Jump to content

Lisa Davidson

Basic Member
  • Posts

    35
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Profile Information

  • Occupation
    Other
  1. Now I'm told that the Rex was only a 16mm camera. This one says on it: H8 Reflex, so I'm probably wrong. However, the price I'm asking is what I paid for it, plus the work done on it. Hope I didn't pay too much! Thank you, Lisa
  2. Hi, This 8mm Bolex camera has S.N. 221014. It is a Rex II with flat base. It was just CLA'd by Bernie O'Doherty, who also did Laserbrighten to the ground glass. It comes in a yellow heavy-duty plastic Storm case, subtitled iM2200. It's in great shape but the weight of it just bothers my right hand, due to a slight accident (to my hand, not the camera!). It has three Switar lenses: 5.5 mm f/1.6 12.5 mm f/1.3 36 mm f/1.4 Included are a worn-out part that you might want, (the Rexofader), a little rewind crank, and two instruction manuals if I can find them (original ones from John Craig). $1100 Thank you, Lisa Davidson
  3. It seems as though if we could learn it in three months then we already would have, and nobody would be asking any questions here.
  4. B. O'D. said not to enlarge the gate of reg 8.
  5. It seems like in ds8 you cannot get any of the Vision stocks or Kodachrome. In reg 8 you can get Kodachrome, and in normal super 8 you can get Vision. Is that right? so you need three kinds of camera and then you'll have footage that doesn't quite match, but who cares. I asked Bernie O'Doherty about this and he said not to mess with it, but he can do "laserbrightening." This seems right to me; if it was engineered that way I guess it's best to leave it that way. No, I don't do deep sky observing but I could . . . I just don't want to learn all that extra stuff about where to find things! it is already confusing enough. I just do terrestrial photography with it. Incidentally, speaking of Super 16, does anyone know if camels actually weep or not? I just saw that thing on television. Kind of hard to believe. So, Mark, you're saying that 8 or s8 or ds8 are not great for landscape just because of the small format size, right, it's not because of the negative vs reversal issue? Mark, is 100D a Kodak Vision stock, or is it an Ektachrome?
  6. that 100D that looks great in regular8 is due to proper registration. doing that in DS8 will reduce the grain by about 20%, more if you go super duper8. can we start calling that maxi8? i dont think there will be light leaks or anything from grinding out a bit of the gate. somebody around here has already done it and hasnt had a problem. lisa, what are you planning to shoot? will the 100D do it for you? ***** (Hi, Kevin, by the way, it is a Rex 4.) I can see the freeway at rush hour from my back yard. Originally the reason I started looking at movie cameras was that I want to attach my Questar telescope (C-mount) to a camera, which led me to the interchangeable-lens Leicina Special for which I still have to get the adapters (one bit is back-ordered from Adorama and then I think it will be SKGrimes again, since I can't find a C-mt-lens-to-Leica-M-body adapter readymade). Then I got interested in what else was available and found this H8 for sale in Hollywood (yes, I live in LA) -- The freeway looks quite amazing through a telescope, let me tell you. I live two or three miles above a bend or kink in what they call "the" 210 (the Huntington Drive change of shape), so at a certain point you're kind of right inside the freeway visually. You get these strange flat things that you can't make out exactly, and then you see that they're the backs of trucks, and then they disappear again (this is at night). You're looking through a lot of turbulent air, which adds to the excitement. Of course, the telescope is like a 1700mm lens and I'll only get 1/16 of the frame (?), so maybe I just need a camera lens and not the telescope at all, but I can use it for something else anyway. I want to film the moon reflected in our fish pond wiggling around in a trippy way. I want to film certain light patterns in glass bowls filled with water. I want to film a sushi restaurant that's got an interesting way of serving food. I want to film pinhole movies intervalometer-style (if possible), which seems to be much more an H8 thing to do than a Leicina thing, since the Leicina film-to-body-cap distance is around 30mm, and the H8 distance is about 10mm (you can use a bigger pinhole and still get a more wide-angle view if you're closer to the film). This would probably be a movie of the light changing in the living room as it moves across the floor, and maybe the semi-transparent cat changing positions. . . I guess she would only be transparent in single frames, but still she could look good as a solid form. I've been blasting through still film for years, but this is like a whole new world. I finally figured out I should read the ASC manual, so I just ordered it. Well, OK, good night, all.
  7. wet gate I'm not sure how they all work, but I've seen a picture of one that has tubes and plumbing so it fills the film "channel" with liquid to cover the scratches and rinse away the dust.
  8. ****** How much does it cost to buy film and have it reperforated? Then you could use anything you liked. I suppose you order 100' of Super 8, if it comes that way, and then have the other side perfed. (I think.) Because otherwise, you'd have to order 100' of unperforated 16mm and then have both edges done.
