 |  | Cam-a-lot is a professional video rental company located on the Amstel Business Park, close to the beltway around Amsterdam. The Amstel Business Park is the oldest film area in The Netherlands where studios, production companies and other rental facilities are located.
In 1997 Philippe Vié and Bernd Lesscher founded Cam-a-lot, after years of experience at different rental and production companies. At that time there were many film rental companies in Amsterdam, but there were no companies that specialized in professional video equipment. Cam-a-lot provides cameras and VCR’s, lighting, grip and audio. The areas we work in are mostly fiction, documentaries, music videos and commercials.
In 2001 Cam-a-lot expanded their cinematography line with two Sony High Definition F900 cameras. Slowly, Cam-a-lot added more cameras with 1080p recording functionality to their line-up, including the Sony HDW 750 and the successor to the F900, the F900R in 2006.
The Sony F900 was the first link between video and film. Since then, a lot of video productions have tried to achieve the 'film look'. Because Cam-a-lot thought this was an important transition, they were the first rental company in the world to start using the PStechnik Pro-35 adapter. Since the Pro-35 became available in early 2002 it soon became a popular way to create a different look.
Since the Pro-35 adapter has a PL Mount, it allows traditional film lenses, like the Zeiss Superspeeds, to be used on any video camera with a B4 Mount.
In order to support the increasing demand of film lenses, Cam-a-lot invested a lot of energy in finding the right mix of lenses to offer. As of january 2012, Cam-a-lot has Zeiss Superspeeds, Zeiss Ultraprimes, Cooke S4's, Elite Anamorphics, Leica Summilux, Angenieux Zooms, Century Zooms, Century Swingshifts, Arri Macro's, Zeiss 16mm Superspeeds, Red Pro Primes and Zooms, a wide range of Zeiss 2.1 Standard lenses and many other lenses.
However, the demand of PL Mount lenses would soon increase even more, with the release of the highly anticipated Red One.
In September 2007, Cam-a-lot was the first rental company in Europe, and one of the first in the world, to order the new Red One camera. Serialnumbers 44, 45, 46, 47 and 48 were deliverd to our door in January 2008. The Red One proved to be very populair within the Dutch filmcommunity.
After the first five Reds, Cam-a-lot continued to believe in Red and now has ten Red One cameras on offer. Starting in january 2010, Red has begun updating the cameras with the new Mysterium-X Sensor. All Red One cameras are now fitted with the new sensor and are available for rental. Besides the Mysterium-X Sensor, Red announced the 5K Epic. Since Cam-a-lot was one of the first companies to support Red, we have received our first eight Epics since early 2011.
Looking to the future, Cam-a-lot has decided to invest in two other camera formats as well, Sony CineAlta and ARRI Alexa. Camalot currently has eight Arri Alexa cameras.
The latest offering from ARRI is the Alexa Studio, able to record 3K ARRIRAW with the Codex Onboard Recorder. We also have two Sony F65 cameras with 8K sensors, capable of 4K 16bit recording.
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