Camerimage 2024 

It can’t have escaped many that the 32nd edition of the Camerimage Film Festival, held recently in the picturesque little medieval city of Torun in Poland, has been accompanied by considerable controversy. Some high-profile ”no-shows”, like director Steve mcQueen and his DP Yorick Le Saux deciding not to attend the festival even though their historical war drama ”Blitz” was the festival’s opening feature, and similarly the director-cinematographer team of Coralie Fargeat and Benjamin Kračun pulling their film ”The Substance” out of the competition, put something of a dent in the festival. 

And also the technical exhibition, or ”Camerimage Market” as it is called, in the lower level of the Jordanki building where the most prestigious screenings and ceremonies take place, reminded one of the ”no-show” leitmotif, with ARRI and Sumolight being among the companies not represented here this time around. 

But in spite of this, the festival is brimming over with activity. There are tons of seminars and workshops and hundreds of film screenings, as well as personal appearances by famous cinematographers, directors, actors and other cinema professionals. And of course to us, keenly on the lookout for ”what’s cooking?” on the various company front burners, the technical exhibition is a treasure trove and so we set off on a little expedition touring the various stands.

Panavision are celebrating their 70th anniversary this year, and they have shown up in full force with an ambitiously decorated, Wicked-themed stand to boot. Visitors are met by a retrofitted VENICE 2 with Panavized trimmings, and are encouraged to mount and try out any Panavision lens of their choice from the generous selection available on display.  ”We want to invite all our customers and clients to join us in celebrating our 70th anniversary”, Kate Priestman explains to me as she briefly describes the smorgasbord of lenses in the booth. ”Panavision has a broad range of lenses from 70 years in the business. It’s a total of 27-something families of lenses. The C-series are still popular today and the Primos, which were introduced in the late 1980s, are now becoming very popular as a vintage lens”.

The company was founded in 1954 by camera technician Robert Gottschalk, and grew out of the photo store which Gottschalk ran in Westwood in Los Angeles. Originally he focused on renting out anamorphic projection lenses for cinemas to handle the demand during the cinemascope craze at the time, but he soon segued into lenses for production photography as well. The original Cinemascope lenses which were used in Hollywood in the early fifties were prone to give the actors ”the mumps”, and many prominent thespians were not amused by this situation. Gottschalk’s lenses handled this phenomenon considerably better than the competition, and the B-series and C-series introduced in the mid-1960s featured a special astigmatizer to further rectify the problem.

There is a sort of cul-de-sac at the far end of the Camerimage technical Market, where you can either turn around and go back the same way through the exhibition or continue on to the seminar auditorium. Here is also where the Lodz film school has a wonderful booth, resembling a little bookstore, and staffed by both teachers and students alike.  The Lodz film school has a 6 year head start on Panavision, as it celebrated its 75th anniversary last year, making it one of the most venerable film schools worldwide. We have a word here with professor Katarzyna Taras who gives us her short list of Festival Favorites! ”The Brutalist” starring Adrian Brody, ”Small Things like These” Starring Cillian Murphy and Emily Watson, produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck… and ”Emilia Pérez” directed by Jacques Audriard.

Ed Lachman ASC, who last year here in Torun picked up the Silver Frog for his work on ”El Conde”, is this year’s highly deserving recipient of the 2024 Camerimage Lifetime Achievement Award. Mr Lachman can be sighted here and there throughout the festival, as he is involved in a Masterclass and as a panelist at various seminars. And there is in fact a connecting thread between Mr Lachman and what’s going on in the SONY booth here at the technical Market, as the new version IV firmware for the VENICE 2 comes with an exposure tool called the E.L. Zone, named after… you guessed it: Ed Lachman.

SONY representative Daniel Listh gives us a brief tour of this remarkable new software. ”Instead of False color, which is based on IRE data from 0 to 100”, Daniel points out, ”the E.L. Zone approach is based on the light meter approach and exposing a middle grey (18%). Colors are based in 1/2 stops above and below middle grey.  The goal is to give you a complete overview of the exposures in your frame”.   

And with E.L. Zone turned on, your monitor image looks like a surrealist painting -in a good way. The various colors mean areas where you have exactly 18° gray, or above or below this, in 1/2 stop increments. This is akin to the way some DPs in the past would take a polaroid of the set lighting prior to doing the takes, to check how far anything deviated above or below the chosen camera T-stop.

The new VENICE 2 firmware version IV is planned to be available in August 2025. Almost six months earlier,  in march 2025, a new firmware update will be available for the SONY BURANO.  Daniel gives us the background to this. ”The BURANO has been out since April and has been very popular with users. And SONY has received constructive feedback on features that could be further developed and improved, and these are implemented in the new firmware update which will be available in march 2025”.

