John Sprung

Who needs watches? Just look at the time code on the slate.... -- J.S.

Did D.W. Griffith have playback on the Pathe? Did Orson Welles have playback on the BNC? ;-) -- J.S.

IIRC, they're the same except that the EX1 is less expensive with a permanently mounted lens, while the EX3 is more expensive with better interchangeable lenses. -- J.S.

Well, it's not like we're all going to die. The Russians are mostly still alive, even though the Soviet Union is gone. It could go like that, maybe a little worse since the pieces would be smaller. Hmmm.... Texas and California get seats at the U.N.?.... China forecloses on the White House?.... ;-) For real gloom and doom, maybe we cut back on NASA and there's no way to stop that big asteroid in 2026 or 2037 or whenever it's supposed to get here. -- J.S.

Not really -- Early 1920's and late 1970's perhaps more so. The laws and regulations in place from the Great Depression -- margin and such -- haven't changed. The whole debt ceiling kabuki show ended with a decision firmly in favor of business as ususal. That's where there'll be a lesson to learn, if we survive.... -- J.S.

Post can't tell the difference between 24.00 and 23.98, provided that all cameras and sound are on the same side of the fence between "point zero zero" and "point nine something". -- J.S.

You could probably build a projector with a six point Geneva instead of the standard four point. That would be a natural way to do three blade shutters. As for polyester camera stock, you could drive a camera with a rare earth magnet clutch to limit the torque and protect it from jams. -- J.S.

Sure, hiding cameras works. In the olden days, I once had a shot in a warehouse where we hid a BNCR in a big cardboard box with a hole in it. ;-) -- J.S.

Indeed, three chip cameras tend to be CCD (2/3" and under), while large single chips (35mm film-ish size) tend to be CMOS. Most CCD's get their immunity to rolling by having two frames worth of sites, one of which takes the picture, the other is there to store it and read it out. The "pulldown" from the sensor area to the covered storage/readout area is extremely fast. CMOS can't do that rapid shift trick, it has only the single sensor frame's worth of photosites. To make a 35-ish size CCD, you'd have to get two frames worth of good photosites on the same chip to make one camera, which would be a big yield problem for the chip foundry. Theoretically it could be done, but it would be expensive. Genesis and Sony's F-35 are CCD, I don't remember offhand if they use the full frame storage technique, or just a fast column readout. -- J.S.

Of course you can't plug the 16.8 Volt DC Arri motor directly into the wall power. But the Arri wild motor ought to run OK off an ordinary car battery charger from AutoZone or the like. You probably won't be able to get all the way to 48 fps with it, but for most purposes it would be an inexpensive AC adapter. -- J.S.

But patents aren't used for manufacturing or engineering. They're used for suing the other guys for making things. Big companies create or buy huge portfolios of thousands of patents, because they want to be able to use a sort of cold war - mutual assured destruction thing against the other big companies. Sue us for patent infringement, and we'll go through our 335,000 patents and find dozens of ways to sue you back. It's like little kids stockpiling snowballs for a fight. Only it takes 17 years for a patent to melt.... ;-) -- J.S.

DLP gets its dynamic range by pulse width modulation. The bright areas of a DLP image are lit up pretty much the full 1/24 of a second that the frame is displayed, with brief off periods. The dark areas are mostly off, with brief flashes of light on them several times during the frame period. So, yes, you could think of DLP as somewhat like being able to project with a 360 degree shutter. -- J.S.

Actually, the high flicker rate doesn't look like flicker to humans. Our eye/brain combination can keep up quite well with 24 flashes per second, but not with 48 unless the image is quite bright. 72 lets you go even brighter before you see flicker, but requires a lot more light to get there. -- J.S.

It doesn't seem to have the Bell&Howell light trap and mounting screw, unless the whole throat has been replaced. There's a lot of custom machine shop work on this, but the carcass is a mass produced screw lid magazine. With B&H out, Mitchell would be the most likely suspect. But, of course, it's highly modified. It could be from some low volume maker, too. -- J.S.

LCD and plasma are actually quite nice for screens in the shot. They usually change from frame to frame very quickly, and have usable picture up most of the time. But always test them to be sure. Try a rolling shutter with a very small angle to catch them advancing frames. Yes, peripheral vision is more sensitive to flicker. You can even see 60 Hz flicker in your peripheral vision, if you look away from an old time CRT TV set. -- J.S.

Three blade shutters are available, Century is the company that makes them. A long time ago, Universal had a pair of Century's in a screening room, one with a two blade, and the other with a three. It took a while to figure out why one of them needed so much more current to the lamp. A balanced single blade geared at double speed works just like a two blade shutter, except that edge transit is twice as fast. We had that on the AA-2 Norelco 35/70 machines. They're a damn buzz saw, they go so fast. -- J.S.

Is there any way to do it? Bleach? Copper napthenate? -- J.S.

Cameras use cam driven pulldown claws, and typically spend about half the cycle time pulling down (180 degree shutter). Projectors use a Geneva mechanism to drive an intermittent sprocket, which pulls down twice as fast. The shutter typically has two equal blades (90 degrees), one of which covers the pulldown, the other produces a blackout of identical duration, but opens to reveal the same frame again. So, you get 24 unique images per second, but 48 flashes of light. Whether you see flicker depends on how many flashes per second you see, and how bright they are. At a given rate, brighter makes it flicker more. At a constant brightness, the faster they flash, the less you see it as flicker. -- J.S.

Picture and sound on separate rolls is called "double system". (or at least it was back when I was alive....) -- J.S.

But is it possible to do anything at all well at the 1/3" level? Doesn't it crap out from diffraction at, IIRC, f/4? -- J.S.

Consider how film is made. They start with a really big roll of plastic, 54 inches wide by I don't know how many thousands of feet long. They mix up and coat dozens of layers of emulsion on it, then slit and perforate. The result is a batch of 52xx and 72xx negative. As demand dwindles, the question is, how many of these batches do they have to make per year to make it worth keeping the staff employed and the plant up and running? There are some products, Infra Red, B&W, that they only do as special orders. Perhaps we'll see more of the camera stocks go to special order only. Then there'll be a tipping point when they pull the plug on the coating plant. Labs, of course, will fold and merge. But there are a lot more of them than coating plants. Lab capacity will ramp down following coating volume. -- J.S.

The total part of an eclipse is brief if it happens at all. The last time I happened to be outside to see one, the most interesting thing was the way the partially blocked sun came through the leaves in the trees. The gaps worked like pinhole cameras, projecting little crescent suns on the pavement. Hard shadows are even harder than ever. Those theatrical instruments that project cutouts might be an interesting thing to try. -- J.S.

Reading them years from now is the wild card. LTO would be a safer choice. -- J.S.

For future projects, it's best to eliminate moire in production. It's caused by detail that's over the Nyquist limit, which can only really be filtered out before it hits the chip. Use a real motion camera with a proper OLPF. -- J.S.

Cheapest if you can find one: For MOS, the Bell & Howell Filmo with the magazine port. For sync, the Bach Auricon, ancestor of the CP-16. -- J.S.