Who will fix our film cameras in 30 years?

[Noé Cornago]

Good morning everyone, I'm a Spanish DP living in Paris,I'm 22 years old, and for about a year now I've had an SR2 S16HS that I bought from a 1st AC in London. Since the start of the year, I've shot more 16mm projects than all of last year's projects put together, but a question has come up for me:

I've had problems with one of my SR2 mags, and there's only one single person in Paris, where I live, who can repair it. The others (that I know of) are Tyler, Daniil, Danny at Cinefacilities, and a few others I'm forgetting.

My question is: is it likely that at some point service guides will exist for this type of camera? How can we fight against the extinction of these technicians who keep these cameras alive? (without getting into the topic of parts that can no longer be found)  you, specialized technicians twice my age, what do you plan to do once you retire? Have other young people or technicians pay to go through a service training? Would it even be possible to do that in a truly complete way? I don't think years and years of experience can be passed on in a workshop, even one spanning several weeks or months , do you plan to leave behind some kind of manuscript with your notes?

My biggest worry is: if I'm not even able to repair a mag, which seems to be one of the simplest parts of my SR2, how will we manage in 30 years? Even if one of the main possibilities, even if I hope not, will be that film will be dead by then.

Forgive my ignorance, and thank you very much for your answers

Noé Cornago

[Jeff Bernstein]

An AI-driven autonomous robotic system whose favorite film is AI : Artificial Intelligence.

[Noé Cornago]

3 minutes ago, Jeff Bernstein said:

An AI-driven autonomous robotic system whose favorite film is AI : Artificial Intelligence.

What do you mean?

[Jeff Bernstein]

Ce n’est pas terminé mais nous passons sans doute à un autre régime de conservation, de commémoration, de reproduction et de célébration. Une grande époque se termine.

 

Derrida, Papier Machine, 165.

[Mark Dunn]

Well, the cameras of a century ago can be repaired, but they were far less sophisticated, so you may be right about the likes of the SR's days being numbered.

I am one of the only people in the UK able to work on Steenbecks and my knowledge is self-gained and quite limited. Even the plastic parts of these machines are now deteriorating and spares are slmost non-existent, though 3D printing may be an option. Electronic components are failing and in some cases a lack of documentation means that I simply don't know what a part is, and if I do it may be obsolete or have been superseded entirely.

Another problem is that I am 65. it's refreshing to see students in their 20s with Steenbecks, but they want to use them, not repair them. There isn't a career, or even much of a business, in it. I do it because I want to help keep film alive, and I'll keep doing so as long as there is demand and I am capable. But the next generation? Don't ask me.

[Mark Dunn]

I surmise that Tyler is somewhat younger than me. But he's not a student anymore lol.

[Aapo Lettinen]

Expensive high end cameras are certainly more difficult to get repaired once the original spare parts run out. Movement parts which are too expensive to reproduce and electronic parts which are too expensive to redesign with available modern components and very few people in the world capable of doing it who could be interested in the job for it being low pay or no pay work.

Another thing is that people who shoot with expensive cameras are not able to compromise on features and quality of replacement parts. I have this joke that "Arri people never buy anything" which is partially true because they are not compromising and thus nothing budget option is possible for them. A replacement needs to be true Arri quality, a 75% quality to get camera working again is impossible to tolerate. They rather put the camera on top shelf or sell it for spare parts than to get it working again with replacement part which is puny "Eclair quality" or something😂

Funny yes but it actually does make it impossible to make newly designed replacement parts for these cameras. Making a replacement part with 5000 or 10 000 design and manufacturing budget for a batch will absolutely have lower quality end result than original part made with half a million design budget and 5k or 8k per part just for manufacturing. 

People asking too much for too little money and time. Then it is not good enough quality and they keep scavenging parts from old cameras until they run out and no one can shoot anything anymore

[Aapo Lettinen]

The exact reason why I have had about 15 newly made motor models for Eclair Acl, four for Npr, 5 or 6 for K3, couple for Konvas, and couple of Aaton compatible accessories.

Nothing for Arri, nothing. I can't copy the original motors and new designs are not good enough. 

