Sachtler

Sachtler is a German brand of camera support equipment for film and television, chiefly fluid heads, tripods and pedestals. Wendelin Sachtler, a cameraman, actor and inventor, ran a camera hire shop in Munich's Schwabing district with Mannheim engineer Heinrich Wolf; in 1958 he developed a tripod head damped by a gyro system, the start of the company.

Sachtler introduced fluid heads with grease damping in 1967 and patented a sealed damping system in the late 1970s, and its fluid heads received an Academy Scientific and Engineering Award for 1991. It also made daylight and tungsten lights from 1988 and the artemis camera stabilizer from 2001, a line it sold to ARRI in 2016.

The Vitec Group plc acquired Sachtler in 1995; Vitec renamed itself Videndum plc in 2022. Sachtler moved its headquarters to Eching, north of Munich, in 2004, and its German office is now in Unterschleissheim. The brand is run by Videndum Production Solutions, and in 2017 Sachtler developed the flowtech tripod with its sister brand Vinten.