Voigtländer CINEMA LENSES

Voigtländer was founded in Vienna in 1756 by Johann Christoph Voigtländer and was known for its high-integrity optical designs for photography throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Voigtländer began as a precision workshop in the Austrian Empire, producing scientific instruments and opera eye-glasses. The company remained under family leadership into the 19th century, and in 1839 Peter Wilhelm Friedrich von Voigtländer met with mathematician and early photography enthusiast Joseph Petzval regarding a mathematically designed portrait lens for the emerging field of photography. Following Petzval’s retrieval of an Austrian patent, Voigtländer moved production of the Petzval lens to Braunschweig in the German Confederation, where the Austrian patent held no legal sway, and cut Petzval out completely. From there, Voigtländer continued optical invention and expanded rapidly through the late 19th and early 20th centuries becoming the inspiration for many historic optical manufacturers like Zeiss, Leica, and Konica. In 1959, the company introduced the Zoomar, widely regarded as the first commercially available zoom lens for consumer still photography. By 1971, the century-old factories in Braunschweig closed, and the historic Voigtländer name was acquired by Rollei which itself was acquired by Ringfoto. In 1999, the Japanese engineering firm Cosina licensed the Voigtländer name through Ringfoto to be used as the brand name for their own modern manual-focus lenses. For modern cinema, the famous Voigtländer Zoomar 36-82mm has been rehoused by GL Optics and is available for rental at Cine Visuals.