Changing the shutter angle on an Eclair NPR

[Duncan Brown]

In my research on the NPR I see a lot of people asking how to change the shutter angle, and I've read the description in the manual myself, and the one crappy picture they have there and it was still not straightforward to figure out.  So I thought I would go through it step by step with good pictures, so anyone can do it!

First step is to unlock the turret, pull it out, spin it 90 degrees (between mount positions) then push it back in a bit - it will stay in that position while you do the rest of this.

 

[Duncan Brown]

Next you need to spin the mirror into the right position.  To do this, move the lever on the side of the camera from its normal "run" position to the "reflex" position.  This enables the inching knob above it.  It's supposed to stay in the reflex position by itself, but mine tends to pop back pretty easily so you might need to hold it there while you inch the mirror around.

 

[Duncan Brown]

Note the directional arrow next to the inching knob - that's the direction to spin it.  Move the mirror around until the leading edge comes into the lens mount opening about halfway.  The exact position is not critical, you just need to be able to see that edge of the mirror.  If your shutter is set to 180 degrees, this is how it will look when you do that.  (If it's already set to something else, it will look like the later pictures.)

 

[Duncan Brown]

Now we're going to use this mystery knob on the side of the camera.

 

[Duncan Brown]

But first you have to go back to that lever on the other side and put it into "shutter adjust" position.  It is spring loaded, so you definitely need to hold it against the stop screw while you do your adjustments.

 

[Duncan Brown]

So holding the lever with one hand, use the other hand to PUSH IN on that mystery knob, while spinning it clockwise.  This will decrease the shutter angle, by sliding another piece over behind the mirror to fill more of the opening between edges of the mirror.  If it was previously at 180 degrees, once you do that you should start to see it appear, like this.

 

[Duncan Brown]

It's a pretty crude mechanism, but it has "clicks" every 5 degrees and markings every 10 degrees so with a little fiddling you can get it to where you want it to be.  Pushing in that knob and turning it counter-clockwise will increase the shutter angle again, though it seems to click every 10 degrees in that direction (goes to each of the marked lines) I guess to return it to 180 faster if that's what you're doing.  Here it is in the middle of adjusting, and if your shutter was already adjusted off of the 180 degree default, it will have looked something like this when you first inched the mirror.

 

[Duncan Brown]

It goes all the way down to 5 degrees (er, a little past it if you go wild!) but you probably won't use it there unless you have an insane amount of light or some really fast film or both ? 

 

[Duncan Brown]

There, hope that helps someone someday when they google search "how do I change the shutter angle on my Eclair NPR"  !

Duncan

[David Mullen ASC]

I remember doing that in film school at CalArts (they had NPRs and ARRI-S cameras) so thanks for the refresher course!