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Aaton LTR54 with daylight spools


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I have a producer who has some 30m daylight spools meant for a bolex that he would like to use with an Aaton LTR 54. I'm wondering if it would be possible to adapt these to the camera short of simply having them put on cores. According to the manual at the link below (on pg. 14) it's simply a matter of removing a screw. Just wondering whether anyone here has any experience with this, or if this manual is referring to a daylight spool I'm not aware of (i.e. a 100 ft version of the A-minima 200 ft reels or something like it). Thanks!

 

http://www.my16mm.com/assets/pdfs/manuals/aatonltrman.pdf

Edited by Seth Lawrence
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Seth ... If you are referring to the standard metal black spools which Kodak and others use for 100ft rolls, these are a standard "daylight" spools which can be used on Bolex, Arriflex, and Aaton cameras, and very probably other cameras. They are quite different to those used on the Aaton a-Minima camera however, which was a special design for that camera and that camera alone, and cannot be used on other cameras.

 

I have an Aaton LTR54 camera, and I can assure you that the standard black 100ft reels referred to above can be used in the LTR54 with no difficulty whatsoever. I mostly use those reels.

 

The LTR54 is designed to take 400ft rolls of film which are wound on to cores as well as 100ft daylight spools, and as the manual says, to use the 100ft metal daylight reels you first have to remove the core centres by unscrewing the small screw. On withdrawing the mounting for cores you will find that the 100ft spools will fit on the shaft on which the core centre was mounted.

 

Both sides of the magazine are the same in so far as the precedure described above is concerned.

 

Regards.

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  • 3 years later...

Happened to be figuring this out with my newly acquired Aaton and wanted to make a small but important addition to Robert's explanation.

In the feed side of the magazine, in the top left corner, there's a small thumbscrew screwed into the bottom of the magazine. This screw serves two purposes:

  1. you can actually use it to unscrew the core (of course you could also use a flathead screwdriver).
  2. it screws on top of the 100ft daylight reel once you've placed that on the shaft. This is actually quite important because it keeps the reel from moving around inside the magazine, which would make it noisy and could cause other problems.

 

 

Edited by Baltasar Thomas
typo and made a numbered list.
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  • 2 years later...
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47 minutes ago, Boris Kalaidjiev said:

Hello everyone,

would the 100ft daylight spools also work on a XTR Prod? 
 

thanks! 

Only on the feed side. On the take-up side you need to use a core, because of the friction clutch. There are several posts on this topic on this site.

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39 minutes ago, Boris Kalaidjiev said:

I’m trying to do a steadiness test on both of my mags tomorrow and was hopping on using some daylight spools. 
 

Does this sound like a bad idea?

Daylight spools scrape on the magazine lid in some cameras- IIRC they sometimes did in the ST. Reading what Baltasar says about spool locks, if you have them, probably not. But noise wouldn't matter for a test anyway.

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3 minutes ago, David Sekanina said:

Only on the feed side. On the take-up side you need to use a core, because of the friction clutch. There are several posts on this topic on this site.

Well there you have it. Remember that 100' on a core, (in a black bag because the box is not lightproof) will not fit in the plastic Kodak box. If you don't need the whole 100' you could just discard the excess film. If you do, I would tell the lab it is short.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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39 minutes ago, Boris Kalaidjiev said:

I think I have some spare 35mm film cans that I could use. Not sure if it‘a a bad idea because the 16mm short end will be wiggling around inside unless I put some buble wrap or something haha 

Just tape the black bag down inside the can. Label the can so they know it's not 35mm?

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As long as the film is in a bag in the can we don't generally care if it is on a core or not, I ran 1600ft of 16mm ECN from an SR3 today with no cores and EZ to put cores in to prep in the darkroom to develop.

I have shot with 100ft daylight spools on both my LTR and XTR they work but they are very noisy.

No need to inform the lab it is short (we will figure that out) but as Mark said definitely let us lab folks know of you send a 16mm roll in a 35mm can as that will be relevant to scheduling what gauge is run and if it is opened in the dark and found to be 16mm while prepping 35mm it goes back to the beginning.

Edited by Robert Houllahan
short
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