I could make something for Aaton but it is too expensive for me to ruin my own camera to get the dimensions and no one ordering without seeing it first. Probably will never get done.

 

That is how the camera lines and workflows die. No one makes original parts and users don't want aftermarket parts in their camera. It is like a car museum, if you can't use lower quality aftermarket parts then the cars just don't move anymore, period.

[Tyler Purcell]

There are three tiers of the business, 

High-end - Rental house, Panavision, IMAX
Middle - Owner/Operator (share grid) makes money with cameras, commercial bodies Arri/Aaton, HD tap, 16/35. 
Low-end- Consumer; Bolex, Scoopic, Beaulieu, CP16, 16BL, some 16mm and mostly super 8. 

High-end business is safe, the rental houses are buying up bodies to cannibalize left and right. Panavision and IMAX makes their own cameras. High end filmmakers will simply pay for them to keep making camera bodies through their production budgets. Blowing 2 million on 4 new VistaVison cameras for instance, which I think is coming fast, will be nothing for a $250M show. They can outsource to an engineering firm, build them and support them at Panavision. This business also does not care about the cost of film, developing or processing. 

Middle business is basically where we all sit, many owner/operators, many people who are reliant on crewing higher end productions to pay for their own productions. Many people doing one-off freelance gigs to keep their lights on. Even more actually funding the film aspect of their paid productions out of their own pockets, just to keep shooting on film. These people are on edge already, many selling cameras to pay bills and even more shelving their film cameras because they're busy on digital shows. 

Low-end business are the consumers who want to shoot a few rolls of film a year, these are generally not professionals, but some professionals do fit this category where they may do a single fashion shoot a year on super 8 or 16mm with lower-end prosumer cameras. I do get some of these clients each year and they're usually very low budget productions, more for fun. 

I work with the very high-end business and the very low end business. I'm on speed dial with dozens of rental houses across the world and solve problems daily for them, along with scanning film many of those filmmakers shoot. So I have an unusual pulse on the industry in the United States especially. 

The way I see it, the high-end is safe forever, Kodak will support them till their dying breath. The studios will pay the film premium forever. The rental houses that provide the cameras/support, will take the cash and gobble up more bodies to cannibalize and that momentum will keep going for the next unforeseeable future. Several rental houses today, have hired full-time techs, only leaving full overhauls or mystery issues to external techs like Andree and myself. The high end business makes up a substantial amount of the film usage, but an extremely low amount of camera use, most movies are using the same cameras over and over again. There may only be 100 bodies globally that are in use for the high-end. 

The lower-end is also very safe, there are literally two or three hundred thousand 16mm cameras out there from wind up Bolex's to K3's and everything in between. It's literally endless and the cost of shooting a few rolls of film every year, isn't the end of the world. They don't need to be on a slim budget production dealing with high costs. They also don't care if the cameras OR film stock are perfect, it doesn't matter. The mechanical cameras are super easy to adapt into basic motor control, we are already seeing this being done by SEVERAL vendors today, even on cameras like the Beaulieu R16, which is great. Plus, those lower end cameras are way cheaper, so you can buy several and piecemeal them together. Lenses are cheap as well, so the cost isn't too great. Where I do think there are people giving up on the super 8 business, I don't see that as much in the lower-end 16mm business. The super 8 business is tiring to even talk about, junky plastic disposable cameras, people just need to grow up and move to 16mm. 

The middle tier are the problem, it's where the bulk of the commercial cameras sit today. These are the smaller rental houses, these are the owner operators, these are the Share Grid people as well. They need good working cameras to get paying gigs, they need quality film stock as well. So keeping these cameras working has become the biggest problem because you can't just buy 3 bodies and cannibalize them. Many people have one highly used former rental camera and they've blown their entire wad buying it and keep it working. They are on edge because they make their money from their equipment and less and less productions can afford film. This trend is only being exacerbated by the rising costs of film this year and the decreasing budgets. Many DP's are actually taking their pay and using it to fund the raw stock, so they can keep shooting with the camera gear AND get the look they're after. 

So now that we got that out of the way, let's talk about what's actually going on in the service business. 

