Why didn't Vista Vision ever catch on?

[Ben Brahem Ziryab]

There's only one true sound-sync VistaVision camera. It's called the Wilcam W11. It's QUIET.
It's been rebuilt and modernized by Marty S Mueller AKA "MSM". Has an HD tap and all the bells and whistles.
Here it is at Panavision Woodland Hills.

[Geffen Avraham]

On 4/14/2023 at 7:22 AM, Ben Brahem Ziryab said:

There's only one true sound-sync VistaVision camera. It's called the Wilcam W11. It's QUIET.
It's been rebuilt and modernized by Marty S Mueller AKA "MSM". Has an HD tap and all the bells and whistles.
Here it is at Panavision Woodland Hills.

Do you know if there are any VistaVision cameras that will take PL or modified EF lenses? If Bruce's camera takes Canon FD, it should be able to take EF too.

I ask because a Canon EF 50mm F1.0 lens, or one of the Vantage One or Arri T.ONE lenses on VistaVision are equivalent to an f0.7 on 4 perf... And Bruce's camera is a reflex, which Kubrick's Mitchell BNC was famously not...

I'm not saying I want to shoot ultrafast on Kodak stock with a reflex camera and a Stereo or ToF depth camera for focus... but I'm also not saying I'm not.

Edited January 4, 2024 by Geffen Avraham

[Patrick Cooper]

Very interesting to learn that Canon FD lenses were used on Bruce's VistaVision camera. I have been using Canon FD lenses for my still film photography for years. For the last several years, I have also been using them for HD and 4k video and I'm also considering mounting them to a 16mm high speed camera in the future. Even to this day, people have high regards for these lenses. 

[Kemalettin Sert]

On 1/4/2024 at 2:50 AM, Geffen Avraham said:

Do you know if there are any VistaVision cameras that will take PL or modified EF lenses? If Bruce's camera takes Canon FD, it should be able to take EF too.

I ask because a Canon EF 50mm F1.0 lens, or one of the Vantage One or Arri T.ONE lenses on VistaVision are equivalent to an f0.7 on 4 perf... And Bruce's camera is a reflex, which Kubrick's Mitchell BNC was famously not...

I'm not saying I want to shoot ultrafast on Kodak stock with a reflex camera and a Stereo or ToF depth camera for focus... but I'm also not saying I'm not.

Thats not how lenses work though? If you put 80mm Mamiya F1.9 lens on FF camera its still a F1.9 lens.You need to use an speedboster to make lenses with larger diameter image coverage faster on a FF camera.

[Daniel Muchnik]

For anybody in the LA area interested in shooting the format, Geo FIlm by the van nuys airport has a couple of the beaumot vista cameras. I've done 3 music videos as a 1st over the past couple years with them. They're quite lovely when treated well, but neither the optics not the video tap show the entire open gate image area. They're PV mount and Geo sends them with a rehoused  set of Leica Rs https://www.geofilmgroup.com/

[Geffen Avraham]

On 1/22/2024 at 8:02 AM, Kemalettin Sert said:

Thats not how lenses work though? If you put 80mm Mamiya F1.9 lens on FF camera its still a F1.9 lens.You need to use an speedboster to make lenses with larger diameter image coverage faster on a FF camera.

Yes, but the depth of field and bokeh seen on a full-frame sensor with an f1.0 lens, is about the same bokeh and background blur you will need an f0.7 to get on Super35.

Speedboosting medium format lenses onto VistaVision would be wonderful, but I can't think of a way to do it without a PL mount. The Beaumont camera will take Mamiya or Hasselblad lenses, but a speedbooster takes up extra space - you would need something like the PL-mount Whitepoint TS70.

[Andrew Skalak]

On 1/3/2023 at 8:54 PM, Steve Switaj said:

And then there was the W7. And I mean THE W7, since there was only one. It was built from scratch by Jeff Willliamson of Wilcam, for high-speed work and could crank at 100 FPS, so it worked on every single disaster FX film for two solid decades.

Steve, do you have any more information about Wilcam and the W7? I'd love to see a picture of this camera. What else did Jeff make? Someone else posted the W11.

PS I have been trying to learn more about some of the now esoteric aspects of motion control for 35mm cameras and was forwarded to your Flying Wombat site. Thank you for all the resources!

[Steve Switaj]

No pictures, but I do have the user manual sitting in my file cabinet, which I have attached (sorry for the lo-res scan, I had to fit into the upload file size limit)

I used to think there was only one, but as I think about it more, there might have actually been two made.

AFAIK,  Geoff made it (them?) specifically for Clairmont. 

This makes sence, since Denny and Terry Clairmont were always really good about investing in specialty equipment, so they had lots of one-offs in the fleet.

I had totally forgotten how much of a beast this camera was. I knew it was the fastest Vista camera on the planet but had totally forgotten that it could do 170 frames at full crank.  With 8-perf that's 21 feet per second, or mowing through a 1000' roll in about 45 seconds.

I don't know what Clairmont paid to create it, but I crewed on a lot of VFX and disaster movies in the 90's and early 00's and this camera worked constantly for a decade.

I remember an incident with this camera when I was at Digital Domain and we were shooting VFX for Apollo 13. 

I never loaded the camera myself (the camera always went out with a dedicated AC) but, like the Photosonics cameras, the W7 had a system in the mags to deal with keeping the film roll winding smoothly at the speeds of hundreds of RPM they could hit in the middle of a fast run. IIRC the film was handled between rotating platters, and the top platter had a lock-down mechanism that had a thread-on retainer that screwed into the center spindle.

On one mag the loader did not lock down the retainer properly, and at the start of the run it unscrewed from the spindle and backed out.

The motors in the W7 were big, and the takeup motor drove the retaining knob up against the mag cover with enough force that it broke off the mag locking ears from the mag body. 

The mag was beyond repair and Geoff had, sadly, at this point passed away, so it was not obvious what was going to happen with the camera.

Fortunately, it turned out that the house machinist at DD was Scott Salsa, who several years before had done quite a bit of contract machining work for Geoff, including the original mags.

Geoff's widow found and shipped over the original mechanical drawings, and, since I was often in the machine shop, I got to watch for two weeks while Scott used a mill and a rotary table to turn an 18" square, 3" thick slab of aluminum into a new mag body that weighed about 2 pounds once it was all done.

W7 Wilcam manual.pdf

[Brian Drysdale]

I surprised no one has posted the video on large format cameras at the ASC museum, they have examples of most of the earlier cameras: