Sir Alvin Ekarma

Here's a link to some pix of my DIY rig. Btw, you'll need to cut around two inches off each of the L brackets. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dodgejackson/...57594415659954/

If you can find it and it's never cheap-- it's usually around $200 or something insane and considering you could just as easily attach the base of the bolex to any tripod and run it off a generic 12v lead acid battery w/ an XLR cable for that much or less, not cost-effective . I made my bracket dealie for something on the order of $10-15. Anyway, pictures later this afternoon....

I used to use a custom-made extension cord between the grip and body and hang the grip from the tripod but it was really counter-intuitive and it got to be a super hassle if you wanted to switch from tripod to hand-held. Anyway, what I ended up doing was bolting two 4", heavy duty L-shaped brackets from the Hardware store into a rectangle, and putting a 3/8" hole at the top and a 1/4" in the bottom w/ some 1mm thick/1" long fun foam strips as shims on the top part of the bracket and on the bottom. Next, I permanently fixed a 1/4" nut around the 1/4" hole with some fibreglass. So with all that in place, I used a 3/8" wingnut and screw to attach the powegrip at the top and attached my tripod head's quick release plate on to the bottom. So basically you end up w/ metal rectangle that permits enough clearance between the grip and tripod. This probably doesn't make a lot of sense but I'll post some pictures tomorrow to clarify.

I just noticed this: 100ft mags? I know you get two of them, but two 400ft mags would've been nicer.

I think the coolest thing about the camera is that you can pick your six speeds. I want to have my Bolex EBM tricked out to do some odd speeds, and the cost is only slightly less expensive than flat out buying this-- provided the $1900 ends up being the sell price. All I can say is that if something like this were available at this price 18 months ago, I wouldn't have even considered a bolex. If I had the money and time, I'd buy this camera now and just sell my EBM kit in pieces on Ebay to defray costs.

Aranda group in Austrailia does a conversion and it's crazy expensive and kinda nuts since the lens vignettes under 25mm (as I recall; I asked them about it a while ago). I was able to get in touch w/ some folks who had it done and they said they should've have gone with something else. And Slowmotioninc.com in Burbank will take your Kinor and convert it to a PL mount, S16 camera with modern electronics for significantly under 6k (last time I checked).

JK Camera sells refurbished S16 bolexes http://www.jkcamera.com/bolex_h16_rex.htm at a good price. They don't come with lenses, accesories, or batteries, but you could easily get an XLR power cable from ProCam or Du-all to run it off a 12V battery, and depending on your budget, you could cobble together the rest of what you need off Ebay or just rent what you need.

I think it's very under-rated. At f4, it compared favorably against the m42 primes I had (they were also at f4 since a couple of the wide lenses started around f3.5). As has been mentioned a lot in these forums, most of the complaints against the stock lens is due probably to low quality control at the factory.

When I was having my pro upgrade done by Du-all, they were adamant that there wasn't any really reliable to way modify the viewfinder so it was either you leave the mask in or no. If somebody's figured out a way to modify the viewfinder, that's frontpage news ( of a sort).

You may want to have this clarified, but listing could only mean that the viwefinder had the 1:33 mask removed i.e. the reference to "no markings". On my S16 K3, I left it in just to have some sort of framing reference and place everything slightly off center to the right using the notch in the mask as a guide.

I was able to rig up my own for $100. As far as I know, doing a true tap isn't easy so placing a CCTV camera on the viewfinder is the only reasonable way of doing it. Check out the link below. http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...00+video+assist I was able to rig up my own for $100. As far as I know, doing a true tap isn't easy so placing a CCTV camera on the viewfinder is the only reasonable way of doing it. Check out the link below. http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...00+video+assist

Are these one of those TV zoom lenses? I've been told that the TV zooms are usually for 2/3 CCD cameras. Also, would it be significantly better than the Poe Switar 16-100 I already have?

Olex- Thanks for the info. I was hoping you'd chime in. Good to hear about the PL mount, not so good to hear that it may not be S16 safe. I have tha Poe Switar zoom and I was planning on having it made fully manual; I was weighing that against getting a Kinor lens since I though it may come out to be cheaper, but if you add a PL mount modification, a PL to Bolex adapter, re-collimation of the zoom for the Bolex, and the possibility that it's not S16 safe, it starts to get more expensive than what I have to spend. Thanks anyway- Sir Al

Here's something I was wondering: Are there adapters on the market that would let you put one of those Kinor 16OPF12-1 zoom lenses on a bayonet/c-mount bolex? And if you could, would the lens be Super 16 safe? Like I said-- just wonderin'.

