Eclair Flea Market

[James Jeffrey Cotter]

On 7/27/2023 at 7:27 AM, Frank Wylie said:

Not to be morbid, but the generation that bought and used this stuff new is getting-on in years...

And you are getting younger? I am like a fine wine, only getting better, but I don’t need my old empty bottle’s anymore! Hahahaha. Actually you nailed the reason I am getting ready to sell off everything I have, it may take a year but I will do it. 

[Duncan Brown]

On 9/16/2023 at 8:31 AM, James Jeffrey Cotter said:

And you are getting younger? I am like a fine wine, only getting better, but I don’t need my old empty bottle’s anymore! Hahahaha. Actually you nailed the reason I am getting ready to sell off everything I have, it may take a year but I will do it. 

Give us here first shot at it ?

Duncan

[Duncan Brown]

Another fairly complete nice-looking, heavily accessorized S16-converted ACL setup, this one located in Poland.  $7500 or Make Offer.  Way too many important details for me to list here, go check out the auction while the link is still good.  (Sorry, people reading this thread years down the road!)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/285508791395

Duncan

[Gregg MacPherson]

4 hours ago, Duncan Brown said:

Another fairly complete nice-looking, heavily accessorized S16-converted ACL setup, this one located in Poland.  $7500 or Make Offer....

Hey,

I had a look. He's a good salesman, and has done some interesting mods and accessorising, the video tap result looks really good. But there are some defects, downsides and serious unknowns. Not being morbid, but...(maybe I am)

- When was the camera last serviced? What would the techs notes on it's condition and mileage look like?
- The GG markings are almost unusable. it needs cleaning up and re marking, even if just with pencil etc.
- Why is it flickering?
- The gate looks quite scratched, maybe it's done a lot of work. High mileage without regular service, if that's what's happened, is bad.
- The VF is my least favourite type. It's quite low for shoulder mounting. I don't mind the early swiveling, non orientable Ang or tube periscope VFs, but I'm not fond of this low Kinoptik one.
- The lack of good mount adapters devalues the kit. PL/C is not a good permanent solution.
- The mag set is not great, and the description of the relative friction concerns me. Maybe film was not loaded. My comparison between Eng and French 400' mags current draw, the freshly serviced Eng one was 30% less A.
- The rod base places the LWS rods very low. Maybe one can adapt some MB to that, and his FF servo gear reaches ok, but I don't know if a Chrosziel or Arri FF swing arm will reach at a usable angle from there.

Gregg.

 

[Duncan Brown]

Oh, it goes without saying on any of these listings I link to - Caveat Emptor.  I like how he says the conversion "might have been done by Les Bosher" - yeah, because he's well known for modifying the ground glass markings badly, with a pencil?  And with his dumb c-pl adapter in the way we can't even see if the lens mount has been shifted (I'm guessing not.)

It looks like a 1.5 body to me, but isn't that an ACL 1 viewfinder?

Duncan

[Duncan Brown]

OK, for a less sketchy deal, how about this "Eclair direct descendant" camera package?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325841548465

Aaton LTR54 Super 16, highly accessorized, only $9995 in Los Angeles

Duncan

[Steven Jackson]

1 minute ago, Duncan Brown said:

OK, for a less sketchy deal, how about this "Eclair direct descendant" camera package?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325841548465

Aaton LTR54 Super 16, highly accessorized, only $9995 in Los Angeles

Duncan

all of it seems hugely overpriced to me.  If you ever thought an ACL was difficult to fix, wait till the electronics crap out on an Aaton.

[Duncan Brown]

2 minutes ago, steven jackson said:

all of it seems hugely overpriced to me.  If you ever thought an ACL was difficult to fix, wait till the electronics crap out on an Aaton.

Well sure, if I were in the market for that camera at that price I would have hit Buy It Now instead of posting it here ?   But there are forever people asking for Super 16 Eclairs, so I post them here when I run across them.

Duncan

[Steven Jackson]

Just now, Duncan Brown said:

Well sure, if I were in the market for that camera at that price I would have hit Buy It Now instead of posting it here ?   But there are forever people asking for Super 16 Eclairs, so I post them here when I run across them.

Duncan

Wasn't address you directly, only giving my two cents on the values and viability of these cameras.

 

[Gregg MacPherson]

8 hours ago, Duncan Brown said:

OK, for a less sketchy deal, how about this "Eclair direct descendant" camera package?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325841548465

Aaton LTR54 Super 16, highly accessorized, only $9995 in Los Angeles

Duncan

That one seems, in a relative sense, like quite a good deal to me. It's been out of circulation for 10 years and was owned, used by someone competent who will have kept it serviced. It doesn't have PL mount or 75fps but otherwise it's a good kit list. If you could buy direct from him without eBay success fees and Paypal fees it would be about USD8K.

It's being offered at about half the value that XTRs are selling at. 

But taking Steven's point, maybe cameras are overvalued. If we consider the liabilities with the shrinking resource of skilled techs and parts, maybe caution is due. But we can't be too influenced by the historic low point in prices from a few years ago (the Happy Times).

One thing worth considering...the value of a camera varies with particular buyers, how well their knowledge and location solves the  proximity or access to servicing and parts.

It's a worthy topic, but if we get serious we may need another thread. 
 

[Duncan Brown]

Well you know me - I assume no access to competent service or parts, and pay bottom-feeder prices accordingly when able.  It's weird how all the French cameras have become more quickly orphaned, despite being some top of the line stuff back when they were widely supported.  (Don't even get me started on my experiences with Pathe and Beaulieu gear...)

