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Logmar Rockhopper S16


Allyn Iwatsuru

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Its interesting, but if it's in the price and feature range of the other cameras, I think people will still buy the older commercial cameras. If they make this commercially viable, I'll gladly eat my words, but I don't see that happening as neither the S8mm cameras and Magellan cameras are really commercially viable. They make really cool products, super interesting designs. 

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This is great. I was thinking just the other day that they should sooner rather than later bring out a S16 camera. They've also posted footage shot on the 65mm Magellan camera. It looks scrumptious. Very sharp and very obviously shot on film.

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From the Logmar owner's statement:

the “Rockhopper S16” being a professional Super 16mm camera and “Gentoo S8” a Super 8mm camera aimed towards “prosumers” such as wedding- and music-photographers and rental houses etc.

These two new platforms are still in the design phase pending pre-sales before they will be committed to manufacturing.

It says to contact them for more info but I could not find an email address.

Edited by Uli Meyer
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I have said this in a Facebook group. This new camera sounds very exciting and I really want to see it, but at the same time I think it will be very expensive, and as such won’t be used by film teaching institutions who are extremely important as they teach tomorrows filmmakers, but on the bright side this might bring down prices of existing S16 cameras like the Arri 416 as most institutions work with older more affordable and durable equipment.

I hope this camera appeals to professionals in film and broadcasting, but this is a big ask as many of them will want something better than the Arri 416. Looking at the website I don’t think this camera will appeal to younger filmmakers, students, colleges and universities, many of who are used to smaller and cheaper digital gear, but I hope I'm wrong.

I know from my own experience of teaching; youngsters want a smaller camera, something that’s easier to use and ideally want to use smaller and cheaper lenses. I think here a simpler version of the ACL will be popular, a camera that is small and can accept different sized magazines and that can take c mount or Micro 4/3 lenses

Pav

Edited by Pavan Deep
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6 minutes ago, Uli Meyer said:

Pav, the 416 is a pretty amazing camera for any professional ?

I know,  it's pretty  unbeatable, it's the best out there, and is the most sought after Super 16 camera, whenever 16mm is used for a film or television series they tend to be shot on the 416.

Pav

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9 minutes ago, Uli Meyer said:

Got a reply from Tommy and they expect the price for the Super 16 to be at around 25000 Euro and the Super 8 at around 4500 Euro. Those are attractive prices for professional users.

How did they come to that price? I will wager that in reality it will probably be double or more that amount if it ever reaches the production stage. 

Never a good idea to announce a price before you have all your ducks lined up and ready to go.

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11 minutes ago, Chris Worner said:

How did they come to that price? I will wager that in reality it will probably be double or more that amount if it ever reaches the production stage. 

Never a good idea to announce a price before you have all your ducks lined up and ready to go.

Maybe they are much further down the line than you are assuming? Or do you have information to the contrary?

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At least the super-8 price was mentioned on Facebook by them and that they couldn't get it lower than that.

If I recall correctly, they also described having left out text-on-video overlay electronics just to take out thousand Euros from the price. Also the decision to go for an oscillating mirror was told to be economical, as according to them the process for producing rotating mirror shutters is both expensive and very toxic.

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25k euros for a new S16mm camera isn't bad, if it's built like a professional camera, with power ports, reliability and trained service professionals. Clearly it's a tough sell for consumers and rental houses, generally only want what rents, which would be 416's of course. 

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That pricing seems reasonable, especially given the jump in s16 gear prices lately (I've seen some basic SR3 kits pushing past $25k USD asking price). Eventually the arri and aaton parts supply will run dry, which will not be a fun day. Maybe if they can make enough of these this will be the answer.

That or we fund a very oversized bake sale to convince arri and/or aaton to produce more spare parts lol

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9 hours ago, Robin Phillips said:

That pricing seems reasonable, especially given the jump in s16 gear prices lately (I've seen some basic SR3 kits pushing past $25k USD asking price). Eventually the arri and aaton parts supply will run dry, which will not be a fun day. Maybe if they can make enough of these this will be the answer.

 

There are really only two types of people who shoot on film; 

The enthusiast and the pro. 

1) The enthusiast has a Bolex, K3, ACL, NPR, maybe an SR or LTR. They aren't spending $25k on a new camera, ever. Many are lucky to afford a Bolex or K3. 

2) The pro needs pro equipment. The cost of a 416 is nothing to have a camera they can reliably trust and own/operate. They also RENT quite a bit and rental houses will not have some foreign camera. Remember, the Aaton cameras were never very successful in the states, not because they aren't good cameras, but because they simply aren't as robust as the Arri's and camera assistants weren't as trained on them. The 416 for instance is a very easy camera for an assistant to use, all the modern accessories just plugin with out adaptors. Sure you can get adaptors for Aaton's to do the same thing, but the camera is still not the same.  

So where the asking price may seem acceptable, it's not an "adoptable" price. 

Arri has lots of 416 and SR3 parts, decades worth. Rumor mill is that Aaton does as well, but it's just hard to get them currently due to staffing issues. 

