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Logmar.dk is now accepting preorders for their new precision Super 8 camera called Gentoo GS8


Nicholas Kovats

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I have used both; the EMP and the a-cam, both very good but have their little quirks, neither has a reflex viewfinder. The a-cam does produce steadier Super 16 images though, but it's a real hassle to load, a great looking camera but quite impractical.

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29 minutes ago, David Sekanina said:

Yes !!! The EMP: your post had apparently not all downloaded when I replied. I read the linked ad and the camera was much more advanced than I had remembered (what, 20 plus years later).

Thanks so much for saving me the time and trouble. 

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Yes I have on the a-cam, but the viewfinder is not the issue, I'm pretty okay without a reflex, but it's the complicated loading path in such a small space that's a pain, you manually have to thread the film through the sprockets and gate and then  carefully pass it across to the take up which is on the other side pushing the film under a set of rollers, the take up side has its own door,  loading film takes too much time and you waste a lot of film. Personally I just think loading 100ft should be easier. http://www.analoguefilmacademy.co.uk/acam.htm

Pav

Edited by Pavan Deep
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1 hour ago, Pavan Deep said:

Yes I have on the a-cam, but the viewfinder is not the issue,

How do you change focal lengths without a reflex viewfinder? Does the range finder have a zoom function? 

1 hour ago, Pavan Deep said:

...it's the complicated loading path in such a small space that's a pain, you manually have to thread the film through the sprockets and gate and then  carefully pass it across to the take up which is on the other side pushing the film under a set of rollers, the take up side has its own door,  loading film takes too much time and you waste a lot of film. Personally I just think loading 100ft should be easier. 

Interesting. I've only seen the cover off, never loaded one. 

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13 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Bro, (they) make cameras for fun on the side. Bravo for dedication, but there is no profit. They're doing it because they enjoy engineering things. 

I said "profitably enough." Of course they have passion.

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37 minutes ago, Jon O'Brien said:

I said "profitably enough."

But if they were profitable, wouldn’t they have a few finished prototypes? They appear to be in this industry for fun as a side gig, nothing wrong with that, but the seriousness just isn’t there. You need to work full time at it, surround yourself with it and then have the proper tools/staffing to be successful. 

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You are quibbling and making assumptions. It's none of your business. You only need to offer support for someone making new film cameras. It's really simple.

Edited by Jon O'Brien
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15 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Bro, Tommy and co make cameras for fun on the side. Bravo for dedication, but there is no profit. They're doing it because they enjoy engineering things. 

Why don't you stop assuming what other people do and think. Tommy and co can speak for themselves, without you getting up on your soapbox to educate us all about why they do what they do. 

 

6 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I have personally cleared the air with Lasse on information that was given to me improperly. We have discussed a few ideas on what needs to be done and he's already playing with some of those ideas, which is great.

 

6 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I want to make them a successful company...

Someone has to stand up and direct, not just sit on the sidelines and say "wow that's cool" every time someone releases something that WILL NOT SELL. I hope in the coming months, we'll see the direction shift a bit and by end of year, a prototype that falls in line with what needs to be done. 

We need a product to believe in and Tommy is finally understanding this. 

Holy cow, do you have any idea how insufferably arrogant you sound? Like you're some kind of expert on camera design and marketing and everything to do with film, and if only you'd been advised things would be perfect. And yet the number of times I've had to correct the misinformation you confidently spout on this site is exhausting, and that's just the small area of my expertise.  I wish you would stop pretending to know everything about every subject,  but I realized long ago that won't happen, so all we can do is call you out on your bullshit and hope that young people coming here for accurate information don't get hoodwinked by your pretentions. 

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Whatever 16mm camera Logmar come up with, I do hope it will be small and compact, like a super-8 camera.  And quiet too. However, I do realise these attributes don't happen easily together on a 16mm camera.  You have to transport far more film at greater speed.  If they succeeded though,  I think the market could be large.   I mean not just for true professionals.   Lots of people want to use film, they really do.  But the cost of S8 film now puts them off.  A roll of film I would guess is much cheaper to produce than film in a cartridge.  (eg   Regular-8 film is so much cheaper than S8,  though not available as far as I know in colour.)

Edited by Doug Palmer
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52 minutes ago, Doug Palmer said:

Whatever 16mm camera Logmar come up with, I do hope it will be small and compact, like a super-8 camera.  And quiet too. However, I do realise these attributes don't happen easily together on a 16mm camera.  You have to transport far more film at greater speed.  If they succeeded though,  I think the market could be large.   I mean not just for true professionals.   Lots of people want to use film, they really do.  But the cost of S8 film now puts them off.  A roll of film I would guess is much cheaper to produce than film in a cartridge.  (eg   Regular-8 film is so much cheaper than S8,  though not available as far as I know in colour.)

I think that if there is lots of budget restrictions like the amateurs and enthusiasts always have, either one needs to shoot with a cheap camera OR the film material needs to be cheap.   The current situation where both the film is relatively expensive and the camera prices have gone way up does not promote more film use in the lowest budget range and people see they won't have other choice than go to digital.

I have personally solved this by shooting with relatively affordable cameras and shooting mostly self developed b/w film for tests so that the expensive colour negative can be saved for actual shooting instead of "wasting" it for camera tests.

