Rigging an Arriflex SR3 Motor to an Arriflex 16M Camera.

[Owen A. Davies]

I have an Arriflex 16M which has whatever standard four pin motor that camera usually comes with currently attached to it. I MAY be able to purchase an Arriflex SR3 motor off of a friend of mine in great condition for cheap. I believe the SR3's motor is five pin, though I'm not positive. Would it be feasible to have my 16M serviced to work with/have this motor attached to it for sync speed? I know the camera itself would still make tons of noise, but I'm planning to do a kind of "Spaghetti Western" ADR of the dialogue regardless. Let me know your thoughts as well as who could possibly do such as conversion if possible.Thank you.

[Aapo Lettinen]

does the 16m use the same style of motors than arri s/sb, looks like it from the images?

It might be possible if you can get all the other electronics too from the sr3 but it may be very difficult to do and if the cameras have different gear ratios between the motor and the movement if may not work at all. 

I would rather get a dedicated motor made for the Arri M like adapting the original motor to crystal sync. You can ask az spectrum about that

[Aapo Lettinen]

to be clearer: the motor itself does not contain crystal sync electronics.  The motor contains the electric motor itself and a encoder (a "speed sensor") used by the crystal sync electronics to know the speed the motor is really running so that the motor power can be adjusted to maintain stable speed.

In  SR cameras the crystal sync electronics are built into the base of the camera so you would need both the motor AND the base to run the motor in crystal sync. But if the mechanical gear ratio between the motor and the film movement is different in SR than it is in M model then the camera movement in the M model would never run at the same fps than the SR would at the same motor setting so you may not get ANY usable crystal fps out of the motor in the end if the gear ratio is different than in the original camera the motor is taken from