Panavision - Cameras

Cameras

By 1962, four of Panavision's founders had left the company to pursue private careers. That year, MGM's Camera 65 production of Mutiny on the Bounty went so far over budget that the studio liquidated assets to cover its costs. As a result of this liquidation, Panavision acquired MGM's camera equipment division, as well as the rights to the Camera 65 system it had developed for MGM; the technology was renamed Ultra Panavision. Only six more features were made with the system: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Hallelujah Trail (1965), and Khartoum (1966). As 1.25x anamorphosers for 70 mm projectors have become rare, most of the 70 mm prints of these films still in circulation are designed for projection with nonanamorphic, spherical lenses. The result is a 2.20:1 aspect ratio, rather than the broader ratio originally intended.

Although Fox insisted on maintaining CinemaScope for a time, some actors disliked the system. For Fox's 1965 production Von Ryan's Express, Frank Sinatra reputedly demanded that Auto Panatar lenses be used. Such pressures led Fox to completely abandon CinemaScope for Auto Panatars that year; Von Ryan's Express was the studio's first picture with Panavision lenses. To meet the extraordinary demand for Panavision projection lenses, Gottschalk had Bausch & Lomb CinemaScope lenses retrofitted into Panavision housings with a new astigmatic attachment, improving them greatly. This was revealed many years after Gottschalk's death; a lead designer from Bausch & Lomb, who had been involved with the original CinemaScope project, came to work as a designer for Panavision and—after opening some of the older lenses—figured out the secret.

In the mid-1960s, Gottschalk altered Panavision's business model. The company now maintained its full inventory, making its lenses and the cameras it had acquired from MGM available only by rental. This meant that equipment could be maintained, modified, and regularly updated by the company. When Panavision eventually brought its own camera designs to market, it was relatively unconstrained by retrofitting and manufacturing costs, as it was not directly competing on sales price. This allowed Panavision to build cameras to new standards of durability.

The new business model required additional capital. To this end, the company was sold to Banner Productions in 1965, with Gottschalk remaining as president. Panavision would soon expand into markets beyond Hollywood, eventually including New York, Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. Kinney National Service bought out Banner in 1968 and took over Warner Brothers the following year, eventually renaming itself Warner Communications. Kinney/Warner's financial resources made possible a massive expansion in Panavision's inventory, as well as substantial leaps in research and development.

During this period, the company's R&D department focused on retrofitting the industry standard 35 mm camera, the Mitchell BNC. The effort to develop a lighter, quieter camera with a reflex viewfinder led to the introduction of the Panavision Silent Reflex (PSR) in 1967. The camera could provide a shutter angle of up to 200 degrees. Many refinements were made to the PSR during the first few years after its introduction, and it soon became one of the most popular studio cameras in the world. Panavision also began manufacturing spherical lenses for 1.85:1 photography, garnering a significant share of the market.

In 1968, Panavision released a handheld 65 mm camera. By that time, however, the much cheaper process of blowing up 35 mm anamorphic films to 70 mm—introduced with The Cardinal (1964)—had made 65 mm production virtually obsolete. In 1970, the last two feature films shot entirely with Super Panavision were released: Song of Norway and Ryan's Daughter. In the decades since, only a handful of films have been shot in 65 mm.