Re: filters. You're better off using a screw in filter on the front of whatever lens you're using since behind the lens filters can throw off critical focus. As for the switch, I can't help you there as I've got an EBM. You could try Jaako at www.jkcamera.com or Dieter at Procam www.bolex-usa.com ; they should know.

If you go to the section of the forum that has all the tech manuals, you can download the manual for the Bolex 400ft mag and it'll show you how to load the film into the camera using a fully loaded magazine w/o having to do the whole procedure in a changing bag i.e. mag loaded before hand in changing bag, magazine put on camera, then in the light, a loop of film pulled out into camera and manaully loaded into the camera body .

According to this page, you can rig up a battery that uses a bunch of AA batteries... http://www.filmclass.com/scooby/ And these folks can sell you a scoopic-to-XLR cable... http://members.aol.com/fmgp/sync10.htm

I think another thing to keep in mind with the whole 70's look is how film/tv shows were presented for many years i.e. not the best way possible. I'm not an expert but local stations used 16mm film prints film chained to 3/4" tape for a lot of their programming; those set-ups weren't exactly state of the art and that was standard until at least the late 80s, and basically the same setups were used when the video boom hit in the early 80's with the first generation of rental tapes. But now with the telecine and color correction available today, most of them could have been shot yesterday and I'm not talking the big budget stuff-- even the kung-fu chop sockys look nice with the tech now available and using original negatives or interpositives.

If you do a search for "Matte box" on Ebay, you should be able to find an Ebay store based in India (!) that has a variety of matteboxes starting around $100. Also note that w/ the Peleng and Zenitar lenses, you'll need to rig the lenses w/ a 72mm filter thread since they aren't designed w/ one. I had to use craft store fun foam, gaffers tape and a cannibalized lens hood.

I recently did my own tests w/ a Super 16 K3 and I was mildly shocked that at F4 and using 7217/100t, the stock lens compared favorably w/ my SLR 35mm lenses for the most part. Anyway these are the lens I used and which I found worked well. PLease note that I just projected my camera test and watched it a couple of times while taking notes. Sorry I couldn't be more rigorous. Anyway... An 8mm Peleng and a 17mm Zenitar (for reasons I'm not knowledgeable enough to understand, these two lenses worked better on the K3 than they did on my Bolex. Maybe becuase it was mounted directly to the camera w/o an adapter? I don't know.) a 28mm Pentax, a 50mm Pentax, a 85mm Jupiter-9, and 135mm Bushnell. Of these lenses, the Jupiter-9 and Bushnell were the ones that seemed to jump out, but the rest worked fine as well w/ nice, crisp punchy images.

I recommend JK Camera http://www.jkcamera.com/ and Procam http://www.bolex-usa.com/ Two thumbs up!

Hey, I was finally able to test this gizmo and it's good-- I shouldn't have any problems intercutting w/ my 16-100mm Poe zoom. Shooting on S16 and using 7217/100t, it looked nice at f4, softer but still good at 2.8, and soft but not horrible wide open at 1.3. Since I'm more of a guerilla filmmaker than DP, I basically just screened the footage and took notes so I apologize for not being more scientific. Still, I think I can recommend this set up. I give it a thumbs up.

There's an archived Poe Zoom manual on the main page of the site if that helps.... http://cinematography.com/docs/Lens_and_mag.pdf

The 1:33 mask in the viewfinder. It can be removed if you're going s16 but the only problem is that there's nothing left for framing reference.

Du-all lists all their prices on their site... http://www.duallcamera.com/services/index.shtml Check under "overhauls" for K3 prices. I don't know if the price includes taking out the mask or if that's extra. Their pro-mod basically involves the removal of the loop formers although more work may be needed depending on the problems that need to be solved. All I know is that my camera works fine after the upgrade. Also, you may want to add $30 for a add-on hand crank. I bought one from Ebay and the K3 winds much, much easier, plus you can apparently use it for some Tony Scott, Music Video "shifty frame rate' effects but I haven't tried it yet.