Can anyone identify this 70mm apparatus?

[Nicholas Kovats]

The seller has identified this as a video device. However, a 70mm sprocket is clearly visible in the foreground. Can anyone identify it's purpose? Rostrum animation camera head? i.e.

 

tiny url: http://tinyurl.com/q962tco

 

original url:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/FOROX-CORPORATION-MODEL-SDD-CAMERA-SYSTEM/350964642723?rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D19839%26meid%3D4158858519234142668%26pid%3D100005%26prg%3D8934%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D5%26sd%3D331093386533%26

 

Cheers!

 

 

[Tim Tyler]

Yes. Animation camera.

 

 

 

[Josh Gladstone]

Pretty neat!

[Nicholas Kovats]

Thanks, Tim! Have you ever worked with this setup?

 

Yes. Animation camera.

 

TableTopForoxSDD_zps56e5a8da.jpg

 

 

[Nicholas Kovats]

Correction. It is a 35mm unit.

[John MacKenzie]

Forox SD camera, used for slide duplication and multi-image animation. The camera has a mechanical pin registration that fixes the film position with precision to allow for mounting in pin registered slide mounts. This allows the camera operator to align objects such as text and masks. The base has a CMYK light source similar to a high end color enlarger, and the film magazine holds up to 100 feet of 35mm film. The camera can also be used for copy stand work with the attached lights. This is the smaller camera: it's big brother is the Forox SS which holds up to 400 feet of film and has more features.

[Nicholas Kovats]

Thank you for responding 8 years later, John! 

[Mark Dunn]

5 minutes ago, Nicholas Kovats said:

Thank you for responding 8 years later, John! 

It's not going anywhere.

[Brian Hoffner]

I have the SS model in storage and for sale. Just have to clean it up as it is disassembled. 35mm and 46mm movements. Has animation table, Lights, table etc. Extra parts etc 

[Frank Wylie]

If you never saw one of those well-made, multimedia, 60 slide projector, video, arena-sized, "mega shows" in person, you missed a remarkable spectacle.

These stands were the king of producing these type shows.

I know it sounds cheesy and primitive, but if the show was put together properly;  wow.  Just wow...

[charles pappas]

2 hours ago, Frank Wylie said:

If you never saw one of those well-made, multimedia, 60 slide projector, video, arena-sized, "mega shows" in person, you missed a remarkable spectacle.

These stands were the king of producing these type shows.

I know it sounds cheesy and primitive, but if the show was put together properly;  wow.  Just wow...

I did see one of these shows and it was indeed spectacular. At least I think I did, except my memory is that it was more theater sized than arena sized.

Having said that, I can't right now really remember anything about it except that it was probably in Houston Tx  in the 80's and I went to see the show specifically because it was promoted as a spectacle.

Not much of a reply, but thanks for bringing back a memory. 

[Matthew Stone]

This thread seems to be on a very slow burn, having been started in 2014!

I thought I might add to what has already been written by contributors so far.

I worked as a rostrum camera operator in Sydney and London during the 1980s, and these small Forox cameras were a fairly common sight in Audio Visual and Multi-Media production houses. They were often used as a backup to larger floor-standing models such as the Forox SS, as mentioned above by John Mackenzie and Brian Hoffner. 

Similar cameras were made by other manufacturers such as Marron Carrel and Mangum Sickles. They were all broadly based on a design that was laid down in the animation cameras that had been used for many decades in animation studios, Oxberry in particular. 

My understanding is that even the name, ‘Forox’, was derived from ‘Formerly Oxberry’, because former Oxberry employees started the new company.

These were sometimes called ‘optical printers’ or ‘multi-image’ cameras. As mentioned above by John Mackenzie, one of the central benefits of the design was a pair of fixed pins in the film gate, ensuring precise registration. 

The other key feature was a film transport that would roll backwards and forwards as many times as desired, even for hundreds of frames. It would do this indefinitely as needed for complex multi-exposure tasks.

For example, the operator could start by exposing 100 frames of a dark blue background, after dialling in ‘blue’ in the dichroic light source, or by laying down a sheet of blue gel. It would then be a matter of rolling the film back to frame zero. 

From there, rolling forwards again through the 100 frames and shooting double exposures onto the blue background, either type, graphics or photo inserts. Of course, the operator had to keep an eye on the frame counter, to make sure he/she was on the correct frame before opening the shutter!

If required, the blue background would have been initially matted out in parts, leaving unexposed areas, so that it would not interfere with other colours in subsequent passes. The mattes could also be shot in-camera by loading a high contrast negative stock, such as Kodalith.

Typically though, these more complex multi-exposure tasks were reserved for the larger floor-standing Forox SS models, which usually occupied a room by themselves. These were much faster and more versatile, with a motorised column and a multi-axis compound, also motorised in some cases. Commonly, a reversal film stock was used, such as Kodak Tungsten 50 (#5018). 

Smaller models, like the Forox SD pictured were generally used a basic workhorse. Often the camera could be used just as a simple slide duplicator, loaded with a low contrast reversal stock, typically Kodak Duplicating Film (#5071). The camera could copy at 1:1 from 35mm originals, or from larger formats such as  6x6 transparencies, by moving the camera head up the column.

The peak of this technology was probably reached by Marron Carrel, when they launched the MC1600. This was fully computer controlled, including the X/Y/Z axes, the colours in the dichroic head, the shutter, autofocus down to 1:1, and even bellows compensation. Various stepper motors and an Apple II computer were used, and it all could be stored on a floppy disk to repeat as required.

From a creative perspective, the MC1600 was a revelation, and many adventurous techniques could be explored quickly and easily. I spent a lot of time on two of the cameras that were installed in Sydney, Australia.

