Bauer C2 M shutter angle and other questions

[Alina Postula]

Hello,

I am shooting a short film on a Bauer C2 M super 8 camera that I inherited. There is very little control on the camera and I am using available light. I am shooting in the middle of a forest (daytime) and am not set up to bring lots of lights and a generator, so there is very little I can do about the exposure. I would however like to meter to see how off I am (that way I can either ask the lab to push it if need be, or give up and just shoot this project in digital). The little info I can dig up on the camera seems to say that the lens has a set aperture at 1.8. But there is a switch for "sunny" or "cloudy." So my questions are as follows:

1)If it is a set aperture what does the switch do? put on and remove a ND filter ??? Or is the info on the aperture wrong?

2)What is the shutter angle so I can figure out the shutter speed...or what is the shutter speed!

3)Any other suggestions for lighting/ metering/ etc.

Thanks!

[Michael Lehnert]

I might be mistaken but I am unaware of a Sun/Cloud switch on the Bauer C2 M super. Do you by any chance mean the switch on the right-hand side of the body, depicting a sun or a bulb symbol depending on the switch being moved up or down? If so, then that's the Wratten 85 filter switch. There are plenty of threads discussing the Wratten 85 filter function on Super 8 cameras here, as well as the problematics of using modern high-ISO and daylight film stock in (non-)coded Super 8 cartridges with mostly automated Super 8 cameras. Just do some more research here using these search terms.

 

In a nutshell - and probably not very helpful - sorry: As you might know, Super 8 cameras were designed based on the use of tungsten film stock only, and thus around two alternative exposure index settings, reading either ISO 25/40 or 100/160 depending on whether the Wratten 85 switch is set on sun=daylight=Wratten85in/bulb=tungsten=Wratten85out.

 

The Bauer C2 M super has a very good Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens, and its maximum opening is f/1,8 indeed, probably down to f/22. This was top-notch glass for its time for Super 8. Unfortunately, the automatic exposure control cannot be deactivated to manual aperture control. You can do a manual lock of the f-stop that the TTL exposure meter has selected by pressing the 'fix'-button at the front of the camera. However, I am pretty sure the camera does not have an exposure scale in its viewfinder, depicting or even naming the current f-stop selected (correct me if I am wrong). This now disables any precise knowledge or attempts at "back-engineering mathematics" on the f-stop, exposure time, shutter opening angle etc.

 

If I am not missing any trick this camera has - I don't own Bauer cameras from the pre-Royal-moniker era but use a variety of more modern ones to great results - there is just no way for you to measure the f-stop internally, or measure it externally with an external lightmeter and then adjust the aperture accordingly. All you can do is look through the viewfinder, trust that the exposure is "balanced", fix it through manual lock to an average you might need for the take, and hope for the best. This limits what you can do in terms of camera movements (moving from dark to bright spots, so to say), but I gather you are not setting light anyway. I also understand that you are shooting in a dense forest, which is pretty much a very difficult location to shoot in purely practically at daytime because of all the light scatter and high shadow/bright-spots contrast. But I recall a film we made in the mid-1980s, using the old Kodak Ektachrome 160 T, shooting deep in a forest (that was a kinda Spielberg-"Super 8"-type thingy B) :P back when we were young) and having recently watched that reel, we were surprise how good the results actually were!

 

Have you done some test reels with this camera? Does it work in normal lighting situations (exposure correct?)?

[Alina Postula]

I might be mistaken but I am unaware of a Sun/Cloud switch on the Bauer C2 M super. Do you by any chance mean the switch on the right-hand side of the body, depicting a sun or a bulb symbol depending on the switch being moved up or down? If so, then that's the Wratten 85 filter switch. There are plenty of threads discussing the Wratten 85 filter function on Super 8 cameras here, as well as the problematics of using modern high-ISO and daylight film stock in (non-)coded Super 8 cartridges with mostly automated Super 8 cameras. Just do some more research here using these search terms.

 

In a nutshell - and probably not very helpful - sorry: As you might know, Super 8 cameras were designed based on the use of tungsten film stock only, and thus around two alternative exposure index settings, reading either ISO 25/40 or 100/160 depending on whether the Wratten 85 switch is set on sun=daylight=Wratten85in/bulb=tungsten=Wratten85out.

