N.J. camera company headed to Hollywood to accept Oscar

January 13. 2012 1:16PM

N.J. camera company headed to Hollywood to accept Oscar

Vision Research's new Phantom HD GOLD digital high-speed camera (Courtesy Vision Research)

With an Emmy Award already under its belt, Vision Research Inc. is sending a 28-person delegation to Hollywood next month to watch four of its engineers and designers receive an Academy Award.

The Wayne-based company develops high-speed cameras for the movie industry — as well as engineering, defense, science and medical research, and manufacturing — and is being recognized with a Scientific and Engineering Award for its Phantom cameras.

Andy Jantzen, chief technology officer at Vision Research, will be among those honored at the Academy Awards Scientific and Technical ceremony Feb. 11, two weeks before the televised awards.

"Winning an Academy Award is a pretty exclusive club," Jantzen said. "It's really neat to be recognized for years of hard work and getting it right. There are loads of people behind me and under me who made this possible … it belongs to the whole company."

Jantzen said the Phantom line, introduced in 1991, was first used in motion pictures in 2007. Although the first film the camera was used on was a flop, Jantzen said the company learned a lot about what is required by movie directors and cinematographers in their equipment.

"Cinematographers are using these cameras because, for the last six or seven years, while we're still focused on speed, we had an extra focus on image quality. In Hollywood, it is all about the picture," Jantzen said.

"While these cameras will run at regular 24 frames per second or 30 frames a second — which are traditional speeds — our focus has been on optimizing these cameras to run thousands of pictures per second for slow motion," Jantzen said. "That hasn't changed, if it's one of our industrial cameras or one of our entertainment cameras … our whole focus is speed."

Jantzen said he believes the additional spotlight on the company will draw more customers, even though Vision Research leads the slow-motion camera niche market, and keep pushing the company to innovate faster, higher quality cameras.

"One thing we pride ourselves in at Vision Research is innovation," Jantzen said. "We have an urgency to innovate, and we know this industry and electronics and the world is moving very fast. To some degree we're keeping up with it, and to some degree we're pushing it."