Andreas Kaufmann, Leica Camera

L1000252AndreasKaufmannFDT

Andreas Kaufmann, Chairman of Leica Camera, with Leica S.

 

Interview with Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, Chairman of Leica Camera, on the Leica Summilux-C cine lenses and the Academy Scientific and Engineering Award. 

Leica Summilux-C lenses got a Sci-Tech Oscar on Saturday, Feb 8. As the lenses were developed, I had interviewed most of the cast of characters involved in developing them. But we had never really discussed the point of view of Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, Chairman of Leica Camera. Here is his interesting narrative on how these lenses came about.

JON FAUER
How is the Sci-Tech award important to you and to Leica?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
We are delighted to receive a Sci-Tech Award for our Summilux-C lenses. It is an honor for us and for our customers, not only for the cine lenses but also for the rest of Leica itself.

JON FAUER
So the “glamor and excitement” of Hollywood might spill over into your still world?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
Well, if there’s glamor and excitement connected with the Scientific and Technical Award, yes.

JON FAUER
How did the Summilux-C project begin?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
In 2005, we were told  by the Leica management that somebody had come to the company and offered the idea of producing Cine lenses. They were German guys and they proposed building cine lenses based on the architecture of the Leica Reflex Camera R lenses. That’s when a few other people came into the picture. There was Christian Skrein, in November ’05, with the connection to Otto Nemenz. I had the first meeting with Otto shortly after. Knut Heitmann, our former manager of research and development at Leitz, suggested that I talk to a fellow in Italy named Iain Neil.

We decided that the project could not be done within Leica at that time because we had started re-structuring the company. This was towards the end of  ’05 – beginning ’06. I had a talk with Ian Neil, the optical designer. At the time, he was at Media Lario, an Italian company near Brescia, Italy. I met him there. We agreed to work on this project. He added two former colleagues from Elcan (Leitz Canada) to the team. One gentleman was Bill McCreath, and the other was André de Winter. We already knew André, because he also worked for Leica in Wetzlar. Then they added one or two other guys from the former Elcan team. This was set up in ’06 as a virtual Leica cine lens design team.

JON FAUER
Who did what?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
Iain was the optical designer. Bill McCreath supervised sourcing of components, and still is today. André de Winter was the mechanical designer. There were quite a few other individuals involved.

JON FAUER
Including you.

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
Yes, there was a little bit of Kaufmann.

I should also say that Uwe Weller was part of the success. He and his company were the only ones who really were able to make the mechanical design a reality. The cams and cam followers were designed in such a way that they were the most complicated curves Weller ever did. (The distance from 6 feet to infinity is the same on every lens in the set, and the spacing between these focus marks is mechanically expanded.) It was a design that most people said basically you couldn’t produce, with tolerances of something like a micron. So, Weller Fine-Mechanics is part of our company, and they were also a great part of the success.

JON FAUER
Why was there an interest in doing these lenses in the first place?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
During the restructuring of Leica Camera it was very clear that one key element at Leica was the optical competence in designing, developing and producing optics. When we started to look into this segment, we thought it would make a lot of sense for Leica to also be established in the cine lens market.

JON FAUER
How did you organize all this?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
First we had to find someone to finance it because we decided to do it outside of Leica.

JON FAUER
That was you?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN

I decided on behalf my family and me and to organize it as a separate entity. When we got the first order from Otto Nemenz, I would say that sort of gave us the push to say, “Yes, we can do it.”

JON FAUER
Why were the lenses so difficult to build?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
Well, Iain was very clear and until now he’s right. We had to build lenses that look into the digital world and go beyond 4K with 8K at the horizon. They should also work with film cameras. They should be the smallest and most compact prime lenses. So he went for a design that I would say, in terms of production, basically skipped the word “tolerances.” In production, it’s easier to do something where you have a certain amount of tolerance built in. Here, they’re basically non-existent for certain lens elements. We also have a very unique asphere from a very strange glass material which also has to be glued to another non-aspheric element, etcetera. So we have quite a few tricky things built in. It’s a masterpiece, but hard to produce.

JON FAUER
In your opinion, what is the great appeal and what’s so unique about these lenses?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
It’s a great combination of a few things that are hard to combine. They’re really small. They are not heavy. They have the same front diameter. They have a very special focus scale where all the focus marks are in the same position. And they have a very special look. I really must say that Iain and his team designed these lenses with a Leica look that is beautiful. It’s crisp. It’s rare. It has pleasing qualities of depth of field that you can play with. They are all T1.4. It’s a combination of quite a few things.

JON FAUER
How would you define the Leica look?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
Very natural and smooth skin tones.

JON FAUER
Very crisp eyelashes, yet skin is silky smooth.

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
Especially when you work with the depth of field.

JON FAUER
A lot of rental houses are asking for more sets, despite the fact that they’re hard to get. What can you tell them?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
We have ramped up production since November 2014. We delivered around 140 sets, and have at least 3 times as many more on order, which is quite a lot.

JON FAUER
Here we are with a brave new digital world where many cinematographers are resisting an  unadorned, sharp look. How do these lenses help address that?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
For example, David Fincher’s Gone Girl was shot mainly with Leica Summilux-C lenses at very low light levels. He shot completely on RED cameras. I think our lenses helped to create this look in the digital world because they capture the light in a certain way.

JON FAUER

What other features were they used on?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
Summilux-C lenses were on Birdman, Iron Man 3, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon II, The Theory of Everything, Whiplash, and many others.

JON FAUER
I read an article in FT (Financial Times). Why is Leica Camera doing so well?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
We’re doing quite nicely.  We’re investing in three serious products which we will show in 2015, 2016. Leica has always been in a very special part of the market, and we keep it that way and try to also go up-market. We developed the S system as a professional system and we acquired the brand Sinar to go into the medium format. We think we can carve out a very comfortable niche in the market.

JON FAUER
And does that include cine?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
Yes.

JON FAUER
Can you explain how your different companies are associated? You have an alphabet soup of ACM, CW, Leica, and so on.

ANDREAS KAUFMANN

ACM, our holding company, owns 100% of CW Sonderoptic and 55% of Leica Camera.

JON FAUER
And where does Leica Camera go from here?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
We will announce some new things at NAB and at IBC. We will try to speed up production of the Summilux-C lenses. We will try to get as many sets out as possible. The Summicron-C lenses are doing well. A little known detail is that even though they are PL mount, most can cover 24 by 36 mm format, which for certain cameras and productions makes sense.

JON FAUER
Coming back to the Sci-Tech Awards and Hollywood, every good film cries out for a good ending. And when the film is successful, there’s a sequel. The interesting and good story here is the journey of Summilux-C cine lenses receiving a technical Oscar. There’s drama and conflict. They were designed to the most incredible, “impossible” standards ever dreamed of. Is there a sequel?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
I sometimes say, “We will never produce a lens like this again.”

JON FAUER
What, never?

ANDREAS KAUFMANN
Well, hopefully it will be something brilliant.

Leave a Comment

Tags: , , ,