Michael Lehnert

I think a price above 1000 USD would seriously dampen interest, both from individual shooters to institutional buyers. For that money, you can buy a Beaulieu 4008 ZM II or Bauer A 512 in CLA'd condition. I appreciate that Kodak is going the high road in terms of offering classic features (variable speeds, TTL exposure meter) and package this into a metal body. They could have gone cheap and only offer something plasticky and point-and-shoot, akin to their product range in the 1970s. The Ricoh 1:1.2 / 6mm fixed and 8-48mm vario lenses for it I am really not sure what to say about. I didn't expect Optivaron or Variogon-level quality to ne offered out of the box, but these inexpensive CCTV shards of glass... mhh... Many who would now potentially buy the Kodak "NeoMatic 2016" grew up with the Micro Four Third hype, buying C-Mount lenses (for insanely overinflated prices) and adapting them on their MFTs. Buy choosing the Kodak's Max 8 film gate specs, I presume engineering had in mind that few buyers would retain the Ricoh as the default lens but rather put other C-Mount glass on, or use the myriad of C-Mount adapters in it.

Metaphorically, of course, as there is nothing you buy or purchase or transaction when you subscribe on the Collection webpage to the newsletter to receive the status of a Collective member -- apart from handing over your private data, which may have monetary value, but that's another topic. Kodak's "...reserving the opportunity to purchase..." isn't like reserving a Tesla Model Ξ, although some may not get that. I already had a student thinking he just "reserved the Kodak camera, like a Tesla". :) The power of marketing... :lol:

I didn't see any actual stipulation from Kodak for anything. Collection, Collective, "reserve the opportunity to buy", pretend layers of access to info that you can get anyhow anyway - it's just lovely marketing that Kodak thinks caters to the demographic they hope (and I hope) will buy the camera in large enough numbers to further sustain the S8 format and give it greater exposure to a new generation of cinematographers. Where did you see a stipulation, Nicholas? Looking forward to getting the cam, shooting with it alongside old school gear, and above all seeing Kodak's in-house S8 process/scan/distri chain and platform they are talking about.

Yes, received the same correspondence, went through the same process, got the same result. It's in essence a fancied-up newsletter/product-offer subscription, under the cool communitarian guise of The Super 8 Collective™ and with the rather vaporous promise of "reserving" the new "Kodak Neomatic Model 2016" B) , as there are no actual obligations or financial transactions taking place on any side. Yes, this may be a further validation of Kodak's initial production planning. But I have no doubt Kodak will already have a pretty solid idea of the projected sales to have made a successful business case for the camera in the first place. Even post-Chapter 11, Kodak ain't some start-up gauging interest after having come up with a cool idea. Therefore, I think this is more about gaining a narrower set of personal data to allow more targeted campaigns. Apart from looking forward to ever more specs and data on the camera, I am mostly interested in Kodak's promise for "special offers on Super 8 Film and processing, as well as other exclusive offers from Kodak", and what those will comprise through which providers, at what quality level and what price. For more viva la revolución aesthetics and a way to get the same email invite, go sign up to the Kodak Collection™ newsletter first. You gotta buy into the Collection first to become part of the Collective :ph34r: :rolleyes: .

Super 8 is THE format for the new generation of blacksploitation filmmakers. ;)

This is ghetto cool indeed, but are you streaming the video signal from the iPhone to another monitor? Because apart from this being some cool MacGyver cinematography, I am somewhat struggling to see the point of the construction, as looking directly through the viewfinder will give you better visual quality and more accurate cadrage for framing a shot. Or am I missing something :) ?