Logmar's biggest sale was roughly 50 s8 cameras of their first generation. So you're telling me, if Logmar sells lets say 200 of these 16mm cameras, there will be more parts available then Arri SR3 or Aaton XTR where they were 1000s of cameras made? Come on man. There are PLENTY of parts for Arri and Aaton 16mm cameras and there are already two guys working on new boards. This is a very tight community and a good portion of the SR3 and XTR cameras are in the hands of private individuals, not rental houses. The private owners are putting a lot of money into updating these cameras. It's insane to see how many new and cool accessories are coming out in 2022! Meanwhile logmar has yet to make a professional camera. They have a long way to go. Nothing against what they're doing, I commend them for trying, but in this market, trying isn't enough. They need to make a 416 copy, not a radically new design that literally shares nothing in common (outside of negative width) to the entire modern spinning mirror reflex market. I'm sorry, but there is NO magic, oscillating mirrors are NOT reliable enough for professional production. They're hedging a bet that enough consumers will want NEW 16mm cameras and I'm sorry, but I've done my research, the answer is emphatically no. Go ask around, find someone willing to pony up $25k on an unproven camera. Tire kickers don't count. Find someone who literally is willing to wire you the money, product unseen. A few people on this very group, some very good engineers, have tried to re-launch classic very well designed cameras and failed. The money simply doesn't exist. It's all talk, hype, tire kickers, but when it's time to pay the bills, most people simply won't do it. 

 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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"Arri has lots of 416 and SR3 parts, decades worth. Rumor mill is that Aaton does as well..."

There for sure is a shortage of hard fronts, mirrors, prisms, motors, relay lenses, elbows for the Aatons and SRs already now. From what I read, only a few hundred 416s have been manufactured, so I doubt they have decades worth of spare parts for that camera too.

But I might be wrong.

 

Edited by David Sekanina
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Those Eclair ACLs were produced in the thousands. Where are the spare parts now? I can tell you, even the people who have bought the last inventories say that there is a mixed set of spares available: lots of parts that almost never break but perhaps none of those that would be most useful. I know that you are probably going to say that this is an issue with an "enthusiast" camera like ACL, but pretty much the reverse is true - these cameras were workhorses of the industry, they were in heavy use and thus also needed more service and repair. Service departments in TV-stations owned spares and also put them into use.

Arriflex and Aaton are similar in this sense, except perhaps a smaller number of the late models exist, since they weren't used for day to day news gathering and were expensive beasts. It's therefore actually less likely that a big stash of spares exists. I'm not convinced that the companies, even if not gone and forgotten like Eclair, ever assumed that their late model cameras would be used for several decades. With the advent of digital, I think the assumption of many was that soon everyone would move to digital counterparts. Why make big amounts of expensive parts nobody was ever going to buy?

Surprise! Here we are now.

But hey, Bolex seem to have spares. Then again, those cameras actually were for the consumers and produced in entirely different numbers...

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7 hours ago, David Sekanina said:

There for sure is a shortage of hard fronts, mirrors, prisms, motors, relay lenses, elbows for the Aatons and SRs already now. From what I read, only a few hundred 416s have been manufactured, so I doubt they have decades worth of spare parts for that camera too.

 

I mean, how many of those parts do they sell? I'm more worried about wear items than those parts. The motors and electronics are re-buildable on the SR3 and XTR's at least. The prism coating issues don't seem to be as big of a problem on that camera either. I was talking with Andree, who does most of the Arri and Aaton service in the US and he hasn't replaced a mirror in a film camera in a long time, many years. I for sure haven't seen a damaged mirror in a good camera in a long time. We get damaged parts cameras every once in a while and sure, they have broken mirrors. 

Another thing to think about is cost. Many people who do have damaged cameras, may have bough in when cameras were cheap. They may not be able to afford to replace the mirror if it breaks, so the camera may get parted out. We've seen that happen quite a few times. I just hodgepodged two LTR's together to make one, both of different generations as well. It was a nightmare hack job, but it works great, you'd never know honestly. That sadly is the future for these cameras, there will be less of them out there eventually, but at the same time, film costs are going to continue going up. So there will be a time in the near future, where the high cost of film mixed with a camera failure, equates to another camera on the market for sale. Eventually people just won't bite on an SR1 or SR2, an old LTR and such, they'll just wait for an SR3 or XTR to show up. The 416's will live with people who rent them and/or use them for high-end work. There only needs to be 50 of them world wide, in the right hands, to make an impact. Keeping those 50 cameras running maybe a challenge if people mistreat them, but if they're treated well, I can foresee them lasting a few more decades no problem at all. Some cameras like the SR1 and 2, have motor issues that can't be solved without replacing the motor (which is tricky due to it having a specially cut shaft and no more parts at Arri)  that camera is still widely popular tho. When a bad motor comes in, we just order the generic version of the motor and thread/cut the shaft to match the OE motor. So options exist, no camera is being turned away because the manufacturer doesn't have parts. 

I agree with you, parts will be the biggest problem. I'm more concerned with electronics then mechanical aspects, due to the cost associated (labor) with fixing them. The mechanical side is straight forward, but the electrics can be tricky to say the least. 

A new camera however, may not fix those issues. This is why re-making an older camera, would be the wisest idea. Because then you flood the market with new parts which work with the older camera. Aaton and Arri probably wouldn't care either. 

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