How Toby Elwes Used TLS Petzval and Canon K35 Lenses to Shape the Look of 'Fear'

London-based cinematographer Toby Elwes is an emerging talent whose work is already gaining recognition, with nominations from the BSC and Camerimage. For the new psychological thriller series Fear, Toby teamed up with director Justin Chadwick to craft a look that blends beauty with unease.

Set inside a grand Victorian townhouse in Glasgow, Fear tells the story of a young family whose dream home becomes the focus of an unsettling conflict with the neighbour living below. To bring that tension to life, Toby turned to TLS‑rehoused Canon K35s for their warm, cinematic glow and clarity, and the distinctive TLS Petzval 58mm for moments of heightened paranoia and emotional vulnerability. The result is a visual language that moves effortlessly between elegance and menace.

Could you tell us a bit about Fear and the visual approach you and the director were aiming for?

Fear is a psychological thriller which plays out in large house in Glasgow. Full of optimism, a young family move to the city’s West End to build their lives in a beautiful town house. However, the mood shifts as they are increasingly spied on and terrorised by their neighbour who lives in the basement flat below.

It was important to both our director, Justin Chadwick, and me that the house we filmed in was atmospheric and could be shot in a suspenseful way.

On our early recces we were quickly drawn to the stunning Victorian buildings on Park Terrace. The house we shot in sat above Kelvingrove Park, majestic during the day but potentially sinister at night as you could see through the large windows from deep within the dark park.

Inspired by the building’s corridors, doorways and windows, Justin and I referenced iconic uses of zoom lenses and voyeurism in classic cinema. We took inspiration from Gordon Willis’s long lens shots in Klute and the spying telephoto lenses in The Conversation and Rear Window; as well as the use of glass, reflections and colour in Saul Leiter’s photography.

With these classic references and an ambition to provide the show with photographic compositions, it felt appropriate to test vintage primes and zooms lenses.

Jan (Solly McLeod) in the warren of basement corridors below the family’s flat

What led you to choose the TLS rehoused Canon K35 lenses for this production?

I was fortunate that our great camera rental house, No Drama Glasgow, have a wide range of vintage glass. Through testing it felt clear that choosing the TLS Canon K35s would offer the chance to emphasise the beauty of our location and family’s early optimism. For these joyous moments, it was lovely to lean into their soft veiling glare and flattering colour rendition.

Rebecca (Anjli Mohindra) exploring her new home

At other times however, the inherent sharpness of our set (compared to some other vintage lenses) allowed me to shoot with clarity and capture the frequently dark scenes from a wide vantage. Peppered with streetlights and lit up windows, the K35s also helped render nocturnal Glasgow with a familiar vintage glow inherent to many of Justin’s references.

Rebecca and Martyn (Martin Compston) at night. The K35s lent a gentle glow to our night scenes.

We frequently enjoyed backing away from the scene to find sinister and voyeuristic perspectives through door ways, curtains and windows. In addition to the original Canon K35 focal lengths, our set was expanded with FD lenses rehoused by TLS. Shooting Super35 on the Arri35, I wanted access to wider lenses for architectural interiors and telephoto lenses for our spying imagery. The 14mm FD prime was an asset in narrow corridors and interiors, while the 100mm and 135mm lenses helped create a sinister sense of the family being watched from afar.

The Petzval is known for its beautiful, swirly bokeh. How did that distinctive look support or reflect the story?

Justin and I had spoken about how it felt like a mistake to simplify the downstairs neighbour, Jan, as a villainous monster. While the family suffer his false accusations of violence and child abuse as pure malice, we were keen to invite the audience to see him with empathy. While still ominous and terrifying, Justin and actor Solly McLeod brought out a vulnerability in Jan.

Leaning into the idea of his delusions coming from his own traumatic childhood, we were keen to introduce a creative visual element as Jan’s anxiety grows.

Jan and Allan (James Cosmo), in moments of heightened emotion shot on the Petzval 58mm

The TLS Petzval 58mm felt like a perfect tool to enhance these subjective moments of paranoia and distress. I regularly used our 35mm K35 prime for the portraiture in the show, so moving tighter to this distinctive 58mm Petzval—with its irregular focal plane and unusual bokeh — provided an intimacy with Jan’s moments of anxiety. While still able to lock sharply onto the actor’s eyes, the Petzval let the edge of frame defocus in a hallucinatory manner.

We shot super35, rather than large format. Utilising the middle of the Petzval, the extremities of the swirling bokeh were lessened, yet the notably shallow and irregular focus isolated our characters and enhanced these intimate moments.

Having loved how the TLS 58mm Petzval emphasised Jan’s inner state on Fear, Justin was emphatic about getting it again on our following project!

How did the TLS rehoused versions perform on set, particularly in terms of handling and reliability?

We shot Fear as a single camera shoot and we were keen to be reactive on set to our actors. I operated a large amount of the show on the shoulder and at night. I frequently put our skilled first AC, Sefa Ucbas, in many challenging free roaming situations — especially as Justin and our lead actor Martin Compston increasingly lent into these travelling handheld takes.

While I was keen to use vintage glass, it was a massive asset for my camera team to have TLS’s re-engineered housings and smooth focus rings for these already challenging camera moves!

Alongside our Arri35 package, we also used a Ronin 4d for certain speciality shots. Jan is a hacker and begins to listen in on the family through smart speakers, phones and laptops. To mimic this eavesdropping, Justin and I were keen to weave a small camera through crevasses in the house: up the winding stairwells and skirting ceilings and floorboards. Another major benefit of establishing our A camera look with the TLS Canon K35/FD set, was that I was able to use small original Canon FD stills lenses and a Helios 58mm prime on the 4d. The gimbal can only function with lightweight lenses (ruling out most cinema glass), so I was very pleased we could echo the optical character of our A camera in this way.

With the shutters closed, Martyn (Martin Compston) takes a phone call in the darkness

Were there any standout scenes where the character of these lenses played a particularly important role?

It was clear from the script that Fear would have a central plot, told multiple times from different perspectives. As our story progresses, we revisit earlier scenes in the show with a new context. There is a specific moment late in the final episode where we return to Jan’s introduction, now accompanied by a judge reading his psychological report: traumatised, reclusive, a figure shunned by society. While Jan was distinctly creepy on first impression, we revisit these scenes to show him in a new light as the family sit in court listening to the judge.

Undulating focus: flashbacks shot with the TLS Petzval 58mm

Aware the edit would weave vignettes of earlier scenes into the end of the show, I was keen to shoot additional material with a memory-like quality. I relied on the Petzval for these moments, shooting in high frame rate and often from a first person perspective. While the Canon K35s offered the show an overall aesthetic, having the chance to push a more pronounced dreamlike state with the Petzval’s gentle distortion, defocused and abstracted bokeh was ideal as the parents reflected on their memories. I was keen to use optics with these inherent traits rather than filtrate or distort our K35s. It was a joy when No Drama showed me their TLS Petzval; which both cut in well and offered moments of greater abstraction.

Jan with a gentle bloom from the TLS Canon K35s

With Fear, Toby Elwes used the TLS‑rehoused Canon K35s to capture the warmth, beauty, and early optimism of the family’s new life, while their clarity and glow added richness to Glasgow’s nocturnal scenes. In contrast, the distinctive TLS Petzval 58mm became a powerful tool for stepping inside Jan’s fractured state of mind, its swirling bokeh and irregular focus lending a dreamlike intensity to key moments. Together, these lenses gave Fear its unique balance of elegance and unease — a visual signature that speaks to Toby’s instinct for choosing the right tools to tell the emotional heart of a story. Experience the tension for yourself, Fear is now streaming on Prime Video.

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You can find out more about Toby Elwes on his website (tobyelwes.com) or instagram page: @tobyelwes
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