberrations as well as increase the total transmitted light through the lenses. This combination of design and manufacturing innovation made it possible to shoot multiple angles and shots with multiple lenses without the need for filters or intensive post-production editing.

The end result was a new family of lenses and optics specifically for motion picture cinematography, the Panavision Primo-L lenses, which are still the sharpest lenses available.

One of the first films shot with the Primo-L lens series was "Empire of the Sun" directed by Steven Spielberg. The narrative below details one of the scenes shot by Spielberg with an 800 mm Primo-L lens: