Recently, my friend Chris Endicott dropped off this large collection of classic lenses belonging to the late, great Dave Allen for me to clean and restore. For those few of you who may not know of David Allen, he was an amazing stop motion animator, visual effects pioneer, writer, director, and producer. Dave was working on a feature film he wrote and directed called “The Primevals” when he tragically passed away in 1999 before the film could be finished. The movie was recently completed with the help of Chris Endicott, one of the original effects artists, and released in 2023. “The Primevals” is available to stream from several online streaming services. Dave Allen’s long career includes an Oscar nomination for his visual effects work on “Young Sherlock Holmes” (1986), as well as his work on such films as “Willow” (1988), “The Howling” (1981), and “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” (1989), among many others. I had the privilege of working with Dave on two Warner Brothers shows that I was supervising many, many years ago and was always sorry I didn’t get to work with him more. This collection of around 20 lenses includes several Bausch & Lomb Baltars, a couple of interesting Taylor Hobson Cooke Speed Panchros, and some wide angle Angenieux lenses. I have only been able to give the collection a cursory glance so far, and was able to clean and lubricate 5 of the Baltars, so there is still quite a bit of work to do before they are all available. Coming up next week, I also have one of Dave’s Fries Mitchell cameras to share.