 

The Bauer C2 M super has a very good Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens, and its maximum opening is f/1,8 indeed, probably down to f/22. This was top-notch glass for its time for Super 8. Unfortunately, the automatic exposure control cannot be deactivated to manual aperture control. You can do a manual lock of the f-stop that the TTL exposure meter has selected by pressing the 'fix'-button at the front of the camera. However, I am pretty sure the camera does not have an exposure scale in its viewfinder, depicting or even naming the current f-stop selected (correct me if I am wrong). This now disables any precise knowledge or attempts at "back-engineering mathematics" on the f-stop, exposure time, shutter opening angle etc.

 

If I am not missing any trick this camera has - I don't own Bauer cameras from the pre-Royal-moniker era but use a variety of more modern ones to great results - there is just no way for you to measure the f-stop internally, or measure it externally with an external lightmeter and then adjust the aperture accordingly. All you can do is look through the viewfinder, trust that the exposure is "balanced", fix it through manual lock to an average you might need for the take, and hope for the best. This limits what you can do in terms of camera movements (moving from dark to bright spots, so to say), but I gather you are not setting light anyway. I also understand that you are shooting in a dense forest, which is pretty much a very difficult location to shoot in purely practically at daytime because of all the light scatter and high shadow/bright-spots contrast. But I recall a film we made in the mid-1980s, using the old Kodak Ektachrome 160 T, shooting deep in a forest (that was a kinda Spielberg-"Super 8"-type thingy B) :P back when we were young) and having recently watched that reel, we were surprise how good the results actually were!

 

Have you done some test reels with this camera? Does it work in normal lighting situations (exposure correct?)?

 

AH! I kind of foolishly assumed that it was a fixed aperture... This has been very helpful!

I suppose I will just shoot, cross my fingers, hope for the best, and also shoot digital as back-up/kind of b-roll to cut to (it's a music video so I feel I can get away with that...MUAHAHA!)

just one more question:

Do you know if it meters continuously or just when the shutter-release button(? not sure if it's still called that on a movie camera....) is initially pressed?

Thanks Again!

[Richard Tuohy]

Hi Alina,

the meters in super 8 cameras run continuously when the trigger is pulled. That means, if pan around and get the sun in the lens, then sure enough the lens will stop down. According to the super 8 database, this camera also has manual exposure.

http://www.super8data.com/database/cameras_list/cameras_bauer/bauer_c2m.htm

With Bauer cameras, the control for auto and manual is usually under a little flap on the top side of the camera near the front. Under the flap you find a wheel with a green (for auto) position at one end (the rest being red for manual). If you haven't shot a test roll with this camera (as I describe here: http://nanolab.com.au/bracketed.htm ) you must trust the internal meter (as long as there are signs of life from it that is).

If you shoot with colour negative super 8 (200 or 500), then you won't have a problem with exposure I suspect. Yes, the camera wasn't designed for these speeds, but that will be fine. Leave the filter switch on 'sun' because you will want the 85 filter for colour correction. In fact, I do recommend you use neg rather than the Ektachrome 100d with this camera as if this camera is like other Bauer cameras I have known, it doesn't have a filter notch pin. This means it won't automatically disengage the camera's internal 85 filter with daylight film (like the Ektachrome 100d). Yes, you can disengage the filter by using the 'sun/bulb' switch (the 'bulb' position is the 'no filter' position). However in this instance with a Bauer with no filter pin, this means it will expose the film as 160 asa rather than 100 asa. This is an essoteric fact about Bauer cameras, and it doesn't apply to almost all other brands - indeed to any brand that has a filter pin, with which the correct advice is to leave the filter switch or whatever mechanism there is on 'sun' even though you don't want the filter, as the filter pin will disengage the filter and switching it out yourself will affect the asa (I put all that there for other people reading this thread).

There is a work around for using a Bauer with 100d. It is simply to take a reading with the switch on 'sun' - which is a 100 asa reading - then switch out the filter (bulb) and set the exposure manually to the reading you got when the switch was on 'sun'. Get the idea?

Don't be put off by all this. All you have to do is:

either shoot on colour neg film and have the filter switch set to 'sun'

or shoot or Ektachrome 100d and do the work around I have described.

Otherwise, go for it.

richard

[Simon Wyss]

Bauer Super-8 cameras have Bell & Howell interiors like Carena and others, so the shutter opening angle is 160 degrees. Please don’t press me to display the coming of those things, it would mean to explain the Gordian relations within a now gone industry. I want to concentrate my energy on finding out about pioneers.

 

By the way, here’s looking at them. http://theimpossiblecameras.weebly.com/index.html