American Cinematographer - May 2015 - 69

Photos by Todd Wawrychuk, Michael Yada and Matt Petit, courtesy of AMPAS.

(Academy Plaque) to ASC associate
Iain Neil and André de Winter, for the
optical design and mechanical design,
respectively, of the Leica Summilux-C
series of lenses, Robbie ad-libbed, "Can
we all notice for a second that I have all
the hard things to say?" Teller quipped,
"I'm just here as the eye candy."
Returning to the award at hand, Robbie
continued, "The Leica Summilux-C
lenses deliver ultra-high optical performance for film and digital cameras.
They incorporate novel telecentric
multi-element aspherical optics and ...
this full series of prime lenses delivers
unprecedented optical and mechanical
performance."
"What she said," added Teller,
who then noted more seriously, "The
aspherical elements in each lens create a
telecentric path of light allowing more
illumination across the entire field."
Accepting the award, revered
optical engineer Neil spoke first. "All
that telecentric stuff, eh?" he joked. He
then went on to thank ASC associate
Otto Nemenz for the concept and original specification of the lenses. De
Winter kept things brief, noting as he
admired the plaque, "There's gold in
them thar hills!"
An
Academy Award of
Commendation (Special Plaque) was
presented to ASC associate Steven
Tiffen, Jeff Cohen and Michael Fecik,
for the development of dye-based filters
that reduce IR contamination when
neutral-density filters are used with
digital cameras. The Tiffen Co. identified the problem and rapidly engineered
a series of absorptive filters that ameliorated infrared artifacts with lenses of all
focal lengths. These widely adopted
filters allow cinematographers to work
as they have with film-based technology.
The last time the Academy
awarded this special plaque was in 2007.
Accepting the award, Tiffen noted, "We
proudly accept this award of commendation and honor the memory of my
father, Nat Tiffen, our company's
founder, who instilled in each of us the
passion to listen to professional image

Top: Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs and Richard Edlund, ASC, chairman of the Academy
Sci-Tech Awards Committee, greet the audience. Bottom: Actors Miles Teller and Margot Robbie
co-host the ceremony.

makers [and] visual storytellers, and [to]
develop products that help create the
world's greatest images.
"We stand committed to continuing to support this industry that we
love," Tiffen continued. "And we find it
so wonderfully pleasing in this world of
digital technology, this world of hightechnology, that we're being given this
honor for a wonderful piece of glass."
www.theasc.com

The team at Texas Instruments
received three awards over the course of
the evening. The first, a Technical
Achievement Award (Academy
Certificate), was presented to Harold
Milligan, Steven Krycho and Reiner
Doetzkies, for the implementation
engineering in the development of the
Texas Instruments DLP Cinema digital
projection technology. Second, a
May 2015

http://www.theasc.com

American Cinematographer - May 2015

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