By my opinion, the only way to reasonably drive the camera price down is to compromise the size of the camera and the sound levels of it. One does not get everything they want at the same time and compromises must be made somewhere, so the only way to save on the camera price is to compromise and the easiest way to do that is to use standard of the shelf motors (making the camera larger) and compromise on sound levels so that the camera is cheaper but a little noisier (so that standard movements and soundproofing can be used and there is lots of more possibilities to arrange the mechanics design of it).

The proposed new cameras are always either too expensive, too noisy or too bulky. Modern electronics allow great speed options, crystal sync on all speeds and even film counters and wireless remote control if needed. But people always come up with the arguments like "it MUST be just like an Arriflex 416 but 30 times cheaper and can be ordered as a one-off mod if needed so that no need to wait for financing a batch of 200 to be made, I need the camera right now" which is absolutely not possible.

If one compromises on price one has to compromise somewhere on the design and I think people just may not be realistic in what they ask for. For example it is possible to make a pretty good frankencamera hybrid for maybe 3k or 4k which is S16 and great crystal sync options and reflex finder etc. using mostly existing mechanical parts and making new electronics and chassis but it would be a little bulky and a tad noisy and it is not pin registered. Trying to sell a camera design like this would probably not be possible because it is not a person's "dream camera" because, well, it is compromised in size and noise levels.

Dream camera cannot have any compromises at all which makes designing an affordable one an impossible task.    Sorry but that is the way it is ?  I think people really would need to decide whether they want to chase for the end of the rainbow the rest of their life to try to find their impossible "practically free dream camera" or if they want to compromise on the design to actually get a camera to shoot projects with it and be happy with the camera even if it has some compromises in the design to make it available in the first place. To me it looks like that for most people it is not the most important thing to actually shoot with the camera but they may rather "collect cameras" and are interested in the technology of the cameras instead of telling stories with them. That is perfectly fine but I think a mockup would work perfectly well for this type of customers instead of selling them a real working camera because, well, it will probably never be used for any actual shooting anyway...

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You have fresh colour films in Double-Eight, Ektachrome 100 D, Vision3 negatives, and print stock. Dennis Toeppen, Daniel Wittner, FPP and others are active there. Alfred Kahl in Germany has offered 2 x 8 mm colour stocks, remnants of which are still for sale.

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34 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

Sorry but that is the way it is ?  I think people really would need to decide whether they want to chase for the end of the rainbow the rest of their life to try to find their impossible "practically free dream camera"

Aapo, who said that. Who is chasing the perfect free camera? Really don’t know how you came to that conclusion. Someone here mentioned a modern equivalent to the Arriflex 16 S but nobody has been discussing an affordable 416. 
One is a one man portable camera the other a camera that needs a crew to operate. I think there is a market for the former. 

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8 minutes ago, Uli Meyer said:

Aapo, who said that. Who is chasing the perfect free camera? Really don’t know how you came to that conclusion. Someone here mentioned a modern equivalent to the Arriflex 16 S but nobody has been discussing an affordable 416. 
One is a one man portable camera the other a camera that needs a crew to operate. I think there is a market for the former. 

I have come to this conclusion after reading dozens of different threads here for the last 12 years or so. People tend to shoot down any camera proposition which is not practically free and technically perfect so it is safe to say that that is what people actually want

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42 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

. People tend to shoot down any camera proposition which is not practically free and technically perfect so it is safe to say that that is what people actually want

I’ve not been on here as long as you but have never come across this. 

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5 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

but nobody has been discussing an affordable 416

Too be fair, I did just a few pages back haha. But I was more so asking if it was possible to make a 416-esque camera for the current market price of an SR3, so I don't know if you would consider that affordable. 

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3 minutes ago, Raymond Zrike said:

Too be fair, I did just a few pages back haha. But I was more so asking if it was possible to make a 416-esque camera for the current market price of an SR3, so I don't know if you would consider that affordable. 

There’s an SR3 on eBay currently for $31k. I wouldn’t call that affordable but still, I stand corrected ?

Btw. when I sold my SR3 for £4K in 2017 and bought a 416 for £9k, a camera tech shook his head and asked me why I would do such a thing since there isn’t that much of a difference between them. 


 

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I engineer lightweight 5-axis machined parts all day, not only for my camera projects, but also for our legged inspection robots at the start-up I work for. I know pretty well how much a 5-axis machined part costs, depending on its geometry, material, the tolerances required, and the price curve for 1,5,10, 50 and 100 parts.

There is no way to make a clone of an XTR Prod or 416 (body alone) under 55-75K (manufacturing cost) today, given a batch size of 50 cameras. The viewfinder alone will set you back 12-20K in manufacturing cost

5a.JPG.e8b2fd670814d5de9bdc691283447ebd.JPG

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20 minutes ago, David Sekanina said:

There is no way to make a clone of an XTR Prod or 416 (body alone) under 55-75K (manufacturing cost) today, given a batch size of 50 cameras. The viewfinder alone will set you back 12-20K in manufacturing cost

Just out of curiosity, in what price range would you estimate a clone of Eclair ACL would go these days?

https://eclaircameras.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/eclair-acl-parcat.pdf

 

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