story 002 · film · stanley kubrick, barry lyndon, 1975
kubrick filmed this by candlelight with a lens made for nasa.
the short, written out
the only light in this scene comes from candles.
for barry lyndon, stanley kubrick wanted the eighteenth century the way it really looked after dark. but no ordinary film lens could see in light that dim.
so he found one that could: a lens zeiss had made for nasa. only ten were ever made. kubrick bought three.
its glass sat so close to the film that they had to cut into the camera to make it fit.
and it let in so much light that the focus was only a few centimetres deep. the actors were told to move as little as possible.
to keep them sharp, the focus puller watched them from the side, on a video screen marked with a grid.
one of kubrick’s lenses went back to zeiss in 2022. it’s in their museum now.
the print that goes with it
oyster and pearls
dark academia baroque old master
no. 2 · 8″×10″ or 16″×20″ · from $20.00 · see the print
sources
- zeiss, “(probably) the most famous lens in the world comes back home” (2022)
- neil oseman, “barry lyndon: the full story of the famous f/0.7 lenses”
- wikipedia, carl zeiss planar 50mm f/0.7
every sentence of the short was checked against its sources before it went out.
