Special requests welcome.
When I was still an apprentice at GLYCO, I earned my money with metalworking and as soon as I became a master precision engineer, I started my own business with a TOS FNGS 32 (1991) and a Deckel FP2 (1952).
I started repairing film equipment, and later manufacturing it, when a friend who was interning at Pille Film asked me one day if I could repair some broken camera tripods he found in a corner of the studio, and I said, “Yeah, sure!” It wasn’t long before I was approached with numerous special requests and I then became relatively well known as CAM-TEC and especially popular with staedycam operators. They had individual adapters made by me for the respective camera/steadycam combinations. Because innumerable combinations on the set provided for unnecessary time delay and caused off costs for double equipment. Instead of a forest of adapters, a “one for all” would be much better, I thought. That was the birth of the catgriller, which is now almost standard, so that the cameraman gives one to his “assi” in good old tradition at the end of the shoot, even if he already has quite a few. In the meantime, more than 5,000 Catgrillers have left my workbench. Since this made me better known as a catgriller than CAM-TEC, I decided to change my name in 2021 and use a skull as part of the logo.
Skull and crossbones? In the 70’s it was super cool among teenagers to hang out with a Bonanza bike complete with a foxtail. After much begging, I got the bike, but the foxtail was sold out. Instead, I attached a flag with a skull and crossbones to my Bonanza. Since then, I’ve gotten a skull and crossbones from every friend for every birthday. Hard to imagine how many different skulls there are in this world and in my house! So on every part that leaves my workshop is a skull, unmistakably a genuine Catgriller product.
Finally, mechanical engineering is not just a job for me to earn money, it is my hobby and my passion. In my spare time, I restore classic cars and it’s not uncommon for me to wake up in the middle of the night with an idea on how to improve one product or another.
Markus Bernhardt / Baer-Bel.