Arriflex 2B/C 400ft Mag Capacity

Christian Flemm · April 13

Dears,

This may seem a particularly daft question, but as I have a shoot coming up and am in the process of cutting down 1000ft film rolls into 400ft+ rolls for my mags, I'm wondering exactly what the true capacity is on the 2B/C's "400ft" mag.

I notice when running the camera that the footage counter goes up to 500ft; however, today when I popped a ~450ft roll into my mag, it felt quite tight despite otherwise fitting. I'm writing wondering whether I should be wary of loading so much film into the mag, or if I will be fine (as Arri would not label the mag as having a 500ft capacity if it could not run that much film).

Best,

Christian

Christian Flemm · April 13

The manual for the Arriflex III actually details the capacities of the available magazines as 200ft and 500ft; and says that "The 60m magazines, as well as the 150m magazines...are identical to those used with the," Arri 2C.

So, I guess I have my answer.

Dom Jaeger · April 14

I’ve often wondered whether European film companies ever released metric film cans, since the Arri mags were described as 60m/200ft or 150m/500ft. But 500ft is also half a 1000ft mag, so it makes sense from that perspective.

It’s curious how the film industry mixes measurements, the consequence I guess of Hollywood’s dominance over what has always been a world-wide industry. We still call it 16 or 35mm film, and outside of a few vintage offerings lens focal lengths are metric, but film comes in imperial lengths and we still call the resulting product footage. Many countries, including us here in Australia (an otherwise metric country) also prefer lens distance scales in feet.

I quite like feet for focus distance estimation, but as a technician I despise small measurements in fractions of an inch.