@ Keith Walters By the sound of that, it seems that basically London 2012 is emulating Sidney 2000 as closely as possible :rolleyes: Indeed, as with all the Shakespeare celebrations, exhibitions, Neil-MacGregor-podcasts and what not, one could easily believe that it will be the Man from Stratford that will personally open the games, and not James Bond (as is rumoured and increasingly probable... :o :blink: )

No, Will, your memory is not betraying you, the 35 III was the first Arriflex with registration pin movement. For my part, I was continuing to David's post #11 on low budget cams generally and my recent experience of what you get for what bucks. /-Michael

I might be mistaken but I am unaware of a Sun/Cloud switch on the Bauer C2 M super. Do you by any chance mean the switch on the right-hand side of the body, depicting a sun or a bulb symbol depending on the switch being moved up or down? If so, then that's the Wratten 85 filter switch. There are plenty of threads discussing the Wratten 85 filter function on Super 8 cameras here, as well as the problematics of using modern high-ISO and daylight film stock in (non-)coded Super 8 cartridges with mostly automated Super 8 cameras. Just do some more research here using these search terms. In a nutshell - and probably not very helpful - sorry: As you might know, Super 8 cameras were designed based on the use of tungsten film stock only, and thus around two alternative exposure index settings, reading either ISO 25/40 or 100/160 depending on whether the Wratten 85 switch is set on sun=daylight=Wratten85in/bulb=tungsten=Wratten85out. The Bauer C2 M super has a very good Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens, and its maximum opening is f/1,8 indeed, probably down to f/22. This was top-notch glass for its time for Super 8. Unfortunately, the automatic exposure control cannot be deactivated to manual aperture control. You can do a manual lock of the f-stop that the TTL exposure meter has selected by pressing the 'fix'-button at the front of the camera. However, I am pretty sure the camera does not have an exposure scale in its viewfinder, depicting or even naming the current f-stop selected (correct me if I am wrong). This now disables any precise knowledge or attempts at "back-engineering mathematics" on the f-stop, exposure time, shutter opening angle etc. If I am not missing any trick this camera has - I don't own Bauer cameras from the pre-Royal-moniker era but use a variety of more modern ones to great results - there is just no way for you to measure the f-stop internally, or measure it externally with an external lightmeter and then adjust the aperture accordingly. All you can do is look through the viewfinder, trust that the exposure is "balanced", fix it through manual lock to an average you might need for the take, and hope for the best. This limits what you can do in terms of camera movements (moving from dark to bright spots, so to say), but I gather you are not setting light anyway. I also understand that you are shooting in a dense forest, which is pretty much a very difficult location to shoot in purely practically at daytime because of all the light scatter and high shadow/bright-spots contrast. But I recall a film we made in the mid-1980s, using the old Kodak Ektachrome 160 T, shooting deep in a forest (that was a kinda Spielberg-"Super 8"-type thingy B) :P back when we were young) and having recently watched that reel, we were surprise how good the results actually were! Have you done some test reels with this camera? Does it work in normal lighting situations (exposure correct?)?

I agree with David that the best choice would be to go for an Éclair Cameflex CM3 or an Arriflex 35 IIC. Especially the Cameflex is much underrated - Costa-Gavras brought his own to IDHEC, and continued using it even when he no longer would have had to. Compared to a few years ago, you can fetch a IIC one Ebay for around €1500. With patience, you can snap one up for less: Just for the fun of it, we recently obtained one for €500 in pristine working condition :blink: B) . Even the projectionists at ARRI wouldn't believe that this was a IIC with a World War II lens on it when they projected the test reel in-house. And renting an Arriflex 35 BL with a good set of fitting lenses strikes me as a much more rational, i.e. economic or reasonable approach than start tinkering around with old Debries in one's machine shop. Unless of course that's supposed to be part of the path to cinematograpic glory ;) .

Yes, it is possible to remove the Beaulieu Reglomatic electric motor servos housed in two lateral tubes alongside the lens, which allow automatic exposure control and electric zoom control (they are not electronically regulated - that only came with the Beaulieu 6/7/9008-series). It's only really worth to do so on lenses like the Schneider Beaulieu-Optivaron 1:1,8 / 6-66mm (C-Mount) or the Angénieux f/1,2 | T/1,4-2,1 / 6-80mm (C-Mount) because of the quality of the glass that was used. You can find screws behind the covers at the front of the tubes and along the collar of the chassis of the housing. Whether you would rather hand this over to a professional depends on your experience working with optics. If you are in Europe, people to address would be Bjorn Andersson ( bjorn.andersson@brevet.nu ) of ex-Beaulieu Sweden fame, Ritter-Media Service of ex-Beaulieu Germany (Ritter Film + Videotechnik GmbH) fame, or other UK/US fine-mechanics workshops that regularly get mentioned here in this forum. You might also want to try Wittner Cinetec, which essentially is Beaulieu nowadays. Beware that you might not get as smooth a manual movement with these vario lenses as you would expect from those for larger formats like S16 etc. The resistance you feel when operating the lenses manually is not entirely due to the mechanics connecting the lens rings with the Reglomatic drives, but due to the manufacturing quality deemed okay for these (at that time:) consumer market optics. In order to get a super-smooth operation, many vario lenses in that era were equipped with fluid zoom drives such as by Chrosziel.

