The first ever Arri

[GeorgeSelinsky]

I was just crusing around doing one of my favorite pasttimes, looking at old cameras, and I found what appears to be one of the first 35mm cameras made by Arri in 1925....

 

 

I'd love to show up with that to the set one day, it looks way more awesome than anything out there today, film or digital.

 

- G.

[GeorgeSelinsky]

 

Come on, work imbedded image. Anyway,

 

http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/kinarri.jpg

 

Cut and paste. It's worthwhile I think. From the site

 

http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/cinelist.html

 

- G.

[GeorgeSelinsky]

...and while we're at it, although it's not 35mm only...

 

http://www.movie-camera.com/bolseye.html

 

Now you can wonder where JVC got their design from for their smallest line of mini DV cams <_<

 

- G.

[Rob Belics]

Here's one I'd love to own.

[David Mullen ASC]

Looks like an Akeley -- maybe they ripped off Akeley's design.

[Bob Hayes]

Very cool!

 

bob hayes

DP LA

[Marty Hamrick]

Here's one I'd love to own.

You want to feel really sick?I had an old boss,owner of the film lab I worked back in the late 70's,actually owned that very model camera.He was about 75 then,he was a news rell shooter back in the 30's and 40's,used one of those as well as Bell and Howell Eyemo.

He suffered Alzheimer's Disease after the lab closed and he retired.All of his old equipment was swallowed up and sold for next to nothing,have no idea what became of his old cameras.

Marty

[Marty Hamrick]

I was just crusing around doing one of my favorite pasttimes, looking at old cameras, and I found what appears to be one of the first 35mm cameras made by Arri in 1925....

George,is that camera a reflex?I don't see a separate VF.

Marty

[GeorgeSelinsky]

Most definitely not, this was before they invented the reflex shutter, which was sometime in the thirties if I'm not mistaken. This camera goes back to 1925. I just love its shape, like a cookie tin. Probably weighed much more I imagine :blink:

 

- G.

[Marty Hamrick]

Most definitely not, this was before they invented the reflex shutter, which was sometime in the thirties if I'm not mistaken. This camera goes back to 1925. I just love its shape, like a cookie tin. Probably weighed much more I imagine :blink:

 

- G.

Now that you mention it,I think the book,The Light on Her Face mentions that.It was sometime before sound that a German company,not Arriflex came up with a prototype of a spinning mirror shutter camera.It didn't catch on at the time.

Marty

[Greg Milneck]

Resurrecting an ancient thread, this is indeed the first Arri camera produced. This very camera now resides in my collection after 40 years of searching for an example. The original owner, Micheal Rogge was a long time collector of early cinema cameras. Unfortunately he passed away last year, and I was fortunate to acquire this example. It’s an earlier prototype without a serial number. The model is extreme rare with only a handful of known examples, the last known serial number being #11

@David Mullen ASC yes, it was inspired by the Akeley Pancake… but definitely not a direct rip off of the earlier Pancake. Short of the shape, the camera was not nearly as innovative as the Akeley: https://www.kinocameras.com/apparatus/Akeley-pancake 

 

More details on the Arri Kinarri in my blog:

https://www.kinocameras.com/apparatus/kinarri

[Simon Wyss]

Dear Greg, a passage from your blog,

Their company would later be shortened to Arri, and for the next 100 years Arri would be a dominant player in the film industry,

seems a little far fetched to me. The truth is that Arnold & Richter were a small enterprise and not well known until 1952 when they began selling the ARRIFLEX 16. The ARRIFLEX, from then on coined ARRIFLEX 35, was sold perhaps 40 times up to the beginning of the war, I don’t know that precisely. Until February 1941 some 125 have been made.

The Kine cameras of the 1930s were Askania, Bell & Howell, Debrie, Eclair, Mitchell, Vinten, Wall. Thousands of Debrie Parvo were in use when the ARRIFLEX appeared in 1937.

