Exploring the World of Leitz Cine Lenses

On Thursday 22nd of August the event ”Exploring the World of Leitz Cine Lenses” was held at Ljud & Bildmedia AB in the Stockholm suburb of Johannesfred. It was a collaboration between lens manufacturer Leitz Cine and the FSF, the Swedish Society of Cinematographers, as well as WIFT-TECH, Camera Nordic, Ljud & Bildmedia, Mediateknik, Punklight and it played out against the backdrop of the latter’s vast Stockholm rental house facilities.

The form factor was that of an afternoon of presentations followed by a social evening with some light food and drink and tech chat, offering a unique opportunity for cinematographers, ACs and operators to personally meet the Leitz Cine team and explore the full range of Leitz cine lenses.

The highlight of the first part of the day was a brief presentation held by the Leitz Cine team, giving the audience a roadmap of the evolution of Leitz cine lenses up until the present day. The team also showcased the wealth of material available from a veritable smorgasbord of Leitz lenses, which the audience was invited to try out on the popular cameras from Sony and ARRI that were also rigged up and poised to go for the occasion.

Frida Wendel FSF then entered the stage and candidly shared her experiences shooting with Leitz lenses, illustrating how they offer different looks for different projects by showing a few clips from her earlier productions. Frida has shot a number of projects with Leitz glass and has become a member of their family, so to speak.

As soon as the presentations were done it was ”open house” with snacks, sandwiches, drinks and tech chat. All lenses were available to test. Roy Rossovitch FSF mounted the Thalia lenses on his stills camera with a PL adapter and took the wonderful event images you can see throughout this article.

Being curious about how this whole event came into existence, I had a chat with Vika Safrigina, who’s in charge of Leitz’s Market Development efforts. ”Earlier this year I had been involved with the IMAGO life-size portrait project ’I of The Lens’ which happened simultaneously with the Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin”, Vika explains and continues ”Rainer Hercher, our managing director at Leitz, told me he would love for me to do a portrait of Frida Wendel FSF, and so I met with Frida in Berlin and after having taken the portrait we discussed putting together a joint Leitz-FSF event in Stockholm in August. Through the global network ’Women in Cinematography’ I also knew Alejandra FC Zarazua, and as she’s also based in Stockholm she helped us generously by spreading the word in her social media channels, and also in supporting Frida to be a key speaker at the event”.

”The central idea here is to introduce ALL of our products, not to focus on only one line of Leitz lenses” Vika clarifies.

I’m sitting down with the Leitz Cine team, which is Vika of course and also Kevan Parker and Tony El Tom. Kevan Parker is Regional Sales Manager Europe / EMEA / India and Tony is Regional Sales Manager Europe / CEE. If you find the abbreviations bewildering, let’s just say Kevan and Tony are responsible for technical sales throughout a large part of the world.

Running on a large wall-mounted screen next to us is an extremely ambitious lens test which has been shot recently in Los Angeles. ”Today is the first time we show this lens test to a group of Directors of Photography”, Tony explains and goes on ”it was shot on the VENICE 2 with open gate, and a couple of focal lengths of lenses out of every Leitz cine lens family are represented in the video, and not only once, but using multiple T stops”.

And it’s easy to see that this is a treasure trove for anyone interested in what footage shot with these various lenses looks like, as there is a low-key night interior, and there is light streaking the front element of the lens from an oblique angle… There is also a flashlight pointed straight into the lens and there is an extreme close-up shot at a very short distance from the subject. So every lens is subjected to a demanding situation which reveals performance and characteristics in a very honest way.

”We do have two new lens lines here today that we showcase”, Kevan clarifies, ”the Hugo line, which are lightweight & very fast and are based on the M-series of lenses, and the Elsie line. Both these families are full frame lenses. The Elsie is actually a brand new design not drawn on any heritage, but instead they’re a full-on cine design”.

Tony chimes in ”the Elsie have a little bit of character but not so much as making them vintage lenses. The idea is to draw the viewer’s attention to the centre of the frame”

As the video goes on, we’re shown the Summilux-C family of Leitz lenses, which show a nice 1960s style flare characteristic. They’re a super-35 design but show only a little vignetting on full frame. A 10% crop of the image would get rid of what little vignetting there is. The TV series ”Succession” was shot on 35mm with Arricam LT cameras using Summilux-C lenses.

Next up are the Summicron-C family of lenses, which were introduced when the transition from film to digital happened.

Suddenly as we’re talking and watching the video the screen just pops, and you get the feeling ”there’s a new guy in town”. That’s the Leitz Thalia lenses, designed for large format cinematography. They can be used for large format cameras like the Alexa 65, and they certainly give you a distinctive look that sticks out from the crowd.

The Leitz Primes series of lenses are the Rolls Royces of Leitz cine lenses, they’re designed to perform absolutely flawlessly. And the glass in the Leitz Zoom is the same as in the Leitz Primes, so it’s almost as having an endless amount of primes at your disposal. And it’s a true zoom, not just a variofocal lens, it truly holds focus as you zoom. The advantages are numerous of course: you can save time on set on not having to change primes, you can hide little zoom shots within your scene as the camera is moving, which can save you from having to do a little dolly movement, etc.

Here is a link to this Los Angeles-shot ambitious lens test at the Leitz’ site, you can check it out for yourself!

An important part of what you do at an event like this is of course to mingle with others in the crowd, and I come across Björn Thisell, the legendary founder of Ljud & Bildmedia, and our conversation drifts towards the subject of how Ljud & Bildmedia have managed to become so big? Björn explains that one of the keys to their success and expansion has been good relationships with other rental houses throughout Europe, who in turn have rented equipment from Ljud & Bildmedia whenever they have been unable to meet customer demands. So this part of operations has been a win-win situation, since other European rental houses are of course very safe and reliable customers, minimizing the risk of damage to equipment or non-paying customers.

The Leitz team were very pleased with the turn-out this time around at Ljud & Bildmedia, and they look forward to doing more with the FSF in the near future. And the first step in that direction has actually already been taken, as Leitz are committed to establishing ”Exploring the World of Leitz Cine Lenses” as an annually returning event to be held in Sweden in collaboration with the FSF.

When major international cine events like the BSC Expo or Camérimage draw to a close, the focus is on transporting massive amounts of equipment away and on the logistics of returning the festival guests safely to their respective countries all over the globe.

But since this event was held at one of the most well-stocked rental houses in Northern Europe, the majority of the equipment on display is already where it should be, and only needs to be tucked away on its shelves, and we visitors can simply take the short walk to the close-by subway station.

Lars Pettersson FSF