These techniques all eventually came to an end with the advent of computer generated graphics, although the above-named manufacturers did produce machines for copying the graphics onto slide film.

It’s hard to find videos or even photos of a large Forox in action. But there’s a video on YouTube of a recently re-activated, partially functional, Marron Carrol MC1400. This model didn’t have the Apple computer, so was broadly comparable to the Forox SS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6PGQC52CLA

I hope Brian Hoffner can find a forever home for his Forox SS, it's a wonderful camera!

[John Salim]

Matthew, thank you so much for posting your contribution and especially the video link.

I've never seen these machines in action ( I would have loved to have operated one )
I do occasionally film duplicating ( stills ) on 35mm and 70mm.
My machine is a rather simple 'roll box' type controlling a De Vere 504 enlarger. I may even be the last person doing slide dupes !
It can print up to 6cm x 12cm panoramic on 70mm - though you cannot do much creative with it really.

All the best,
John S

[Matthew Stone]

John, indeed, you’re practicing a very rare Dark Art. I have not heard of anyone offering that service here in Australia, though there are plenty of film to digital services.

It sounds like an interesting rig that you’re using for duplicating, and an enlarger lens would be ideal for this.

The Marron Carrel was supplied with an enlarger lens as standard equipment. It was an El-Nikkor, and the focal length was 80mm IIRC. It was very sharp and there was no noticeable image curvature or distortion. For some tasks, a Micro-Nikkor 55mm was used, but it wasn’t quite as good.

I'm sure you would have loved operating a rostrum camera. There were many creative possibilities and it was fun pushing the envelope.

Provided a person had some photographic knowledge, the basics of the camera were not hard to pick up. Conveniently in a typical rostrum room, a range of base exposure settings were usually provided on a wall chart (often hand-written and sometimes with scrawled notes or corrections).

Producers and designers were always requesting special effects from the camera operator, and looking for new ideas. There was a particular jargon that they used, for example: internal glow, external glow, streak, zoom, step and repeat, star field, travelling matte, slit scan, window mask etc.

The huge multiple slide projector rigs of the time could easily achieve frame rates of 6 or 9 frames a second (or even more), so creating animated graphics was a key part of it.

Experimentation was enjoyable, and nobody ever complained about film costs!

These days, finding the right film stock for making duplicates must be a challenge – or is it a matter of using standard Ektachrome or similar?

On the rostrum camera, one of the procedures was to ‘pre-flash’ Ektachrome 50T if it was necessary to copy images onto it. This helped to bring up the mid tones, especially if copying images of people.

[John Salim]

Hi Matthew,
( see pictures attached )
The Duplicopier 3570 works 'upside down' to conventional rostrum cameras, by using an enlarger to print onto film.
It uses print masks from 35mm to 6cm x 12cm.
The sprocket drive in not perf accurate ( pretty out really ), so you couldn't run processed film through a slide mounter for example.
Everything has to be hand finished.

The lens is a 75mm f4 Rodenstock Apo-Rodagon D which is designed for 1:1 duplicating. It will print from 35mm to 120 6x6 format.
The dupe film I use is Fujichrome CDU II Duplicating film, ( and unbelievably ) is still good to use even though it's well out of date.
There's a slight D-max loss - but nothing serious I'm pleased to say !

Cheers,
John S


 

Edited June 26 by John Salim

[Matthew Stone]

Hi John, that really is very impressive!

I can kind of get the general picture of how it works, and I don't recall ever seeing anything quite like it.

I guess the challenge will be if the Fuji duplicating stock runs out, what to use next. Although maybe there is still enough stock around.

On your website, you're certainly providing a lot of useful film services.

Thinking aloud here, I sometimes wonder if we (the human race in general) will someday regret our reliance on shooting everything digitally.

We’re all happily shooting on our camera phones to ‘capture’ significant moments in our lives, and some of us dutifully back up the files on our computers (or print a few out, perhaps).

But in reality, many of these images may not even survive past our children – let alone grandchildren.

So I wonder if there might be room for a commercial duplicating service that does things back-to-front? In other words, it makes copies from digital files and transfers them to film.

It might take a little bit of marketing, but the proposition to customers would be: ‘Give me the best 30 smartphone shots from your next birthday/graduation/wedding/etc’.

These would then be transferred to colour film. Customers would receive the film (negatives or transparencies) which they could file away for posterity.

I’m imagining the setup as fairly simple: a film camera on a copy stand, with a high resolution iPad or laptop screen as the image source.

Just a thought, anyway.

In the above, you mentioned D-max, and I think Kodak #5071 was similar, the dark tones and blacks in particular were often slightly lacking in density.

And even with regular Ektachrome #5018, D-max was sometimes a bit inadequate, especially for animated multi-image sequences.

With perhaps 6 or 9 projectors all pointing at the same screen, if the slide backgrounds weren’t dense enough, it could spoil the impact. When all the projectors were lit up at once, the black backgrounds could turn grey and washed out.

But there were workarounds for this issue.

What we typically would do with titles and graphics was create a sandwich inside the slide mount, comprising one layer of colour film plus another layer to mask off the black background areas. This second layer would be either shot on Kodalith or on colour film (just black backgrounds with clear window inserts).

Or there was another solution, called ‘double-chipping’, which to my mind was the coolest way of doing it.

This was to shoot each element of the graphic animation as two separate frames on Ektachrome, but somewhat over-exposed (about +1 stop). The two identical pieces of film would then be sandwiched in the slide mount, creating very saturated colours, and super dense black backgrounds – ideal for animations.

But such tricks of the trade have fallen by the wayside now...