Picture Getty

Oberkochen, a German hamlet nestled in the rolling hills 85km west of Stuttgart, might seem an unlikely hotbed of fanatical innovation. But a three-minute cab ride from its sleepy train station takes you to the global HQ of Carl Zeiss, the 164-year-old optics giant steeped in standard-setting camera lenses, microscopes, measurement tools and medical devices – a company that still applies for two patents every single business day and whose 2,000 in-house scientists conjure up some 600 inventions every year.

Such commitment to R&D – Zeiss earmarks “more than 14%” of its €2.1bn annual revenues on research spending, according to Dr Winfried Scherle, head of the camera lens division – stands in stark contrast to Europe as a whole. Scherle attributes this partly to the company’s Foundation status, an unusual corporate structure that allows Zeiss to withstand the commerical pressure for instant returns. But equally important is its customer feedback: “Our innovation culture is high because we have close contact with our customers,” says Zeiss, “and we empower our employees to suggest and realise ideas.” This approach, equally unusual for Europe, seems to be working: Zeiss earns around 60% of its total revenues from products launched within the past five years.

Throughout its history, Zeiss has attracted some of the most perfectionist clients imaginable. In the 1960s, NASA turned to the company with a singular problem. Could it create a camera lens that could survive extreme differences in temperature and was also simple enough to be operated through the thick gloves of a spacesuit? The result was the Biogon 5.6/60, which allowed Neil Armstrong to capture those iconic images of the first human footprints on the Moon in 1969.

Just as demanding was the legendarily pernickety filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. Hearing that Zeiss was responsive to the peculiar demands of movie directors, he tasked the company with creating a lens that would allow him to shoot candle-lit scenes in old English castles by only the flickering light of the candles themselves. After countless phone calls and letter exchanges with Zeiss, Kubrick finally felt able to make Barry Lyndon the way he had envisaged – without artificial fill-light.

Such creative back-and-forth continues today, although the timeframe has sped up. As for much of its cutting-edge product line, it took Zeiss just six months to create its latest innovation, a series of movie-like lenses that can be attached to high-end still-photography camera bodies popularised by Nikon and Canon.

Video-capable photo-snapping cameras are rapidly revolutionising the way movies are being created. A hit at this year’s Cannes film festival, for example, was Uruguayan horror flick, The Silent House, which was shot in a single take using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II – and on a €4,500 budget. The same camera was used to shoot the final episode in this year’s run of popular US medical drama House.

But while cinematographers claim that the image quality of the these HD single-lens reflex cameras is astonishing, their handling limitations have held back any widespread adoption. As small and lightweight as these cameras are, they just don’t have the same operating finesse of an old-style movie rig or the focusing abilities that allow for those creamy cinema backgrounds. Until now, that is. This summer saw the launch of the Zeiss Compact Prime CP.2, the first interchangeable cine lenses designed for both HDSLRs and the pending release of hybrid camcorders from the likes of Panasonic and Sony using the larger, still- photo sensors. For a few thousand euros, would-be Kubricks can now enjoy their own professional-quality cine lenses that would normally run to many times that amount just to rent.

“We were challenged to create a product that met the expectations of our discriminating customers while being affordable,” says Scherle. Among the key selling points is an “iris opening created by 14 high-precision blades that stay consistently round and symmetrical over the entire T-stop range. This translates into natural and pleasing out-of-focus highlights and a smooth bokeh. Also, the focus rotation is 300°, which provides the filmmaker much better control with the shallow depth-of-field” .

Such attributes benefit even large-scale Hollywood productions since studios can now use more cameras on set without significantly adding to the budget. “While many DP’s [directors of photography] would be reluctant to put a traditional cine camera into harm’s way, a HDSLR can effectively be used as a crash camera to provide unique perspectives for stunt scenes,” says Scherle.

As proof of concept, producer George Lucas turned to Canon’s 5D to film the cockpit scenes and reshoots for his upcoming WW2 fighter-pilot epic, Red Tails. The HDSLR images were, according to Lucas’ longtime producer Rick McCallum “virtually indistinguishable” from those shot with the expensive Sony F35 camera used on the principal photography, and so could be seamlessly inserted in the final editing process.

In an arena where breakthroughs are not on the same game-changing scale witnessed in many other industries, all this amounts to a catalytic explosion. “For the first time, the price barrier has been eliminated from high-definition film capture. Ambitious filmmakers are now creating exciting new content for cable TV, documentaries, commercials, music videos and even feature films,” says Scherle. “We believe it is too early to talk about the CP.2 lenses opening new markets. However, taken together with the entry level cine cameras and the expanding range of low-cost accessories, it is an exciting new category with unlimited possibilities.”

According to Scherle, developments like these are the culmination of small steps taken over many years. He anticipates that such close cooperation between the lens and camera manufacturers will be the key for further evolutionary milestones.“With the barriers to high-definition, motion- picture capture falling, the line between professional and amateur will be blurred. This has been the case in the still-photo world for some time and we are just beginning to experience the changes in the motion-picture market”.