Personally,  I don't think camera repair is the biggest problem. Sure, as time goes on, some of the highly advanced cameras like the Arri 435, Arricam's and Penelope, will become harder to service and we will see many bodies become parts only. However, there are many cameras which are all mechanical and don't require any special electronics like the Arri 35 series. I can see how updated motors and boards for Moviecam SL/Compacts and even Arri 35BL's could be a thing as well. For 16mm its not that bad, we're already working on a universal electronic design with an LCD display and infinite variable control for speed, with a super small brushless motor that could work on Aaton cameras, SR's, Eclair's, etc. That's the easy part, there are plenty of younger people who know about electronics and I feel people will come to the table with options. 

The mechanical stuff is slightly harder because the tolerances are much tighter than a cheap Chinese mill can produce. So when things wear out physically, it may be harder to remedy, unless it's platform sharing like Arri SR's and Aaton LTR/XTR where you can make one part that fits a whole series of cameras and simply do a big batch of them. Currently we aren't hitting a brick wall on those, but that day will come soon. We finally have issues with Aaton lower mag drive gears because they're plastic and they simply dry rot. But the motors are bulletproof and the pulldown tip itself is replaceable outside of the other mechanical aspects, unlike the SR's. We have a box of tips, it'll probably last the next 20 years as people simply shoot less film today then they have in the past. The Arri 35mm cameras like the BL's, 535 and Arricam's, the movements are pretty robust if you keep them lubed. 

Optics are probably the worst issue camera related, because there is nothing you can do when a Pechan prism goes bad and develops fungus. Nobody is making a new one for you and unless you do a big batch from some Chinese vendor and risk it, there is no quick solve. We have solved some optical issues with the help of Edmonds and some Chinese brands, but all the SR's I've worked on with fungus in the optics, have really gotten me sad. Most users simply can't afford the development of a new optic, so they live with the softness in the viewfinder that will eventually be unusable as nobody has good optical parts. 

A new camera is a temporary fix, not a permanent because whoever makes one, won't be able to make the quantities of cameras that Arri, Aaton, Eclair, Beaulieu, Canon, Mitchell/Cinema Products and Paillard produced, no way. When the new cameras finally hit market, they're going to be limited runs and eventually have little to no support within the next decade as the companies who made them get bought and sold/fold, which is how this always happens. So unless a millionaire spends their entire wealth on building a new company to solve a problem I don't think exists today, I don't think a new camera will actually solve the aging camera issue today. It solves other issues related to production and accessibility, being able to just buy a new camera is pretty sweet for rental houses and people with money who want to experiment. We will be offering upgrades in the coming years that will turn older cameras into newer ones, but we don't know if the market will support such a thing. So they'll all be prototypes for now. 

Finally, the actual issue in the future won't be cameras at all, it'll be raw stock. Kodak knows they don't need to keep film prices down, the studios will pay whatever they want to charge. What I think a lot of people don't realize is that they've had to recently re-structure the entire company financially and for the first time in a long time, they are more heavily reliant on film as their income stream. This means, the executives are looking at the cost/profts much more and are putting up more brick walls for the team in Hollywood who are fighting to keep costs down. With the current admin running the United States into the ground, the cost of raw materials has spiked considerably. This mixed with the factory needing upgrades to keep them functioning, has led to the first price increase in 2026 that we've seen in years. They have also removed discounts for most stocks and have made it way harder to buy new 35mm. There is no doubt in my mind we will see another price hike in 2027 or 2028. 

Setting up another film company with the quality required for commercial production is not possible. Illford is the only company on the planet who can do large batches of film with the consistency of Kodak and they have discussed making a new color film stock and bringing it to the motion industry. So maybe this will be a good thing for the lower-end people, but I surmise the cost will be more than Kodak if that happens. ORWO doesn't make anything commercially capable in color, nor the qualities required. Lucky has tried to enter motion, but quality isn't there and probably won't be. 