Daniel points out that many cinema professionals have gone through a rough patch these past few years after the Covid Pandemic. ”Right now some of our customer base are focussing on survival. But at SONY we’re looking forward to a brighter future together with the cinematographers and shooters out there who love to use our equipment”.

Just a further ten paces down the aisle, we find Kevan Parker and Chiara Siebert in the Leitz booth. ”The most important lenses we want to showcase at this year’s Camerimage”, Kevan and Chiara point out, ”are the 15mm Elsie and three new focal lengths in the Hugo family, called the Hugo II. At Leitz we have divided our portfolio into three product families: Performance, Character and Legacy, and the Elsie is a member of the Character family while the Hugo lenses belong to Leitz’ Legacy products”. 

Kevan and Chiara go on to explain that he 15mm Elsie is brand new and makes its debut at this show, and that the Hugo II lenses consist of focal lengths 66, 75 and 90 mm, and are all T2,1 while the original Hugo lenses are all T1,5.  

That the Hugo IIs belong to Leitz’ Legacy products is pretty obvious when one learns that the 66mm is based on the legendary Leica ”spy lens” developed during the Cold War for the US Navy for ultra high resolution imaging purposes. And the 75 and 90 mm lenses are based on the Summicron M series lenses for stills photography. These lenses are all available now and the market response has been good.

Nearby, in the Nanlux booth, Risa Zhu and Camel Luo are very enthusiastic about the company’s products. ”Evoke 2400 B is our biggest seller right now, it’s the most popular light in the rental market now, has bi-color green and magenta adjustment and is IP55 certified, so you can use it in the rain. And of course you can run it on regular household power”. 

Camel gives me the unfiltered (sorry, I couldn’t resist) truth about how the latest LED lighting technology can be used to achieve downsizing and efficiency on present-day film sets. ”A full range of accessories is available and one of the most popular right now is the Parallell Beam Reflector which intensifies the light output of the unit considerably, narrowing it down to a 6° beam. And at only 9,4 kilos, the reflector is very lightweight. Shooting the Evoke 2400 B up into a Lightbridge reflector is a game changer, as reflected light can be used to considerably reduce the environmental footprint on a production”.

Many large HMI units require two people to carry them, the Evoke 2400 B can be carried by one person alone. And if you consider bouncing light placed on street level and facing upwards into a third floor window off a reflector, as opposed to placing an 18K on a cherrypicker, you get an idea how much can be done to cut down on transportation, energy consumption, etc, with this approach. The accompanying photo here illustrates nicely how the output from a cluster of Nanlux Evoke 2500B lights, equipped with the new 6° Parallell beam reflector, can be bounced off a set of Lightbridge mirrors mounted on a cherrypicker.

And, as icing on the cake, the Evoke 5000 B will be available 1st quarter 2025.

At the SONY booth there was concern about the hardship many cinema professionals are experiencing at this time, and Moon Smart Focus express similar sentiments, and have adjusted their portfolio to make their products more lucrative for AC own operators. ”We call it trimming the fat ”, explains MOON’s Michel Cardoso Teixeira, ”our new version: Moon Smart Focus LITE, offers support for only one LCS system (ARRI, Preston or Teradek). If an owner would like to add another license they can upgrade – this way we can offer the product at a lower cost of entry, and we’re also introducing leasing offers, so you can part-pay for the product instead of buying it outright.  The market response has been positive, and we’ve had several sales already in Europe of the new LITE version”.

A bit further down the aisle, Cooke are announcing the advent of their new series of lenses covering the 65mm Large Format for cameras like the Alexa 65 and 65mm film cameras. I was curious why Cooke choose to enter this segment of the lens market at this point and they explained that it used to be Alexa 65 was the only game in town for 65mm digital, but now both Black Magic and Fuji are entering the market, and in the case of Black Magic with a camera at a price point where 65mm digital will be a viable proposition to a lot more people than previously. And that sheds new light on Cooke’s move, because lenses designed for this very large format kind of camera are few and far between and not easy to come by, we’re talking Leitz Thalia, Panavision and ARRI. 

So Cooke’s decision to launch these lenses now is probably a very good one, particularly as they’re aiming to offer them at a not-too-steep price point. 

In summing up, this the 32nd edition of the festival is of course so much more than just the technical exhibition. During this week many dozens of seminars and workshops are held and hundreds of film screenings, as well as personal appearances by famous cinema professionals, some of whom are here to pick up prestigious awards. This year’s recipients of the Main Competition Frog Awards were…  The Golden Frog went to Michał Dymek for ”The Girl with the Needle”,  directed by Magnus von Horn. Silver Frog went to Lol Crawley for ”The Brutalist” directed by Brady Corbet, and finally, the Bronze Frog went to Paul Guilhaume for ”Emilia Pérez” directed by Jacques Audiard.

Lars Pettersson FSF