This thread has gone a long way. I wonder how much life it has left in it? More than the UK film industry post-Cameron? /-M

Oh dear, that will be interesting to follow through development... :huh: More Prometheus, or more Indy IV in outcome ? :unsure:

Official announcement by DCMS and BFI just today: Link to BBC News Online

I second that motion! I think 'Aaton' or 'Aaton Film + Digital' would do the job.

Funny: Jean-Pierre Beauviala in signature dress featuring in the photo on page 3 of the Aaton PDF brochure Brian posted originally. B)

Hi James, I am one of the three guys out there who have a working Bolex 16 Pro ;) . Can you be a bit more specific what you mean with 'jamming'? Where are you at in the loading process? Is the film rolling off the reel clockwise, and is it in the right side (left chamber) of the mag (a common error)? Have you torn the film over the cutting edge, with no loop formed and no film protruding beyond the holding clamp? Do you have a bobby in the take-up chamber of the mag? When pushing the load lever on the body, does the camera sound mechanically different than it sounded before (as you say you have already shot a reel of film with it)? Normally, loading the camera is the easy bit of operating it. So a little bit more details from your side would be handy for us to help you. Refer to the manual Dom send you as I have a complete set of documentation and could help you talk through that. /-M

The "cat-on-shoulder" marketing claim is really steeped in history, and comes from a time when shoulder designs were still rare as 16mm cameras where mostly handheld in front of the operator, 1950s-style. Think: Arriflex 16 St or 16 BL (Tim is the master of 16 S knowledge B) ). The comparisons made by others here with flatbase cameras like the Arriflex 16 SR-series is spot-on in terms of the "comfort" camera operators can now benefit from thanks to "cat-on-shoulder", but actually it's a bit of an anachronistic comparison because the SR was presented in 1975, years after Jean-Pierre Beauviala had presented/launched the Aaton 7 back in 1971/3. In fact, André Coutant's Eclair 16 NPR of 1963 was the first shoulder-design camera, and the much-delayed Eclair ACL - already designed by Jean-Pierre Beauviala - developed this form factor further into what Aäton now basically markets as "cat-on-shoulder" ergonomics. The ACL is basically the sketch from which JPB created the Aaton 7 and laid the foundation for his own company. In a way, even after "cat-on-shoulder" was established as the preferred form factor for film-based newsgathering cameras by the mid-1970s, ARRI still had the boldness to bring their own very unergonomic design to market that they only ditched with the 416 roughly three decades later :huh: . Personally, I think the Aatons are still the best cameras to have on your shoulder for any longer time, and the most ergonomic ones to operate. Better than the ACL or similar cameras like the CP 16, News 16 or even the 416. The only camera coming close to the Aatons is in my view the Bolex 16 Pro, a camera introduced in 1970 ahead of the ACL and Aaton which few people know.

I have been away from this board for a few years, I admit, but reading this thread as one of the first upon return made me blush in admiration for those who are still on here and devoted to supporting those who seek advice on professional cinematography, and shudder how this ethic blinded too many to just post a "don't feed the troll" alert that would have sprung up within minutes on other boards. :) I mean, c'mon, I taught over the past years in academia, and saw alot of stunning things that would make a great film script, but all this is just surreal...

Have been away from this site for a while (years, oops), but to pick up on Anthony's point regarding this interesting proposition of a digicam: KineRAW-S8p ; what does the S8p moniker stand for in the trademarked product name, or what does it refer to? /M

Yes, all recent posters keep coming back for more. It's like a feeding station for drivel. Started as a worthy topic, but by now, it reached the stratospheric niveau of filmshooting.com. Which means that this is the first thread ever that I am going to unsubscribe from here, before someone posts an Adolf "Downfall" Hitler Super 8 theme clip. I hope this thread can die gracefully, as there is nothing more to contribute to it.

