In Memoriam — Dedo Weigert (1938-2025)

ASC associate member Dedo Weigert, who was honored with two Academy Scientific and Technical Awards for the Dedolight system, died Nov. 30 in Munich, Germany, at the age of 87.

Born to an art-history professor and a painter in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), on Nov. 5, 1938, Weigert seemed destined to pursue a career in the arts. At first, he thought he would be a painter, like his mother, but when he took up a brush, “the images never really expressed what I wanted to express,” he said. After studying theater history in college, he found work as an actor and assistant director in local theater companies. Then he became a production manager at a company that made commercials and industrial films. “In those days, I didn’t really think much about the camera,” he said.

That changed when he got an offer to work as a camera assistant for British cinematographer John Baxter Peters, who became an invaluable mentor. “He was a wonderful teacher … a cameraman who’d done everything,” Weigert recalled. “He was a very hard worker, and I copied as best I could what he did.” Together they worked on a variety of television specials, including a documentary about the Soviet space program.

By 1964, Weigert was a cinematographer with dozens of credits, and in 1965, he founded Dedo Weigert Film Gmbh, which eventually became the European distributor for Tiffen, Aaton, Photo-Sonics and Kino Flo. The company also maintained an R&D department, whose projects included a high-speed video fluoroscope for the University of Heidelberg.

Weigert unveiled the Dedolight in 1984, and the patented dual-aspheric lens system gave users unprecedented control over the placement and quality of light. It delivered focus ratios between 20:1 and 25:1, whereas traditional Fresnel lights were delivering 3:1. Special-effects crews embraced Dedos immediately, and other cinematographers and gaffers quickly followed.

Enthusiastic testimonials rolled in. “We would have been lost without them,” former gaffer Tom Stern, ASC said of using Dedos with Conrad L. Hall, ASC on American Beauty. “I wouldn’t go anywhere without my Dedo kit,” said Steven Poster, ASC. “The quality of this light really has to be seen to be believed,” said Russell Carpenter, ASC. “Dedo has built a work of art as far as an instrument’s concerned,” said Roy H. Wagner, ASC. Gaffer Ross Dunkerley praised the Dedo’s precision as “almost surgical.”

Weigert became an associate member of the ASC in 2006 after Society members Steven Poster and Julio Macat put his name forward. For the development of the Dedolight, he received a 1990 Academy Technical Achievement Award, and for the Dedolight 400, he shared a 2003 Academy Scientific & Engineering Award with Depu Jin, Ph.D., and Franz Petters. Weigert was also honored with a 2003 Emmy Engineering Award for the Dedolight 400 Series.

With more than two dozen international patents to his credit, Weigert continued innovating to the end. Product launches in 2025 included the Dedolight PB70 Parallel Beam System, a 1.2K HMI powered by a regular house outlet, and Dedocolor Matrix8 and Matrix18 Full Spectrum RGBACL+T LEDs.