The Mitchell Camera Corporation was founded in 1919 by Henry Boeger and George Alfred Mitchell as the National Motion Picture Repair Co. Its first camera was designed and patented by John E. Leonard in 1917 and, from 1920 onward, became known as the Mitchell Standard Studio Camera.

From that time until the late 1960s, Mitchell cameras produced the vast majority of feature films around the world. This is an astonishing achievement considering that only around 400 Mitchell BNC cameras were ever produced. The early history of Mitchell is well documented; it is the history since the mid-1980s in which we have been involved.

Famously, Bob Gottschalk, founder of Panavision, attracted many Mitchell Camera Corporation engineers by offering better pay and working conditions. He reportedly placed a sign outside the Mitchell factory and, in doing so, assembled the team that would go on to produce Panavision's 35mm cameras. The movements of these cameras were remarkably similar to the Mitchell BNC movement of the period. This took place in the late 1950s.

In the early 1980s, Panavision purchased the struggling Mitchell Company. At the time, my father, Joe Dunton, was heavily involved in the acquisition as part of the Lee International Group, which owned Panavision. By then, the only commercially viable camera still being produced by Mitchell was the S35, a non-sync camera that was struggling to compete against the success of German-made Arriflex cameras.

Joe proceeded to expand the product range, focusing primarily on support equipment such as the Vitesse head, the Bazooka, and related products. He left Panavision in 1987 and went on to purchase the E.F. Moy Company.

Following Joe's departure, Panavision sold Mitchell to a company called Flight Research in Virginia. Flight Research primarily manufactured bank surveillance cameras and fulfilled various military contracts, with little interest in Mitchell's motion picture heritage. However, they retained all of Mitchell's original engineering drawings and records, along with a selection of spare parts.

In the early 1990s, Joe repurchased the remnants of Mitchell from Flight Research in conjunction with Samuelson Film Service of London. He moved the archives, drawings, and remaining assets to his office in Wilmington, North Carolina, where they remain today.

During this period, we rebranded several E.F. Moy Ltd. products, including dolly track, under the Mitchell name, but we did not maintain a significant manufacturing presence in the United States. We also attempted to launch a new Mitchell camera in 2003. This project was a digital back for the Arri SR2, developed in conjunction with Ikegami of Japan. Although severely underfunded, it anticipated many features that would later become commonplace in digital cinema cameras, including a rotary menu interface and an integrated side-mounted screen.

My father passed away around Christmas 2025, and I have since decided to relaunch Mitchell as a viable filmmaking equipment manufacturer based in Wilmington, North Carolina. We already have a range of products that have been manufactured in the United Kingdom since the acquisition of E.F. Moy in 1987, but I believe the company must diversify in order to grow.

Mitchell also manufactured lens housings, most notably for the Super Baltar lenses. While the optical glass was produced by Bausch & Lomb, the mechanical components and housings were manufactured at the Mitchell factory. We intend to follow a similar model going forward - maybe utilising another brand of my father - Xtal Xpress .

Over the years, we have maintained contact with Ikegami, and with adequate funding we would be interested in collaborating on a new digital cinema camera. In addition, while reviewing the Mitchell archives, we discovered a prototype—but fully functioning—65mm, 22-perforation horizontal camera movement. This remarkable design would allow us to develop a new large-format film camera system under the name "VistaMax."

On this website we have opened store - and Mitchell hrinking some of the great advertising material that was produced over the years. Revenue from the store will go towards reestablishing Mitchell as a relevant manufacturer of great equipment in America.

We will also update the gallery pages as we sift through the Archive - and will publish origonal sales ledgers and any other images and drawings that we find -