  9. the ds8 conversion makes the gate bigger, changes the claw and alters the pulldown distance. you should send it to jk camera aka meritex. google those names and throw in bolex in the search string if they dont show up. consider asking them to convert your camera to 'super duper8' they wont know what this means but essentially you are asking them to make it have an aspect ratio of 1.5 by widening the gate. this will give you better telecine. you would then have to use different lenses methinks (i dont know if the original switars will cover the extra imag area).using the original switars probably means repositioning the turret a bit. the easier method is t just use 16mm lenses. to do this you need to ask jk optical t make you a c mount spacer for 16mm lenses. its only a couple of hundred dollars and opens a whole new world of lens options and coverage for super duper8 is no longer an issue. And I haven't been able to find ds8 film so far -- where can I get that? kodak will sell you the ektachrome 100D in batches of five rolls of 400 feet otherwise you can contact john schwind on here he sells it in 100 foot rolls. Yes, it has Switar primes on it (I think it wasn't you but someone else who talked about that). One of them is a little wobbly and you can move it a bit with your finger, but the image still looks OK, and another of them is hard to focus (the ring is hard to move), but the third is fine. I finally got the real manual so I can begin to practice loading it. The online ones' pictures are illegible. te lenses sound like they need a servicing and that can be costly. mabye consider my point of using 16mm lenses instead. Is crystal sync better than Nagra Pilotone? Or maybe you can't hook up Pilotone to H8. you cant really do pilotone and you wouldnt want to. a tobin sync motor is the best option especially since you can even set them to do thousands of speeds all in sync. you need to see if your camera has a 1:1 shaft. its near the other shafts where you can backwind the film. how many shafts do you see? can you post a picture? if the camera doesnt have a 1:1 shaft you can either get a tobin syn motor and for a small fee clive can change the gear in an 8:1 motor for you to work with the camera on jk optical can install a 1:1 shaft for ou. you can then just find a 1:1 shaft tobin motor. let me know if you go this route for i might have a tobin motor milliframe controler for sale as i have a spare. ps, the nagra will work independantly of the camera providing it has a sync card in it. dont think about connecting the camera to the recorder, its hell. ****** Earlier, I had emailed not jk (meritex) but guy at cameraspro, and this was our dialogue about superduper8. Me: "\In fact, do you do a Super-Duper-Double-8 conversion (widening the gate yet more so that you can film on the sound-track portion? Or is that too much to take out and it might weaken the camera?" Him: "We cannot open more the film gate [any more than that]. You will get unsteady pictures and light leak. You need to keep the 0,8mm for the sound track or to support the film under the pressure plate" So that's one professional assessment anyway. In your opinion, Kevin, is that being a little on the conservative side? It is a Rex 4, I think. It has a knob for T/I, not a lever. The serial number is 221014, on the base plate, but the camera says 8 on it, not 16. I am assuming it's the original base plate, of course. Does that mean it has a 10X viewfinder? It doesn't look so great in there. JK told me in his last email (I hadn't asked him at that point about superduper, just super) he could get more light into the viewfinder but not more magnification, but I don't know if that means the film gets less light or not; I should ask him. Another question I keep forgetting to ask, how do they do telecine on superduper8? Don't they need a special gate, or do a lot of places have this? I saw the article about Sleep Always, and he talks about telecine in that.
  10. ***** I would be surprised if it was better than a Rank, but I don't really know. All I know is what I read in their web page. Maybe it could be better if you have good color correction. But I'm not sure about the scratch reduction -- am I right in thinking that the Rank has a wet gate?
  11. I don't know; I've been wondering about that too. Do you know if Final Cut the easy version (cheap version) will do positive-negative inversion? And I noticed in this telecine program that they have a screen shot of the Epson "Twain" interface in which they have checked "Sharpen." I'm not sure how good that would be, like I know in Photoshop you should sharpen it yourself with lots more control than the scanner gives you, but I don't know if Final Cut has that ability. I don't have the program, and was also kind of wondering about shareware video-editing programs.
  12. ***** Thanks, Kevin, that was what I wanted to know. DS 8 conversion doesn't change the pressure plate setup; it just widens the gate. Do you know who I ought to send it to to have that done? And I haven't been able to find ds8 film so far -- where can I get that? Yes, it has Switar primes on it (I think it wasn't you but someone else who talked about that). One of them is a little wobbly and you can move it a bit with your finger, but the image still looks OK, and another of them is hard to focus (the ring is hard to move), but the third is fine. I finally got the real manual so I can begin to practice loading it. The online ones' pictures are illegible. Is crystal sync better than Nagra Pilotone? Or maybe you can't hook up Pilotone to H8.
  13. ***** I'm not metering with another camera but with an external meter (Pentax spotmeter). To your knowledge, do all the Super-8's and reflex 8's take that 17% of light, or is that just a Bolex fact? It's kind of hard to find this information; I don't know where to look. Incidentally, my thumb still aches from holding the H8. The H8 works pretty well with the monopod, but still feels pretty awkward. This is what I'm wondering -- is Super-8 just too easy to use because the cameras are so much lighter and lovelier with better viewfinders, meaning you are losing some quality somewhere else? I mean, are you getting something for nothing? If you haul around that five or six pounds of Bolex plus lens, do you get more for your effort? It's funny, because I don't mind using a view camera, but this is somehow different. I guess I mean, is the "old technology" flawed and Super-8 fixed it, or is the older actually better in a way? Also, do you think double super-8 is worth doing, and is it hard to find film (I haven't been able to, so far).
  14. http://8mm2avi.netfirms.com/ Maybe you know about this already. The program is shareware for $19, and you sit at your computer and scanner and do each frame yourself in strips! You could get very high res that way.
×
×
  • Create New...