In terms of techs, I think younger people will fill in the gaps over time as the right people get into film and experiment. We've already seen some amazing breakthroughs in this department, it's just a matter of time before they start mentoring with some of the top guys. Transferring knowledge is the key and I try to do that on a regular basis through my Instagram and YouTube channels. I wish more techs would give their experiences away because they will excite younger people. Andree does that to anyone who comes in his door, I do the same thing because I feel it's critical to keeping film alive. 

So yea, that's my breakdown.
 

 

[Dom Jaeger]

There are still people around who can work on film cameras, mostly in rental houses where the service knowledge was always learned, and practiced regularly. I work for Panavision in Australia, there are two of us here with over 25 years experience on Arriflex, Panaflex, Arricam, Bolex etc plus an experienced electrical tech. There’s another guy in New Zealand, several in London and LA. Arri Rental obviously has  people maintaining their rental fleet, same as Keslow. There’s Andre Martin at AM Camera, the guys at Visual Products, at Duall. Probably still some knowledge at places like Abel Cine. I’m sure there are people in Europe other than Danny or ex Arri guys in Munich, just need to find them. If there’s enough interest Arri might be convinced to do some training on their analog cameras again. 

So I would contact rental houses in your area that have film camera and ask them who they use for camera maintenance. An SR mag isn’t very difficult to service for anyone who works on fine mechanics.

In terms of the future, places like Panavision, Arri Rental, Keslow etc are the most likely to have some knowledge transfer going on with younger techs. It does take years to properly master, especially the mechanical finesse and knowing each camera’s quirks. Rental houses also have the tooling and equipment to service cameras, including good machine shops. So it’s important to support those place if you value film.

What is somewhat problematic is having relatively inexperienced people taking cameras completely apart and losing certain calibrations that need factory jigs and specialised equipment to set accurately. In the past you could trust the factory sealed settings. 

Parts will always be an issue, but anything can be manufactured or upgraded if you have a budget. What often happens is that cameras get cannibalised to keep other ones running, so a big inventory is useful. It’s been interesting to see the evolution of HD taps and modern battery solutions.

I’ve been doing Bolex service workshops as a way of passing on some knowledge about this stuff. I’ve written online guides  for simpler cameras. Pro cameras like Arriflexes and Arricams are a bit harder as there are certain tools you simply have to have and each camera is different.

[Aapo Lettinen]

Yes it is certainly a difficult situation for  owner-ops who have more expensive film camera. They are reliant on the single aging potentially already a bit unreliable camera and it was so expensive that there is no possibility to get a backup body or second lower quality camera for safety.

Shooting on lower cost cameras like Eclairs has its benefits. You do have options. You do have backup camera body. You can stock affordable accessories if needed. It is not an Arri or Aaton but one can get the Eclair for the same price than it costs to service the Aaton once. 

Shooting with aging cameras is fine if you have a backup available. You just grab the other camera system and continue shooting

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

There's a lot of discussion  online of what a mid-tier s16 camera would be with how things are with parts etc.

My conclusion (which might be wrong) is using something  an Éclair ACL with Aapo's motor, if a bit strategic it could be around the 5-7K budget many are looking for, plus more easily accessible parts I guess.

I would not touch an SR2 in a million years no matter how lovely they are.

The XTR Prod is the holy grail but it's out of reach.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 09:13 PM by Aristeidis Tyropolis

[Robert Houllahan]

Our camera tech at Cinelab is 27 he fixes more than camera but is very good at that.

Also parts can be made in CnC and 3D printers.

[Jon O'Brien]

That sounds encouraging, Robert.

Reading some of the other posts, to sum up it sounds like things are going back to the way they were in the 70s, 80s, etc, where there were basically the rental house cameras for the high end productions and there maybe weren't many owner operators of Arris etc.

You got your start on Super 8 and video, got a job at a tv station or went to film school, and got experience with their 16mm gear, and went from there.

I've got an SR in extremely good shape, with three good mags. It seems to have been hardly used. I do wonder if the internal circuit board will one day get too old. But so far it has had absolutely no problems. People are negative about SRs lately. I don't know if it's justified. Mine was modified by Denz and has a new front with PL mount, in S16. If it develops a problem, I will deal with it then but so far all is good. I've got a Bolex Rex 5 S16 as backup.

