19 Facts About Panavision

Panavision is an American motion picture equipment company founded in 1953 specializing in cameras and lenses, based in Woodland Hills, California.

Panavision has introduced other cameras such as the Millennium XL and the digital video Genesis .

Panavision operates exclusively as a rental facility—the company owns its entire inventory, unlike most of its competitors.

Panavision was established principally for the manufacture of anamorphic projection lenses to meet the growing demands of theaters showing CinemaScope films.

Panavision teamed up with William Mann, who provided optical manufacturing capability, and Walter Wallin, an optical physicist who was an acquaintance of Mann's.

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Panavision improved on the Super Panatar with the Ultra Panatar, a lighter design that could be screwed directly to the front of the projection lens.

Panavision invented a solution: adding a rotating lens element that moved in mechanical sync with the focus ring.

Since 1954, Panavision had been working on a new widescreen process commissioned by MGM.

Panavision developed a nonanamorphic widescreen process called Super Panavision 70, which was essentially identical to Todd-AO.

Super Panavision made its screen debut in 1959 with The Big Fisherman, released by Disney's Buena Vista division.

Panavision now maintained its full inventory, making its lenses and the cameras it had acquired from MGM available only by rental.

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.

The first cameras produced by Panavision were Mitchell cameras, and all standard 35mm cameras made by Panavision to this day are based on the Mitchell movement.

Panavision came out with a direct competitor to Tiffen's Steadicam stabilizer, the Panaglide harness.

Panavision was sold to Lee International PLC for $100 million in 1987, but financing was overextended and ownership reverted to the investment firm Warburg Pincus two years later.

Panavision operated three rental depots in the UK and was main agent for Panavision in France and Australia.

Sony produced the electronics and a stand-alone version of the camera; Panavision supplied custom-designed high definition lenses, trademarked Primo Digital, and retrofitted the camera body to incorporate standard film camera accessories, facilitating the equipment's integration into existing crew equipment as a "digital cinema camera".

Subsequent to the completion of major design work on the Genesis, Panavision bought out Sony's 49 percent share of DHD Ventures and fully consolidated it in September 2004.

Panavision 3D was a system for presenting 3-D film in a digital cinema.