Arri ST or SB for documentary film making?

[Dom Jaeger]

On 7/24/2026 at 7:07 AM, Steve Switaj said:

I've been meaning to ask, I have one of these that's been sitting on a shelf for 20 years.

Every once in a while I pick it up and think "I should clean this up a bit and run a roll of film through it"

The parts that look like they need the most help are, unsurprisingly, the rubber bits, namely the eyepiece and the coupling for the motor.

They eyepiece is easy, there are several sellers online, but what do you do about the drive coupling? it looks like it's stretched out, and has hardened, I have no confidence in its grip strength.

Assuming you can even get the part, it looks like quite a bit of the camera has to come apart to install it?

Charlesworth Dynamics in the US sells newly fabricated rubber couplings, and also has a stock of Arri 16St parts. 

On older models it's an easy replacement, newer models (usually above serial #12000) are more tricky. 

They're beautiful cameras, nice to work on. Here's a little guide I wrote if you want to attempt some disassembly:

https://cinetinker.blogspot.com/2019/02/arri-16st-service.html

 

 

[Dom Jaeger]

3 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

I for one am thousands of feet in shooting my documentary with my K3, it was one of those "misses" that became a "hit" eventually after Aapo's motor modification and a CLA. Sending another 1k feet roughly of shot footage this week for dev/scanning, the photo below is from footage already in the can.

 

That's great, congratulations! Yes if you get a K3 that works, doesn't leak or scratch and you replace that awful little winding key with a motor, they can be OK. 

I've worked on several recently that were S16 converted (which the gate really isn't good for) where the new S16 ground glass did not match the gate depth. The ground glass holder was just held in place with 2 screws, with no ability to fine tune the depth, position or flatness. Pointless having a reflex system if the groundglass can't be accurately set. I spent ages manually trying to shift the thing to get it at least within a few hundredths of a mm of accuracy. Painful. 

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

8 hours ago, Dom Jaeger said:

I've worked on several recently that were S16 converted (which the gate really isn't good for) where the new S16 ground glass did not match the gate depth

My gate is a "catch-all" for S16 and U16, but it's centered for N16, probably for the best so I "ballpark" my frame.

8 hours ago, Dom Jaeger said:

you replace that awful little winding key with a motor, they can be OK. 

Oh, for the life of me I hated winding the camera with a vengeance.

In general, I hated that half the time I forgot to fully wind it because it was annoying, but even when I didn't forget, I hated the 20sec limitation - the Bolex winder (and all of its other mechanisms really) is/are a piece of art and elegance compare to that utter crap that would have eventually broken anyway. Aapo's crystal motors are really a great way to make the camera much better even in stock setup (I'd say even more so the case).

Also didn't really like the Meteor lens really or the wide-angle limitation of the mount and the Peleng 8mm is not priced good.

The motor and the EF mount really freed me up and the noise can be handled as it's really salvageable in post for my interviews.

[Ross Yeandle]

Hello, we have a company that refurbish all of the 'Black' Arriflex cameras from 16mm to 35mm. This year we have refurbished X8 Arriflex ST and SB cameras including 'instagram' '@the_filmlab_guy' s own personal camera, he's based at Pinewood Studios UK. We love the Arriflex ST and have X3 of our own all in regular use and refurbished by us. We supply power solutions and have all the specialist tools to service these beautiful machines. 

Please contact us on enquiries@shotonfilm.co.uk

And we can chat about film cameras. 

All the best 👍 

[Aapo Lettinen]

On 7/27/2026 at 5:10 AM, Dom Jaeger said:

 

That's great, congratulations! Yes if you get a K3 that works, doesn't leak or scratch and you replace that awful little winding key with a motor, they can be OK. 

I've worked on several recently that were S16 converted (which the gate really isn't good for) where the new S16 ground glass did not match the gate depth. The ground glass holder was just held in place with 2 screws, with no ability to fine tune the depth, position or flatness. Pointless having a reflex system if the groundglass can't be accurately set. I spent ages manually trying to shift the thing to get it at least within a few hundredths of a mm of accuracy. Painful. 

The proper S16 conversions of the K3 use newly made gate plate which entirely replaces the old N16 one. The original gate is really difficult to modify to S16 without making it scratch wildly. One can order the newly made gates from couple of FSU country sellers and if they modify the cameras then they usually install a newly made gate. Ground glasses are usually left as original and thus framing is what it is. If having a S16+U16 combo gate with original ground glass one sees about half of what is captured horizontally

[Aapo Lettinen]

Just now, Aapo Lettinen said:

The proper S16 conversions of the K3 use newly made gate plate which entirely replaces the old N16 one. The original gate is really difficult to modify to S16 without making it scratch wildly. One can order the newly made gates from couple of FSU country sellers and if they modify the cameras then they usually install a newly made gate. Ground glasses are usually left as original and thus framing is what it is. If having a S16+U16 combo gate with original ground glass one sees about half of what is captured horizontally

Typical scratch from diy kind-of-S16 modified krasnogorsk with original gate modified can look like this and the ebay cameras with original gate often have similar kind of scratch more or less.

In this case my own K2 which I tried it on almost 20 years ago just to see what I can do at home quickly, have used the camera on projects but it surely is annoying compared to a properly modified camera with new gate

[Dom Jaeger]

1 hour ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

The proper S16 conversions of the K3 use newly made gate plate which entirely replaces the old N16 one. The original gate is really difficult to modify to S16 without making it scratch wildly. One can order the newly made gates from couple of FSU country sellers and if they modify the cameras then they usually install a newly made gate. 

Yes, the channels on the sides means the original gate modified to S16 looks like this:

 

The support rail on the left just stops then starts again on the other side of the gate opening. 
 

Some of the “newly manufactured” S16 gates for K3s aren’t much better:

This one has the expanded area of exposed image sliding on the gate support rail. 

[Aapo Lettinen]

10 hours ago, Dom Jaeger said:

Some of the “newly manufactured” S16 gates for K3s aren’t much better:

This one has the expanded area of exposed image sliding on the gate support rail. 

yes and that machining quality is just depressing... Cheap Chinese places do better on similar kind of parts and I honestly think that it would be better to just design one's own replacement gate than to try to live with these half-working Russian thingys.

Like, a gate with properly dimensioned support rail for the S16 area and a side pressure bar to get more stability? it is not much really, takes some days to design properly and couple of tries to get the machining quality right. The Chinese can machine it precise enough if paying for the extra work accordingly and one can manually polish the remaining tolerances out if needed.