Jarin Blaschke and Dan Sasaki discuss vintage and custom lenses

For each of his four feature-length collaborations with writer-director Robert Eggers, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke has collaborated closely with Panavision, delving into the lens inventory and working closely with the Special Optics team to assemble the packages he would use to frame the projects’ period settings. Taking place in 1600s New England, The Witch (2016) found Blaschke choosing Cooke Speed Panchro Series II lenses, which he complemented with Bausch & Lomb Super Baltars and Panavision Super Speeds, framing for the 1.66:1 aspect ratio. For The Lighthouse (2019), which takes audiences to the year 1890, Blaschke and Eggers elected to use the 1.19:1 aspect ratio and selected Baltar lenses and custom Petzval optics designed by Dan Sasaki, Panavision’s Senior Vice President of Optical Engineering and Lens Strategy. With The Northman (2022), the filmmakers embraced a wider 2.00:1 aspect ratio for an epic tale set in the time of the Vikings, circa A.D. 900; Blaschke’s primary lenses for the movie were Primo spherical primes modified by the Special Optics team. Most recently, for the 1830s-set Nosferatu (2024), the filmmakers returned to the 1.66:1 aspect ratio, and Blaschke’s lens package combined Baltars with custom optics inspired by vintage photographic lenses.

In this video, which took place at Panavision’s headquarters in Woodland Hills, California, Blaschke and Sasaki dive deep into all four of those projects, detailing the cinematographer’s meticulous testing processes, digging into a variety of optical designs, analyzing test footage and final frames, and much more.

Pop-up definitions appear onscreen throughout the conversation to provide additional context or information related to topics and terms that Blaschke and Sasaki mention. For ease of reference, you can also find those definitions - and their time codes - below.

02:46 – Thorium is a radioactive lead isotope present in thoriated glass, which has a high refractive index and was used in a variety of vintage lenses.

02:54 – Double-Gauss lens designs incorporate symmetrical groupings of positive and negative elements. Reverse-telephoto (aka inverted telephoto or retrofocus) lenses use a net-negative objective to increase the back focal length while achieving a wide field of view.

03:23 – Chromatic aberration can be either lateral, manifesting as color fringing, or axial, which occurs when a lens does not focus all colors (i.e., wavelengths) of light onto the same focal plane.

03:32 – Substrate refers to the base material that makes up an optical component. Different substrates have unique refractive indices and dispersion qualities.

04:10 – Spherical aberration occurs when light rays passing through a lens converge at different focal points, resulting in a blurred or soft-focus image.

06:37 – Dagor, Artar, and Protar lenses were developed for still photography in the late 1800s.

08:26 – Orthochromatic film was primarily sensitive to blue and green wavelengths of light, but not red. The Lighthouse was shot with panchromatic black-and-white film, which is sensitive to a broader spectrum of light.

09:44 – In a reflex motion-picture film camera, the spinning mirror that allows the operator to view through the lens sits between the film plane and the lens’ rear element, in some cases requiring a vintage lens’ housing to be shaved-down to clear the mirror.

10:24 – Named after its inventor, Joseph Petzval, the Petzval was the first mathematically designed lens. One of the byproducts of its design is a swirly bokeh, which results from astigmatism induced by its positively biased power.

11:23 – A doppel (from the German word for “double”) is a symmetrical lens with two identical optical groups to improve aberration correction.

13:39 – Adapted from the principles of Galileo’s early telescope, a Galilean lens can be as simple as a two-lens system comprising one convex (positive) element and one concave (negative) element.

16:42 – Examples of transverse aberrations — which cause image points to be displaced horizontally — include lateral chromatic aberration and geometric distortion.

18:01 – MTF (modulation transfer function) is used to measure a lens’ ability to maintain contrast and reproduce fine details. The higher a lens’ MTF, the sharper the image it produces will appear.

20:21 – A triplet is a three-element optical system. An achromat typically comprises a positive and a negative element to correct two wavelengths of light and reduce chromatic aberration.

22:10 – Created by photographers Ansel Adams and Fred Archer, the Zone System is a technique of visualizing and controlling brightness and contrast by dividing an image into “zones” ranging from pure black to pure white.

23:19 – From the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Eidoscope lenses produced a soft-focus effect well-suited to portraiture while capturing straight lines in a rectilinear fashion, without geometric distortion.

32:00 – A focus conjugate refers to the ratio between an object and its photographed image.

36:21 – The human eye’s photopic response is its “day vision,” controlled by the eye’s color-sensitive cones. The eye’s scotopic response kicks in under low light, when the eye’s rods take priority over the cones, resulting in a perceptually monochromatic image.

42:12 – “That theater” refers to the Tak Miyagishima Theater inside Panavision Woodland Hills. The theater is named after legendary Panavision design engineer Takuo “Tak” Miyagishima.

44:04 – Thomas “Tommy” Rose is an image technology specialist in Panavision’s Special Optics department. He’s also a cinematographer and served as director of photography for this video.

47:46 – The emperor in question was Emperor Hirohito, who was born in 1901, the year after the Heliar lens design was introduced.

48:36 – An anastigmat is a type of lens designed specifically to correct astigmatism.

48:46 – Developed circa 1920, the Plasmat lens design incorporates six elements symmetrically about the aperture and produces high sharpness with excellent control over spherical and chromatic aberrations.

49:14 – Shout-out to Panavision Special Optics lens technician Rudy Samkow.

51:40 – A spherical glass element features a surface that represents a section of a sphere, while an aspheric element has varied curvature across its surface. A single aspheric element can take the place of multiple spherical elements, resulting in better low-light and wide-angle performance.

52:22 – Merit function is used to evaluate and optimize multiple performance criteria, quantifying how well a lens minimizes aberrations, reduces distortion, improves sharpness, and more.

54:20 – Popularized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pictorialism refers to an aesthetic movement in photography that emphasized the creation of evocative images imbued with artistic expression rather than a straightforward documentation of reality.