Patrick Neary

Hi- The fill light is that big shiny, foil-covered lander you see reflected in his visor. The photo looks vignetted, like it may have been underexposed and dodged back up in the center, or if it was Kodachrome maybe just vignetting from the lens.

oh bleepety bleep bleep. Just for posterity; This forum has a number of people who have been incredibly generous in providing real-world examples of their work, solutions to problems and experience-tested suggestions for others. The instigator of this thread has offered nothing of interest or use, unless you figure in the entertainment value of following this particular kind of train-wreck. Look at the production accounts or detailed testing results posted here by some of the more illustrious contributors. There's no hush-hush, "and then they'll be sorry" kind of lunacy. They go out of their way to offer help and useful (and interesting) information.

when you're doling out advice on what is supposed to be a forum for "Professional Motion Picture Camera People..." it might help to have some real-world production experience. Good God what has happened to this forum.

Hi- You should probably look up the definition of "1st Assistant Director" and "Line Producer" and maybe "" 1st Assistant Camera" "Key Grip" and "Gaffer" and "Electrician" etc. while you're at it. :)

Hi - Since this is (I think it still is) a cinematography forum it might be interesting to talk specifically about what camera and lens package you used as well as details about your post production process, since not too many people are shooting VV these days.

http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=14136

Hey, a new paint job and that chunk-o-camera would be like new! or new-ish. ok, how about not-so-ugly?

Hi Dan- The Pen's FFD is quite a bit shallower than Nikon's (or PL), like 28 or 29mm, so there's lots of room to add an adapter for PL.

That's extraordinary- So that's not a 2709, that's THE 2709! I saw the article in the print version awhile back, is that really the same Chaplin camera that was up for auction at Christie's a year or two ago?

Ditto what Paul said- thanks for the interesting post! Does your friend shoot with the 2709s or are they just for display?

Looka' lika' Piece-o-junk!

Dang, looks like everyone will have to wait until Canon releases another completely new line of DSLRs, which could be as long as three or four days from now...:)

Thanks again! I've set this camera up primarily for hand-cranking, and hope to use it for single-frame as well, so "high speed" for me would be about 16fps! :P

Vincent Laforet's enthusiastic review only mentions 30fps, and Canon's own specs don't mention any frame rates at all. Is the camera able to shoot anything other than 30?

Hi- For a great historical perspective of shooting and exhibition frame-rates (and to some degree, aspect ratios), check out two fantastic books: An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928 by Richard Koszarski and The Parade's Gone By by Kevin Brownlow both give extensive and interesting history of the early development of cinema.

Thanks, Stephen- that makes sense- Is there a rule-of-thumb "target tension" for the belt (ie slips easily over the pulley , or so tight it snaps and takes skin off your fingers as you attach it) ? A couple of my 400' mags have small, additional pulleys that elongate the belt path, I assume you'd tension a stretched belt over those if needed.

Hi- Just a random question over coffee, I've seen a few Mitchell GC/standard pics where the take-up belt is twisted so that the film takes up "9P" instead of the usual "99" (emulsion-out). Is there a specific benefit or reason I'm not seeing that folks do it this way?

Hi- I think another question might be whether or not the inching button provides consistent exposure for each frame.

wow- thanks that's a great round-up of filmo-info! Here's a great example of a franken-filmo (snagged from fleabay, I hope it's ok to use these here): It's apparently a DA body, but with a motor-hand-crank port (which neither of my DAs had) and an old-style VF door converted to a DL-style turret finder; who knows if it's single or 2x perf!

Hi- The noise level is very similar to a filmo, so pulling film it's easily less than half the noise of a 2C, 35-3 or 435. Much of the noise of course shoots straight out the front, so you'd have to construct a blimp to contain the noise, and at that point I think you'd have to ask how useful it would really be, with the camera being non-sync, non-reflex and limited to 100' loads. I guess you could add a sync motor (I have an AC-sync motor, but it's quite a bit louder running than just the spring-wind.) and reflex the camera, and use 400' mags on the back, then blimp it, but it would be very un-ergonomic to say the least! >>Relocating the pin to half its original radius from the center is all you'd have to do to the front. I don't see any reason to re-grind the cam that moves the claws in and out. Re-gearing to double the rate of rotation for the cam looks like the bigger part of the job. << Actually the cam is attached to, and rotates with the shutter, so the claw makes its cycle 1:1 directly with the shutter rotation, if that makes sense, so no slowing would be needed (as I mentioned earlier, it looks like the claw would just have a slightly longer dwell coming into and then pulling out of the perfs). There would have to be some kind of re-gearing with the feed and take-up sprockets though, 'cause they both want to keep pushing 4 perfs-worth of film at each cycle of the shutter/claw, which would now only be pulling 2-perfs. I could see a major pile-up very quickly in that little film chamber!

I think from the DL onward they were single perf, but the problem is that there seems to be a buttload of oddballs floating around out there- As a for-instance, my first DA was double perf, but the one I have now is a DA body with a DR door, but is single perf.

Lucky you that's one nice lens! Whenever I've rented the 20-60 it's always had a support. It's a small zoom, but it's still a chunk. I don't think I'd want to use it without a support.

Hi- Just wondering if anyone is aware of any Thing M animation motor/controllers lying around (or maybe a Norris) for a Mitchell GC, or have they all gone to equipment heaven?

Hi- I might add to the list: Get the %@#* out of the shot! And don't take the scenic route out of the frame after slating. :)

Actually with the scheme I mentioned above, you'd still only get 20 seconds per wind (it would be the same number of revolutions of the shutter, the claw is just doing tighter circles, but maybe with longer dwell times at the beginning and end of each pull-down?) but you would still obviously get the longer time per 100' roll. As for hand-holding the mitchell...