OB I TUARY | SET- UP
ALFRED PIFFL Alfred sadly passed away earlier this year. We look back at his life in the film business and his company’s achievements OBITUARY A s company founder and managing director of P+S Technik, Alfred Piffl energetically and courageously navigated the company for over 25 years, through many ups and downs, with his positive vision and charisma. Ultimately, P+S Technik was Alfred’s lifetime
“In the future, the viewer won’t look through a window, but will be very close to the story, so that he’ll become part of it. P+S Technik sees not only a trend towards virtual reality, but also a trend in which moving images will increasingly interact with all levels of society.” Alfred Piffl
Rome working with their lenses. “That was the real movie world,” said Alfred. “At Arri, apart from the camera technology, I didn’t get in touch with much of the glamour of the film business. In the world of film technology, I believed back then that as a single inventor or creator, I was able to do remarkable things. But I wanted to control the adventure myself. So, I didn’t move to Rome.” TECHNOVISION In 1990, ironically, Alfred Piffl started P+S Technik and his first client was Technovision. P+S Technik started its career with the support of Arriflex products and conversions and became best known worldwide for the award-winning P+S Technik image converters MINI35 and PRO35. Nowadays, the company offers a wide range of optics products, especially anamorphic lenses, and is also a worldwide leading company for professional lens rehousing.
achievement. Although Alfred stepped down from his position as managing director in 2017, he remained active within the company and was a key member of the development team behind P+S Technik’s latest series of lenses. A visionary engineer, he founded P+S Technik in May 1990 in Munich, together with Zlatko Spajic, a former colleague from his time at Arri. Alfred had been working in development at Arri for six years, and during that time, he got the chance, at the age of 30, to work on the film transport of a new Arri camera, the Arriflex A535. The new film transport system was the first movement developed on a computer. For the design of the movement, Alfred was able to install the first CAD workstations at Arri (at that time rather a rarity outside the aircraft and automotive industries). With the completion of the development of the BL4s movement and some work on the A535 movement, Alfred devoted himself to new challenges and in a completely new and different field. He moved on to the optical works Rodenstock in Munich. TEMPTED BY ROME This was also the time when Henryk Chroscicki, owner of Technovision, became aware of Alfred Piffl and offered him a job in
BELOW Alfred Piffl with the BL4s Film Transport
I believed that as a single inventor or creator, I was able to do remarkable things
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