[Ross Yeandle]

We are trying to do our bit, by currently fixing 16 and 35mm film cameras and are expanding our range from Arriflex, Bolex and K3 cameras which are very popular, so we are servicing and restoring those first. We want to keep film alive for the next generation and are seeking to increase our reach, to give folks out there the best chance of achieving that.

We are looking to support the blackcased Arriflex cameras with newly made components when required and we will also be extending this to Bolex parts in the future. Basically, it's keeping these wonderful high quality legacy cameras in perfect working order, so that they can reliably go out and earn their keep.

All the best, Ross

www.shotonfilm.co.uk 

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Good question, but:

Will there still be film in 30 years?

Will there still be labs?

Will there still be human DPs or have you all been replaced by AI tools?

Will there still be cinemas, TV channels, streaming services?

Will you still be alive?

Will you still be making a living as a DP? Or will you become a soldier in mankind’s last war against AI?

Will Earth still be a habitable planet? (Climate change, nuclear wars, asteroids, new viruses, …)

…

So stop wasting your time with worries. Que sera, sera.

[Aapo Lettinen]

I personally think that in 30 years one needs to shoot b/w photography stocks if wanting to continue with film origination. And have a diy scanner and own processing equipment. Film origination falls more and more into the hobby/enthusiast/high art  sector. Film stock is produced by small boutique film community run workshops or small special companies doing one batch a year. It is natural that it would be mostly b/w then as it would be a part of the hobby to make the actual stock and it mostly goes to the arts sector experimenting with weird visual styles.

Big productions use film as long as it has marketing value. In 30 years no one in the audience cares about film so there is no point in shooting on it. Cool stuff exists as long as there is money to produce it. If the audience takes the money away from film then there is no film in mainstream cinema anymore.

At the moment blockbusters use 65mm 5perf and IMAX because it provides marketing value and people will go see a movie they would never care about otherwise. They are curious and interested in technology. And/or seeking amusement park ride type visual experience. Many of them are wannabe filmmakers or real filmmakers or film freaks who watch movies as a serious hobby ("movie nerds"). The audience for film is a dying breed. Almost anyone who cares about film technology and film look is gone in 30 years including the directors and cinematographers caring about it and then it does not make sense to use film anymore. In most productions it is mainly about marketing value, not about the look of the image. Slight workflow benefits don't justify film use for producers and investors, it has to have marketing value and does not hurt if film origination helps getting more awards too which is again marketing value which is the whole point of awards anyway.

---

I designed most of my motors for about 12 to 15 years expected lifespan. That by my opinion is realistic expected lifetime for large scale film origination at least in b/w but hopefully still for color film too. Designing for 30 years is unrealistic, it makes the motors way too expensive and most components just can't make it that far anyway and random replacements and repairs would be needed at least on capacitors if nothing else. 30 years also sees unexpected uncontrollable soldering joint breaks in all electric devices due to shocks+vibrations+thermal stress+moisture swelling etc. which cannot really be countered for, it is just lottery which joint survives and which not. Making a 30 years lifespan product for 4x the money and it still being unreliable after used about 20 to 25 years does not make sense. It makes much more sense to design and manufacture a completely new control system after 15 years of use and use only the old mechanics of the camera if they still work.

The most realistic way of getting the cameras working is to design like this making a mid lifespan product and then after about 12 to 15 years someone else designs a replacement if needed to continue the life of the motors another 15 years if practical and still needed.  The about 15 years is an approximation anyway, sometimes they might last longer and sometimes less. No one really knows. There is still some digital cinema camera bodies which have happened to last almost 20 years in use like some original Red Ones and Alexa Classics and are still used in low budget stuff nowadays, if failing the user would buy another used body from ebay and hope for the best. Most video cameras do start to fail after about 10 to 12 years or so latest and lower cost stuff after about 5 to 6 years. We see lots of failing 2011 to 2015-ish higher end video cameras now like Red DSMC1 line, Sony F5/F55/F65 and Varicam35/varicamLT. Lots of "as spare parts" listings or "does turn on but this and that issue" listings.  The lower cost stuff like Ursa Mini Pro and Ursa Mini G2 and similar already start failing now as I have heard, after about only 6 years of use. Depends on the design how the thermal stress affects them but video cameras have tons and tons of tiny soldering joints and each and every joint can fail after thousands of heat cycles of turned on and off and freezing winter and hot desert and whatnot conditions over and over again. Thousands of soldering joints per camera. One broken joint can disable it entirely and be so difficult to repair that you need a new board or the entire camera goes to waste. It is just a huge gamble overall. Even new cameras can fail but it becomes more and more likely the older the camera is and the more it has heat cycled and used over the years.

