Malcolm Kafetz showing Stanley Kubrick, left, how his lens worked. Photo reproduced by kind permission of Malcolm Kafetz

I WAS really very saddened to read of the death of Malcolm Kafetz in the Friends of Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill autumn newsletter.

He was a lovely, enthusiastic man who became something of a legendary former chairman of the organisation.

His seven-year tenure was crowned by the successful fight against plans to build a five-a-side Goals football complex on a grassy verge close to London Zoo.

Malcolm lived his whole life around the park and ran a business selling specialist camera equipment, making friends along the way with some of his customers including actor Peter Sellers and pianist Oscar Peterson.

Back in 2007 he invited me into his home in Baker Street and I was astonished to see a picture of him sharing a moment with film legend Stanley Kubrick on set of the sci fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Not many people knew about this, but he was an expert in optics and in 1968 had been summoned to MGM’s Borehamwood studios to help the struggling director work out how to shoot one of his most famous scenes. He had developed the first “fish-eye” lens capable of fitting on to a Panavision camera, which Kubrick learned he simply could not do without.

Malcolm told me at the time: “I concocted the lens and he used it when Hal talked to Dave the astronaut. I proved it could be done then, but I’m afraid it is not very clever any more.

“The film was revolutionary at the time. The scene with the apes… it was all done in the studio. The background was projected onto a 96ft-wide set.

“It didn’t show up because of special optics they used.

“They couldn’t shoot it in the desert because all those people were dancing dressed up as apes, they would have died of heat exposure.”

He added: “You remember the zebra? Well, that was a pony painted with stripes.”