16mm projection

[Brian E Ray]

Hi, Does anyone know anything about sproketless 16mm projection that would have good registration and be gentle on film

[Dan Salzmann]

What exactly do you mean by sprocketless projection?

Do you mean a projector that doesn't use the films perfs?

[Charles MacDonald]

Hi, Does anyone know anything about sproketless 16mm projection that would have good registration and be gentle on film

 

almost any 16mm projector uses a sproket wheel or two to buffer the weight of the reels from afecting the mechanism. Otherwise the Pull-down claw may have to exert enough presure to turn a full rell, with the danger of ripping out perferations.

 

some have larger diamerter wheels than others.

 

Perhaps though you were thinking of a unit that works more like a moviola or a flatbed editor that has a prism shutter to avoid a pull down claw entirely?

[Alain LeTourneau]

MTM and several other manufactures used to make prism projectors for interlocking (spliced) work print

and edited tracks for projection.

 

But these have sprockets next to the prism... just like a flatbed.

 

 

-Alain

[Christian Appelt]

There were some special telecine projectors using a vacuum pulldown mechanism, but even these had sprockets to transport the film stock continuously.

 

The swiss company of Sondor and MWA used to make 16/35mm prism studio projectors for high speed and sound mixing work.

 

MWA Home

 

BTW, any well-maintained professional 16mm machine will be gentle with your film if you use it correctly. Problems can be expected with the cheaper models of automatic threading portables that sat on the shelf for 20 years and appear on eBay now... ;)