ARRI printers are long forgotten (like others). An international player the company became with the 35 BL in the seventies.

There have also been a KINARRI 16 and a KINARRI 9½. Only for completeness

[Greg Milneck]

46 minutes ago, Simon Wyss said:

Dear Greg, a passage from your blog,

Their company would later be shortened to Arri, and for the next 100 years Arri would be a dominant player in the film industry,

seems a little far fetched to me. The truth is that Arnold & Richter were a small enterprise and not well known until 1952 when they began selling the ARRIFLEX 16. The ARRIFLEX, from then on coined ARRIFLEX 35, was sold perhaps 40 times up to the beginning of the war, I don’t know that precisely. Until February 1941 some 125 have been made.

The Kine cameras of the 1930s were Askania, Bell & Howell, Debrie, Eclair, Mitchell, Vinten, Wall. Thousands of Debrie Parvo were in use when the ARRIFLEX appeared in 1937.

ARRI printers are long forgotten (like others). An international player the company became with the 35 BL in the seventies.

There have also been a KINARRI 16 and a KINARRI 9½. Only for completeness

If you are referring to "and for the next 100 years Arri would be a dominant player in the film industry"...thats my personal opinion as a working DP in the US...you may disagree, but as a young operator in the 80's and a DP in the 90's and beyond, I worked with Arri gear more than any other. (AKS, lenses, cameras, etc)..and even today as a rental  house owner the most in demand cameras are Arri.

The Kinarri 16 is rare...even the image on the Arri site depicted as an Arri 16 is the Arri 35. The 16mm has a box style body. A 9.5mm was never produced, the only reference I could find to it  was a vague comment in a forum and it is not accurate...if you know more please share. I have spent years researching the Kinarri 35mm, in 40+ years of collecting and searching for one I have only personally seen 4, but have documented several others sold at auction and one owned privately , passed on from his grandfather who bought it directly from the makers.
FYI- The blog is info and photos of a few of the cameras contained in my collection. I do not own a Kinarri 16

[Tyler Purcell]

6 hours ago, Greg Milneck said:

If you are referring to "and for the next 100 years Arri would be a dominant player in the film industry"...thats my personal opinion as a working DP in the US...you may disagree, but as a young operator in the 80's and a DP in the 90's and beyond, I worked with Arri gear more than any other. (AKS, lenses, cameras, etc)..and even today as a rental  house owner the most in demand cameras are Arri.

I think what Simon was saying is that Arri didn't dominate for 100 years. In fact, their 35mm feature film camera business didn't really take off globally until the end of the 80's and into the 90's. It also only ran through 2012 or so before they came out with digital cameras and shifted away from film. I think you may underestimate the local rental houses and what they rented vs what other people rented. Plus many DP's preferred certain systems and if you weren't working with someone shooting with one of those systems, then how would you know?  

Historically tho, prior to the 535, 453 and Arricam's release, there were actually very few 35mm movies shot entirely with Arri cameras. I think you'd find it to be in the hundreds globally. The acquisition of Moviecam and the money they put into making the 535, 435 and Arricam systems, were really what got them the dominance.  Arri was not doing well financially during the late 90's and they needed to develop a new camera fast, they spent a lot of time revamping Bauers next generation moviecam and turned it into the Arricam. The industry was enamored with the Arricam, Arri scan and Arri laser. The tech worked, it was a DI workflow that everyone wanted and it was BY FAR the most successful end to end system in the world. Those three tools were in every country globally from India and Australia to New Zealand and all over Europe and the United States. Like a web, they basically fully-dominated for what, a decade before film died? Then like a flash, they dumped film and were ready to become the new leaders in digital cinematography. However, their dominance in the professional industry kept going. 