The original Arri / Aaton / Eclair / CP16 / whatnot electronics were NOT designed for infinite lifetime either. From the boards I have seen they seem to be designed for from 10 to 20 years expected lifetime depending on the device and version with some design choices looking like regular-yearly-maintenance-expected  type stuff. The boards were MEANT to be periodically replaced and updated. People were not expecting them to last longer than 10 to 20 years because this type of cameras are checked and serviced very often and tiniest issues immediately taken care of.

Camera electronics were never meant to be buried under rubble in the attic for 30 years and then someone digging up the camera and starting shooting with it without major repairs expecting it just to work like it did in the 70's or 80's or 90's. The camera electronics have passed their expected lifetime multiple times now on the oldest cameras without the periodical care and replacement boards they were ment to get any 5 or 8 or 10 years minimum. And now people are devastated when they break down unexpectedly. The 70's and 80's Arris and Aatons had very well made electronics but there is no chance they being reliable after 40 or 50 years anymore. No matter what space technology originally used. That is why I was never interested in repairing old camera motors because I know they will fail again soon, the next component fails and it comes back and you have to do it again and again until people run out of money or get too frustrated. That is also why I think a electrically complex camera like Arricam or Penelope is a bad investment for owner-op because it costs literally a fortune to redesign that complex control electronics and the cameras start to be so old already that they have past the expected lifespan of the control boards (at least from how they look from the images I have seen of the boards).

Electronic components don't last forever, it is physically impossible. And the camera electronics were never designed to last forever either because it cannot be done. Same thing with mechanics of course but they do last longer if taken care of and it is dependent on usage and maintenance too. Electrical parts age and fail even if they are sitting on a shelf for 20 years. Some parts might even age faster if unused than if they are used regularly. It is not possible to regularly maintenance electronics, the maintenance in the case of electronics means that you regularly change parts and sometimes the circuit board base if needed until there is no original components left anymore after some decades.

People again and again forget that the cameras have been living on borrowed time over double their expected lifetime already. Expecting 30 years more on top of that without redesigning and remanufacturing almost everything is pretty impossible. It is like expecting people live to old age without public healthcare and dental care and medicine and retirement plan, just shutting up about their health issues and continuing doing heavy construction work at 90 years old until they die and then expecting them still being viable organ donors so that they can help other 90yr olds to continue shoveling dirt 24/7

Edited Thursday at 07:52 AM by Aapo Lettinen

[Clark Nikolai]

I've worked at a place that digitizes videotapes. One thing that's difficult is getting decks repaired. Nobody is making new videotape decks so we have to keep the old ones working. It's not that hard to find a replacement used VHS or Hi-8 deck but something like UMatic or open reel is more difficult.

The hard thing is to find someone to repair them. As far as I know there's only one person in North America doing it (in Seattle. Precision Video Service.) I think tech schools should be telling their students about niche things like video deck repair where there's a high demand but very few people doing it.

The other thing is the video heads. There was a place in California that was making them but they've closed down a year ago, so as something that wears out, it's just hoping that you can find an old deck that has heads that aren't worn out. 

And then there are the old time base correctors. They haven't been manufactured since the 1990s. Everyone is relying on finding old equipment as they can't just buy a new one.

So much history is out there on these formats and can't be seen.

[Jon O'Brien]

I really think it's not worth worrying about. I've observed in life that things of value somehow seem to keep going. A way forward is found. Individuals come and go but technical means of producing art continue ... that is, unless enough people don't care enough, and then the art form is truly gone. So you pick up an instrument, or learn to sing well .... or take up some other interest that floats your boat.

