Using a Kinamo 35mm

[Fabrice Ducouret]

I just got a Kinamo 35mm camera,  and I'm really excited to play with it soon.

Unfortunately, it comes without a user guide, and these are hard to find, even today across the world wide web.

I've taken a picture of it and labeled some of the parts in case someone out there can help me figure out what everything is. The model I got has only one little defect, which is that once rewinded the motor just goes straight away, whether or not the shutter is pressed. So I might look for a cover, and only use the hand-crank. I've been able to open the film compartment and the film holder inside, but I'm not sure how to load film it it yet.

 

[David Garden]

I am wondering if you were ever able to get some answers to your questions about the Kineom.  I am researching this camera and considering buying one.  I found that there is a person renting it by the day in the Los Angeles area on the website, Sharegrid.  I was thinking about renting it and running some film through it to see how it looks with respect to image registration, focus, resolution and light tightness of the camera. I am in the Pasadena area teaching cinematography this summer if you are in the area, maybe we could meet for a coffee.  I just downloaded a journal article about the camera and its designer, Emmanuel Goldberg.  I would be happy to provide you with a copy of this film history journal article.  I was able to download it with my university credentials.

[Dom Jaeger]

Fabulous little cameras, I started a thread about them many years ago now after discovering one where I worked. I documented pulling it apart but alas those photos are gone now. It has the most ingenious spring motor drive gear that increase the gear ratio as the spring winds down, in order to try and maintain speed.

Regarding the buttons and levers, it’s been a long time but I think I remember some.

1: I think this releases the lens 

5: I think this disengaged the spring in order to use the hand crank

7 and 12: These were a basic framing guide, the back one was a lever that lifted up with a centre notch to align with the front part, which was a wire frame that swivelled up

I forget the others, but I’m sure playing with one you could work them out.

[Doug Palmer]

Great little camera. I had one that gave nice steady images. However, I parted with it as the duration of spring motor on mine was only a few seconds. I did think of modifying somehow for electric motor, maybe should have kept it ?

[Doug Palmer]

7 hours ago, Doug Palmer said:

Great little camera. I had one that gave nice steady images. However, I parted with it as the duration of spring motor on mine was only a few seconds. I did think of modifying somehow for electric motor, maybe should have kept it ?

I'd be interested to know the proper duration of the spring motor in a well-serviced camera.  Also if anyone has succeeded in modifying one to 24 speed, perhaps with an electric motor in place of the chunky spring motor.  The Kinamo is so incredibly compact.

[Simon Wyss]

Have a look at the EAC-1, might become your darling.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/143462962195?hash=item21670f1413:g:wcMAAOSw629fwXuF&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA8EkW69usFqrK1UugyKqDrgUKolwLJ7bgUW1e1Q5Rpbuj9Ws0bqRgQvfWCWgUWpTDA2GkWe1Q0MA5l1m4Ed22aqy1fd9FF9kAyuuwWU6z0RJ13UxYEIMHyY2XEN%2FjR%2Fg%2Fe5k%2BndJoDW%2BO9LE29BDF30%2FwkzC54gt8EimZFqbKIptA6bIXFD%2BfW2MAMySqPFiJr%2FO%2BuZgJy3WucFOaq%2FelE6OV%2F8lGKvbBQCGYi9BDJWMHglhtNEwdLsGCvEgqbT%2FcO6WplXn16hWGr5GNq77nnsywchJ3oXQrxSciSshPle%2BoiLypYYmptl%2FrrubJKRQ4Cw%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR6TRrfmVYg

[Dom Jaeger]

On 6/12/2023 at 4:02 AM, Doug Palmer said:

I'd be interested to know the proper duration of the spring motor in a well-serviced camera.  Also if anyone has succeeded in modifying one to 24 speed, perhaps with an electric motor in place of the chunky spring motor.  The Kinamo is so incredibly compact.

This guy has modified Kinamos with modern motors:

https://www.instagram.com/kamera_doctor/?hl=en

[Doug Palmer]

Thanks Dom for this, he certainly seems a clever guy and it's encouraging that modern motors are possible on a nearly hundred year old camera !  Now I really do wish I'd kept mine. 