Duncan

[Steven Jackson]

I'm going to sell a super16 ACL body that according to Paul at Visual Products, was modified by him, but for some reason was never fully finished...meaning that it does not have a VP ground glass, but a standard ground glass.  It's just the body, no motor or viewfinder, so would suit someone that already has an ACL and wants to swap over a few parts to have a super16 camera.  I've shot film with this camera on numerous occasions and the results are good but under certain situations, mostly backlit sunlight, I get flicker, which was easily dealt with in DaVinci.  I won't be asking a fortune for it.

Edited October 10, 2023 by steven jackson
mistake

[Aapo Lettinen]

1 hour ago, steven jackson said:

I've shot film with this camera on numerous occasions and the results are good but under certain situations, mostly backlit sunlight, I get flicker, which was easily dealt with in DaVinci.  I won't be asking a fortune for it.

I had a discuss with Heikki about this weird flickering of ACLs under certain backlit conditions and I guessed it would be caused the slightly asymmetric movement of the mirror which causes every other frame to receive just couple of % more exposure than the other. Heikki sent me some test footage and I confirmed that it is indeed exactly every other frame being slightly different exposure than the other so it has to be caused by the slightly asymmetric movement of the mirror. I don't know if it can be corrected by timing the mirror differently but all cameras don't seem to do it so I guess it can

[Heikki Repo]

33 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

I had a discuss with Heikki about this weird flickering of ACLs under certain backlit conditions and I guessed it would be caused the slightly asymmetric movement of the mirror which causes every other frame to receive just couple of % more exposure than the other. Heikki sent me some test footage and I confirmed that it is indeed exactly every other frame being slightly different exposure than the other so it has to be caused by the slightly asymmetric movement of the mirror. I don't know if it can be corrected by timing the mirror differently but all cameras don't seem to do it so I guess it can

The backlit sunlight flicker is a different issue compared to the one we discussed Aapo - it's a feature present on all ACLs due to the way the mirror works in this camera. It's not a bug.

 

The flicker that's present in the footage I sent to Aapo on the other hand is present on every other frame regardless of the lighting situation. That one is due to very slight higher friction in the movement and has been generally noted by Visual Products to be the difficult to solve cause of flicker in some ACLs. In order to solve that one one has to be able to make the movement smooth without any bumps in friction.

[Steven Jackson]

54 minutes ago, Heikki Repo said:

The backlit sunlight flicker is a different issue compared to the one we discussed Aapo - it's a feature present on all ACLs due to the way the mirror works in this camera. It's not a bug.

 

The flicker that's present in the footage I sent to Aapo on the other hand is present on every other frame regardless of the lighting situation. That one is due to very slight higher friction in the movement and has been generally noted by Visual Products to be the difficult to solve cause of flicker in some ACLs. In order to solve that one one has to be able to make the movement smooth without any bumps in friction.

Paul Scaglione from Visual Products did tell me this too.  Is this flickering from your newly converted ACL from Les??

Edited October 10, 2023 by steven jackson

[Duncan Brown]

4 hours ago, steven jackson said:

I'm going to sell a super16 ACL body that according to Paul at Visual Products, was modified by him, but for some reason was never fully finished...meaning that it does not have a VP ground glass, but a standard ground glass. 

Easily fixed with a pencil, I hear! ? 

Duncan

[Duncan Brown]

Wasn't there a whole other cause of flicker that had to do with light sneaking in around the recentered lens mount on a S16 converted camera?  I'm sure I read that somewhere around here.    But it sounds like you are talking about potential flicker on even a stock ACL.

Duncan

[Steven Jackson]

2 minutes ago, Duncan Brown said:

Easily fixed with a pencil, I hear! ? 

Duncan

as only the right side of the view finder field changes, never found much need to mark it off and nothing I ever shot had to be that precise in the framing.  worked great for me but surely not for everyone.

[Duncan Brown]

Completely off topic for the flea market thread,  but anyone know how hard it is to extract the ground glass from an ACL?  The NPR has a little filter slot right below the ground glass that you could always slide something with markings into, in a pinch.

Duncan

[Heikki Repo]

20 minutes ago, Duncan Brown said:

Wasn't there a whole other cause of flicker that had to do with light sneaking in around the recentered lens mount on a S16 converted camera? 

That issue was on my first S16 modified ACL. Easy to find when you know what to look for. 

[Heikki Repo]

2 hours ago, steven jackson said:

Is this flickering from your newly converted ACL from Les??

No, this is on one of the ACLs I have serviced. Still haven't had time to finish tests on the newly converted one...

[Gregg MacPherson]

Often, interesting topics are informally started within other topics, and this way are more easily lost downstream, hard to find later. I'm going to start a new topic on ACL flicker and transfer the content above to there. Anyone can do this (hint).

Gregg.

[Gregg MacPherson]

Rescuing this from eventual oblivion on the marketplace forum...

 

[Duncan Brown]

Oof, that's a bummer about the prism.  I've seen something somewhere that makes it look not-awful to pop the prism out of an NPR.  How is it on the ACL?  (I mean, ignoring the fact that there are likely no replacement prisms to be had...)

Duncan

 

[David Sekanina]

I read that Simon (Filmtechniker) in Switzerland has separated doublets, cleaned them and rejoined them. I guess he could save the prism.