After placing a phone call to iLab, Pete mailed me that I could pick up the HDD and the neg, and that all was done as requested. The transfer was free as promised, i.e. complimentary because of the "past baggage" of this Super 16 deal. So yeah, that's a wrap for me. -Michael

I would like to give an update on the situation, given that this thread had quite some resonance and very helpful insights. (Also thanks for the two private messages I got that shared my experiences with iLab). I escalated this for the third time to the two CEOs of iLab, explaining the situation as in my first post, plus attaching pictures of the torn envelope and reminding them that I am still waiting for a quote for way over a week. Next day, I got a reply from one of them, Martin Mcglone. To keep things fair, I would like to post his email in its entirety and let them have their saying themselves: And then, most kindly: I got a call from their rushes manager, confirming the complimentary HD transfer, and I clearly thanked them for that. Next day, I got another e-mail, as apparently someone showed them this cinematography thread (which they seemed to mistake for a cinematography blog of me personally, or something) I must say I did not react kindly to the last sentence "I feel that this is the only way...", as this could be interpreted as "if you don't, then we won't". And I pointed this out in my reply to Martin, also explaining that ciny.com is a pro forum and obviously I will keep members here updated on the progress on the situation. And they got that: So today, I dropped an HDD off at 55 Poland Street to get my uncompressed HD transfer going, in person after arranging this with Pete. The place looks better than the other places in Poland Street's medialandscape, and Pete Spittle seems to be a great guy. So, it's now being processed for free, and I will pick the HDD and the neg up next week. In summary, looks like a solid company, nice gesture to compensate my troubles, but their main email still bounces as of today, and all this doesn't explain the overall delay and why noone notices this stuff internally for, well, months! But anyway, overall, once things actually start to get into gear and in motion, iLab looks like delivering the quality I want after all. Keep you posted how this continues, -Michael @ Phil & John: Phil, you are a video guy now?? The gods show mercy on thy soul B)

Thanks guys, for the feedback. I know Soho Film Lab back from when it was still Todd-AO, and had very good experiences with it. They also offered S8 neg services, which I appreciated when mailing things to Andec Lab in Berlin were not an option. I just wanted to check out iLab. I didn't notice that Soho also offered the Fuji Complete 16 package. Had I known that, I would have stuck with them, and not tried out iLab. I already contacted Fuji a while back and they told me they had another complaint, too. If I don't get a quote from them this week, I will drop in to iLab personally and have a chat to sort this out, or fetch my neg from them and bring it to Soho for further post work. -Michael

Does anyone had any experience using iLab, the London-based film processing and post company? I would love to hear from you guys. Their website is here. In order to do a cheap test-reel with my Eclair 16 NPR coming back from its annual TLC plus a new S16-mod magazine (basically to see that all is well with the gear) I bought into a "Fujifilm-iLab S16" package deal, offering a packaged stock/process/digital rush service. I am honest to say that I had nothing but problems: Fuji sent out the raw film reel next day by courier, but from iLab's side, I didn't hear if they had received the reel, done the processing, I didn't receive the digital rush (simple DVD transfer), for weeks (!) no one answered the phone or replied to e-mails, then suddenly e-mails bounced saying their "inbox quota" is exceeded. Then I mailed to the CEO guys directly, and two days later, got a call saying that they had send out the rush weeks ago, but they weren't able to present me with a proof of posting or tracking number or any proof they had done so. To my horror, they then told me that they can do another rush IF (!!) they find my neg in their storage. A few days later (not within 24h as told) I received a mangled and torn-in-half A4 envelope (plain paper, no cushioning) with a DVD-Video in a transparent sleeve (not even a cheap case) by regular mail (not courier as told). Right now, I am waiting for 2 weeks to get a quote for a DI.... I think I might pick up my negative from these guys in person because I can't trust them posting it back to me. I hope this is a one-off horror story. I would be relieved to hear that others here had better experiences with iLab. Or not? Thanks for the feedback, -Michael