I do agree, the post 2000 dominance of Arri is legitimate, but it's absolutely not a reflection of the years prior with 35mm filmmaking. When you look back, the most dominant system(s) were made my Mitchell. The BNC, BNCR, Technicolor, the 65mm systems, these are all Mitchell designs. Then when Panavision took over, their dominance soared. From 1930 through 1980 (50 years), the industry still relied heavily on Mitchel systems in the form of Panavision. Yes it's true, many films that shot with Panavision cameras did have a 2C handy for those MOS shots, so it's not like the camera system wasn't used, it absolutely was. 

Now, maybe you're thinking 16mm? Arri's 16mm cameras were far more widely used, that's for sure. Even the 16BL and S/M were very well used systems due to TV and such. However, the SR simply dominated the industry, it was a checkmate at the time. Even guys like Aaton couldn't really compete until they got their bugs out and made the XTR Prod/Xtera. By then there were thousands of SR's on the market, so it was a rough business to be in. The 416 is still to this day the most dominant 16mm camera available. So if you're referring to 16mm, I'd say the dominance was a lot longer than it was with 35mm, but nowhere near 100 years. 

[Dom Jaeger]

3 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Historically tho, prior to the 535, 453 and Arricam's release, there were actually very few 35mm movies shot entirely with Arri cameras. I think you'd find it to be in the hundreds globally. 

I think it would be way more than that. I would say Arri have been a dominant player in the film industry for a lot longer than since 1990, probably since at least the 70s, particularly in countries outside the US. Panavision never really penetrated the European market, and was often too expensive for many other parts of the world. Mitchell were the dominant camera company globally from probably the 30s until the 70s, but in Europe particularly, IICs were very often used on lower budget and New Wave films, sometimes blimped. Often a IIC was used for the handheld or action shots in conjunction with a Mitchell. There's also the Techniscope films shot with modified IIcs, the Pan-Arris used in conjunction with Panavision lenses, and plenty of films from Asia or India or other parts of the world. The American New Wave started with films shot on Arri IIcs like Bullit and Easy Rider and by the 70s IIcs and 35 BLs were used on a multitude of films - think Scorcese or Kubrick or Bergman or Truffaut or Boorman etc. By the 80s, almost everything not shot with Panavision (and I'd say a majority of European cinema) was Arri. Moviecam made a dent in the duopoly in the 90s but were subsequently bough by Arri to produce the Arricam line.

There's also the legacy of Arri's 1937 shutter/mirror design, which ended up as the primary reflex system utilised by motion picture cameras from the 70s to the 2000s, not to mention the various Arri designs that have become standards in cinematography like the PL mount since 1982. And in the 16mm world Arri have been the field leaders since the 16St was released in 1952. 

So yeah, maybe not 100 years, but at least a good 50! 

In the pantheon of cinema camera companies since the birth of cinema I would probably rank them Mitchell, Arri, Panavision, Debrie, Bell & Howell. 

[Dom Jaeger]

Here's a thread where we talked about some of the many movies shot primarily on an Arriflex IIC:

 

[Greg Milneck]

9 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I think what Simon was saying is that Arri didn't dominate for 100 years.

Good point, poor choice of words on my part. I guess from my perspective, in the 40+ years of my career, Arri has always been one of the main players, and not just because of their cameras...not to mention they have remained relevant after 100 years, not many companies can say this. Thanks all for the feedback, I edited my post 

[Tyler Purcell]

11 hours ago, Dom Jaeger said:

I think it would be way more than that.

Yea, it's not sadly. There really truly were only a few hundred Arri-only feature films prior to the 1980's shot globally. It's a very small number. There is actually a book I have somewhere in my storage about it, they listed every film on a few pages, it was a VERY short list and many of them were more recently made, as the book came out in the 90's. 35BL was a big deal of course, but it was also trust with the system, people started to trust it more and more, which led to more and more use. So I will give ya the 1980's as potentially a time period where they started their dominance. I still think it's only 40 years or so if you actually look at titles globally. 

Obviously with TV, commercial, music video and 16mm, there is no contest, Arri has dominated those fields for a long time.