[Jon O'Brien]

I think that someone will figure out how to keep the old Arris going, you know, the SRs, 416s, Arricams ...

It might only be a fixed 24 fps, with a motor that lasts 10 years and then needs replacing, but someone will offer this service eventually. There's a lot of interest, a lot of will, and a lot of very clever, technically-minded, young engineer types out there.

[Brandon Paterno]

hahah yeah, not to pivot away from film but modern electronics such as those responsible for producing images digitally (dsps, fpgas, and all those frustrating to pinpoint surface mount passives, etc) are such a black box that they're often straight for the landfill if there's a board level failure. There's some real amazing science and math doing realtime conversions (an oversimplification im sure) reading out matrixes of photosensors at incredible speeds, and the hardware and software engineering to support it all is fairly fragile.

It seems like many manufacturers build (built?) these pro things out in a modular form so that a component replacement is a Phillips screw away... for five years or more if we're lucky. What happens when the company responsible for upholding support for a pro device runs out of boards...? It seems that caps explode, inductors fracture, bugs rot in between components, and those multilayer boards become shot... Some of the more sought after tape decks like the Panasonic AG-1980s love to detonate on account of some electrolytic caps. 

I'm seeing things on the camera end such as a simple fuse being reduced to a surface mount component because the manufacturer decided to reject sufficient static protection, thus taking the entire camera completely out of commission since the company A) no longer manufactures the camera and B) the fuse is surface mount!!!!!! (so no one has or will bother to repair it and thus the entire camera becomes scrap) Surface mount is great and well and good but it is a major indicator of a (reliable, predictable) lifetime of under ten years. 

I can't personally speak on contemporary pro digicams as I haven't gotten to shadow the tech above me on any of those repairs yet but from what ive seen and heard it'll be curtains when spare board assemblies for a given camera depletes. Grave robbing is the glue keeping things together sometimes........ lalalala

[Brandon Paterno]

14 minutes ago, Jon O'Brien said:

I think that someone will figure out how to keep the old Arris going, you know, the SRs, 416s, Arricams ...

It might only be a fixed 24 fps, with a motor that lasts 10 years and then needs replacing, but someone will offer this service eventually. There's a lot of interest, a lot of will, and a lot of very clever, technically-minded, young engineer types out there.

Arri and their little black boxes are a real thing I think

ive heard that the software on these (it's microcontroller city baby!!) is locked off and certain fairly critical adjustments are just not possible outside of authorized arri service centers. So there's the problem of reverse engineering any of the communication protocols to determine certain electronic faults that are likely present on the hardware itself but not accessible without some sort of decryption... On the other hand I do think that some of the parts can be rebuilt by way of swapping the write locked components like microcontrollers to equivalent MCU SKU's. But then getting everything to work together nice.... those 416s are real beauties leveraging a good bit of software magic

Since the cameras are so f*** expensive they're not gonna end up in the hands of people who actually have an interest in looking through the protocol. I know I'm gonna be looking into Arri LDS because we need a test apparatus for isolating some data readout issues -- ill be able to really look at the thing because im in a position where I can handle the comically expensive lenses that use the protocol, and I can probe them safely (some sort of CAN derivative). But probably at some point the juice won't be worth the squeeze and these problems will be at the hands of arri while they still support the protocol/exist at all. time is a cruel mistress!!

[Gillian Donaldson-Selby]

Perhaps manufacturers could be asked to 'open source' their designs/documentation after, say, 30 years? Documents could be placed in trust and made public even if the manufacturer no longer exists. 

[Brandon Paterno]

in an ideal world…

to be fair to arri they have this site that has been pretty helpful. dunno how long this has been around and obv it isn’t service manuals 

https://sparepart.arri.de/catalogprod/app?__bk_&__windowid=YHT165462409&__rid=CXL1788479153870#2V10C9D9248E4C6405

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

22 hours ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

Good question, but:

Will there still be film in 30 years?

If sensor development continues on its current trajectory, and if film does not improve, then there will be no film in 30 years. I don't like that, but that's reality.