Fabrice, I hope you solved your issue with the unwelcome running of motor.  Maybe it's a problem with the release spring not activating properly.   And I'd be interested how many seconds you are able to get when fully wound. Re the loading, I recall it was fairly straightforward.  And hopefully the registration will be good as I found on my camera.

[David Garden]

I thought I might add a bit to the discussion.  I am in Los Angeles and just rented a hand crank only version of the Zeiss Kinamo 35mm camera from a person named Stu Dub off off of Share Grid.

https://www.sharegrid.com/losangeles/l/121452?type=rent

I will be using the camera to roll some 35mm film tomorrow with my Pasadena City College cinematography class.  I will let everyone know how it turns out and maybe try posting some of our footage up to this discussion.  I just did some testing and learned that the Kinamo cameras have a very small shutter angle, which seems to be about 10 degrees.  This may have been so that it would work for exterior lighting conditions without any filtration.  An exposure time per frame of 1/600 sec when filming at 16 frames per second is written on the inside door of this camera.  This speed corresponds to (2) crank revolutions of the handle per second.  Each "full rotation" of the hand crank exposes exactly eight frames of 35 mm film in the (4) perf format.

You can see both the small shutter angle and the pencil writing in the set of images up on my Google Drive.  The link is attached below.  Also, I am including a pdf link from a research article about the Kinamo camera that I found online.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Asgf45JouGOSMLzEvPS-bQOpselYbVXw?usp=sharing

https://escholarship.org/content/qt26j9w089/qt26j9w089_noSplash_c8f33211c48b1b7007a09ad70b218bf4.pdf?t=p4o0ql

[Frank Wylie]

8 frames per crank is the standard for most 35mm silent film cameras with very few exceptions. 

The 1/600th of a second shutter speed surprises me; it must be a modification of the shutter angle for modern film speeds, as I cannot imagine it being that from the factory.  The film speeds of the day would simply have not worked with such a short exposure time at 16fps.

Be sure to use a stout, sandbagged tripod (or hang a weight from the center column) or you'll get cranking "wobble". 

From the many films I have seen of silent film camera operators cranking, most tended to place their cranking forearm roughly parallel to the shaft of the crank and revolved their hand in a circular motion with a loose wrist, rather than using the overhand cranking motion of an organ grinder;  It's less tiring and easier to maintain a constant speed because you are only moving your hand, not your entire arm.

[Mark Dunn]

Isn't that going to make for some rather "strobey" rendering of movement? Compared with the usual 1/60-1/80 sec.

[Dom Jaeger]

That's not a normal Kinamo shutter, someone has fabricated that one with a very tiny angle. Not sure why, it will make filming in even slightly dim light very difficult (especially if you use the original f/3.5 Tessar), and create a very stuttery, staccato movement, as Mark said. The normal shutter was around 180 degrees from memory.

[Frank Wylie]

3 hours ago, Dom Jaeger said:

That's not a normal Kinamo shutter, someone has fabricated that one with a very tiny angle. Not sure why, it will make filming in even slightly dim light very difficult (especially if you use the original f/3.5 Tessar), and create a very stuttery, staccato movement, as Mark said. The normal shutter was around 180 degrees from memory.

Maybe someone was trying to make "authentic" silent films that flicker and strobe...

[David Garden]

Thanks for everyone's comments we filmed with the Kinamo today and exposed three rolls of 5219 - 500 T film and rated it at 32 ISO to compensate for the small 10 degree shutter angle.  The camera worked smoothly. My students had great fun hand cranking the camera.  The joy on their faces was amazing.

It was a bit of a job to wind down the Kodak film in a changing bag and onto the tiny Kinamo spindle. Each load is about 75 feet or about 45 seconds of run time at 24 fps.  We used a metronome app on a cell phone with 180 tones per minute.  This corresponds to three hand crank revolutions per second, which should result in about 24 fps.

Also, the Kinamo film magazine take up spool had a broken spring on the keeper and wasn't properly working so we used some tape as a work around.

[David Garden]

Here is a link to view the Kinamo hand crank 35mm footage which we filmed last week with my Pasadena City College cinematography class.  I photographed this video off the work print that we viewed at Fotokem this morning with a Canon C100 Digital camera - poor man's telecine...

 

https://vimeo.com/852469007

 

 

[Doug Palmer]

Registration looks good ?