Who developed the OCT-19 mount?

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi folks

 

I'm putting together a list of common mounts with some notes on each for publication, and came across an interesting oddity. It doesn't seem to be very clear who actually developed the OCT-19 lens mount. Very many of the lenses available in that mount are by LOMO, but I'm not sure that they actually developed it, or when it came into use.

 

Anyone know anything about this?

 

P

[Michael Rodin]

It must have been MKBK (Moscow Cine Equipment Design Bureau). The mount was developed for a later type Konvas MOS camera - the one without a turret. It was "Конвас KCP1-2M".

It's one of the sturdiest mounts out there, maybe the sturdiest apart from 65/70mm types - made with anamorphics and zooms in mind. Much more solid than earlier OCT18.

 

By the way, OCT19 is an unofficial name. It comes from the mount being first described as a part of a ОСТ-19-144-83 standart for a cine camera bayonet mount (info from Olex Kalinichenko). OCT18 is also kind of a slang name.

[Phil Rhodes]

Thanks for that. I did notice that the throat diameter and flange focal distance were quite large - it's essentially a giant PL, but every example I've ever seen has been made very tough.

 

I guess nobody has any idea what it's really supposed to be called...

 

P

[Aapo Lettinen]

Thanks for that. I did notice that the throat diameter and flange focal distance were quite large - it's essentially a giant PL, but every example I've ever seen has been made very tough.

 

I guess nobody has any idea what it's really supposed to be called...

 

P

It is more inspired by the mitchell bncr mount than arri pl which also explains the ffd and sturdier construction compared to the pl mount.

 

I have a old soviet Soyuz us3n camera from the 70's which already has the oct19 mount. I'm not absolute sure if it is modified later or if the oct19 was fitted in the beginning at factory but to me it seems like it is factory installed. I guess the mount was available earlier than the konvas2m was made and maybe they installed them to other cameras at the beginning as well to test it out, soviets did lots of experimental stuff and constant changes with their cameras, almost every early konvas for example is slightly different than other unless they are from exactly same year and batch. I think there may be close to 10 different versions of the older straight viewfinder side latch konvas 1kcp which was between the straight viewfinder top latch model and the orientable finder 1m model

[Kyryll Sobolev]

Hi folks

 

I'm putting together a list of common mounts with some notes on each for publication, and came across an interesting oddity. It doesn't seem to be very clear who actually developed the OCT-19 lens mount. Very many of the lenses available in that mount are by LOMO, but I'm not sure that they actually developed it, or when it came into use.

 

Anyone know anything about this?

 

P

 

i think it will be difficult to determine when and where exactly the mount was developed without visiting archives/libraries in russia

though there is interesting information available online, some of which you may already know:

OST stands for "Industry Standard" (Otraslevvoj Standart) - so something specific to a particular industry

GOST is a "State Standart (Gosudarstvennyj Standart)

 

and in this case ОСТ-19-144-83 became GOST 26157-84 (view here), which i believe is still valid to this day

 

officially OCT-19 came into effect in 1984 (!) - see this document here

on page 4 the paragraph reads

"Starting in 1984, lens housings for 35- and 70-mm film will be manufactured with a single mount for installation into film cameras, which have a mount diameter (посадочный диаметр...?) equal to 68mm and flange distance (рабочий отрезок) of 61mm (OCT 19-144-83). In 1989, 35-mm film lenses will be made available with Arri PL mount, to make our lenses compatible with western film cameras.

This overview is based on the materials provided by CKBK Ekran, with contributions from lab results of lens tests by NIKFI"

 

 

but unoffifically... who knows :)

it was very likely developed prior to the actual introduction of Konvas 1КСР-2М (whose designed was meant to use a single lens, instead of its turret predecessor)

 

from the materials i have read, it seems that NIKFI and MKBK would have been involved in the creation of what would become OCT-19 mount

NIKFI is Cinema and Research Institute (Научно-Исследовательский КиноФотоинститут // http://www.holography.ru/nikfieng.htm, http://www.nikfi.ru/)

MKBK is Moscow Cinema Equipment Construction Bureau (Московское конструкторское бюро киноаппаратуры)

 

Moskinap, like Lomo, at that time were the manufacturing plants. The design came from above-standing structures.

 

and yes, OCT-18 is of a slang term, not an actual standart

OCT's starting with 18 cover things like lip gloss (18-209-75), soap (18-235-75), and mineral water (18-224-82)

[Phil Rhodes]

Crikey, that's a wealth of information. Thanks, I'll work it in there.

 

I think I've only ever used an OCT-19 camera once, but it did strike me as being extremely heavily built.

 

P

[Keith Walters]

Crikey, that's a wealth of information. Thanks, I'll work it in there.

 

I think I've only ever used an OCT-19 camera once, but it did strike me as being extremely heavily built.

 

P

Just about everything the Soviets used to make was generally built like the proverbial brick shitehouse, but with performance roughly equivalent to a spade and a sheet of rough newspaper :rolleyes:

I used to have an old Astrad "VEF" AM/FM radio. The construction looked like something out of Forbidden Planet, but the performance was absolutely pathetic. One of the many things I wish I'd kept over the years.

About 40 years ago I knew a TV repairman who had a Russian-made oscilloscope, which looked like something out of a Jules Verne novel. They could have rented it out on the set of The Man in the High Castle.

I think a real collector's item would be an old Soviet-era studio TV camera. The Russian-made Electronika Plumbicons looked more like vidicons...

[Kyryll Sobolev]

i asked optika elite people to shed some light on the story, but it seems even they don't know exactly how the mount was developed

however, they were very helpful and actually sent me a copy of the OCT 19-144-83 document

you can access it here

 

the last page of the scan actually has detailed measurements for PL mount.

 

so organizations involved in creating the standart are:

Ekran - but only seems to be in a consulting role of some sort, the only person credited is a "deputy director general/CEO"

MKBK - with lead designer B.F. Gordeev (who developed the first Kinor in 1965)

NIKFI

 

i would hazard a guess that the drive to develop a mount similar to PL was not an official directive, but very likely came from within MKBK. since their workers did go on professional visit to the usa and western europe, they got to see how things were done in the west.

[Phil Rhodes]

Wow, that's a lot of information.

 

Happily, the PDF file can be copy-pasted into Google Translate, so I'll have a closer look. I've long since submitted the original article, but this may be as much information as is available anywhere about the history of this mount.

 

Thanks!

 

Phil

[Kyryll Sobolev]

...and one more thing to note,

i think i saw alex kalynychenko mention it somewhere online - they didn't really ask for an OCT mount set of lenses before in the way like we do here (are those EF mount? pana mount? PL mount...)

 

you would get, or sign out, a camera body for a production, and the set of lenses came with that particular body

very obviously that led to problems later on because you couldn't always use older sets of lenses with newer design bodies