PANAVISION and Future Technologies

PANAVISION cameras are continuously updated ‘state-of-the-art’ devices which incorporate more desirable features than any other motion picture camera. Every feature is there either because it makes pictures look better on the screen or because it makes it less expensive to make pictures, especially when shooting sync sound in confined conditions.

Development work never stops. The PANAVISION management team knows that if they were ever to sit back on their past laurels and not continue to spend vast sums of money on R&D they would quickly lose their leadership in the field. Because PANAVISION cameras and lenses are never sold but only leased on a picture by picture basis they are in the ideal position to constantly manufacture new items, to upgrade and service existing items and to withdraw those that become passe. You never get a noisy “yesterday’s” camera from PANAVISION.

Panavision at the Cutting Edge of Technology

For the ultimate in image quality, especially in so far as being able to have your picture projected using very much higher screen brightness levels you can shoot with PANAVISION cameras at 29.97 fps and because the cameras are so quiet in the first place you can do so without the camera noise becoming obtrusive. With this system images have freedom from flicker, faster pans and tilts are possible without strobing and there is finer grain and greater image detail.

Shooting at 29.97 fps is also advantageous for ultimate image quality when film is transferred to NTSC video; for shooting scenes which contain many in-shot video monitors and for transfer to High Definition TV (whichever system may prevail in the future).

Irrespective of what generations of video origination, recording and display systems may be invented, and later relegated into disuse in the years to come, a transparent image on film will always be usable and marketable at any time in the future. This is more than can be said for productions that were recorded, even comparatively recently, on now obsolete video recorders. There is always a future for film.

1. PANAVISION’s engineering design department, 2. PANAVISION’s sound test room, 3. PANAVISION’s environmental test chamber, 4. PANAVISION’s MTF optical test bench, 5. Video formats may come and go but rolls of film virtually last forever.