Bolex EL Reverse filming?

[Floris Vanhoof]

The Bolex EL manual says the R knob is for reverse motion at 18fps - not for filming, only for rewinding.

So is it completely impossible to film in reverse?

I'm also curious which mechanism in the camera prevents filming while rewinding.

And should one close the viewfinder and lens while doing reverse motion the film?

Edited March 17, 2021 by Floris Vanhoof

[Frank Wylie]

The manual lists "unlimited reverse running" under Technical Specifications, but then does mention it is only for rewinding.

Depending on what your end product is, there is an old trick where you can film the scene with the camera upside-down and flip the film base to emulsion, plus heads to tails, and get the same effect, with the caveat that you will be opposite wind in regards to all other film shot in a normal manner.

If you are printing from the camera original, you'll have degraded definition. If you are scanning for electronic post, you can avoid the hit and simply flip the image in post and reverse the action.

 

 

 

Edited March 17, 2021 by Frank Wylie
clarification

[Floris Vanhoof]

good tip, hadn't thought of this

 I'm printing, but I might try this later on anyway just to see how it looks.

[Dom Jaeger]

6 hours ago, Floris Vanhoof said:

The Bolex EL manual says the R knob is for reverse motion at 18fps - not for filming, only for rewinding.

So is it completely impossible to film in reverse?

I'm also curious which mechanism in the camera prevents filming while rewinding.

And should one close the viewfinder and lens while doing reverse motion the film?

The problem is that the shutter timing is synched to the forward claw. The reverse claw is on the same pivot, but facing the other way, so it is 180 degrees out of phase. In other words, when the reverse claw is moving the film, the shutter is open. So you would just get smeared images.

It’s possible to reset the shutter timing so that the reverse claw would be synched to the shutter, but I don’t know how stable the footage might be - the reverse claw is a much simpler shape. And of course now forward running is impossible. 

You should always cap the lens and viewfinder when running in reverse, yes.

[Dom Jaeger]

5 hours ago, Frank Wylie said:

Depending on what your end product is, there is an old trick where you can film the scene with the camera upside-down and flip the film base to emulsion, plus heads to tails, and get the same effect, with the caveat that you will be opposite wind in regards to all other film shot in a normal manner.

If you are printing from the camera original, you'll have degraded definition. If you are scanning for electronic post, you can avoid the hit and simply flip the image in post and reverse the action.

If you flip colour film base to emulsion, won’t you get the redscale effect? I guess this is a B&W film trick only? Or you could use double perf film, where you don’t need to flip base to emulsion, just head to tail.

[Floris Vanhoof]

thanks!

that also explains a shot of smeared images on my last roll.

 

[Frank Wylie]

25 minutes ago, Dom Jaeger said:

If you flip colour film base to emulsion, won’t you get the redscale effect? I guess this is a B&W film trick only? Or you could use double perf film, where you don’t need to flip base to emulsion, just head to tail.

True. 

I totally spaced that because the trick was taught to me last Century when we were only shooting B&W or VNF in Film School.  No one could afford color negative!

Hmmm.  Guess it's only valid in color if you are going to scan it and flip/reverse it in post.

isn't DP 16mm only special order now?

Edited March 17, 2021 by Frank Wylie

[Duncan Brown]

Risking showing my ignorance, but wouldn't color negative camera film not work at all?  RemJet and all...

 

Duncan

[Frank Wylie]

I was saying to reverse and invert the film AFTER processing...