Image of Barry Lyndon

Kubrick was unable to get financing for NAPOLEON, so instead he made BARRY LYNDON using many of the same techniques he had been planning to use on NAPOLEON, such as lighting scenes with candlelight. Here's one of the cameras he used on BARRY LYNDON.
'Kubrick was "determined not to reproduce the set-bound, artificially lit look of other costume dramas from that time." After "tinker[ing] with different combinations of lenses and film stock," the production got hold of three super-fast 50mm lenses (Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7) developed by Zeiss for use by NASA in the Apollo moon landings," which Kubrick had discovered in his search for low-light solutions. These super-fast lenses "with their huge aperture (the film actually features the lowest f-stop in film history) and fixed focal length" were problematic to mount, and were extensively modified into three versions by Cinema Products Corp. for Kubrick so to gain a wider angle of view, with input from optics expert Richard Vetter of Todd-AO. This allowed Kubrick and Alcott to shoot scenes lit with actual candles to an average lighting volume of only three candela, "recreating the huddle and glow of a pre-electrical age." In addition, Kubrick had the entire film push-developed by one stop.'