Lester Dunton

The camera and lenses will be at the BSC show this week, and at NAB on the JL Fisher booth.

The BNC is available if you want to use it with the 0.7's ... will also be adding his 70mm BFC camera soon.. The package also comes with cooke speed panchros for faint hearted!

You could try a spiratone fisheye attachment on the super baltar, it would require a thread adaptor.

We do still have the 0.7's together with the camera. Looking to move them into the digital age, and have been considering fitting them to an Alexa M head. the reason being that the stock lowpass filter is too thick to allow correct back focus adjustment, therefore a special chip block has to be produced. The Mitchell however is ready to go!....

Try http://www.wilmingtoncamera.com/ -not in LA, but willing to ship.

But the beginning of an exciting new Digital Era...

I have used video projectors off screen playing back plate material to produce specular highlights within the set and on artists.(eg Knight bus sequence in Potter 3) I have found synchronization not too much of an issue if carefully planned. It is also important to diffuse the light from the projector eg hampshire and 251, and desaturate the plate material, and if possible use projectors with a xenon light source.

Mark, You should be fine, to be sure use a 180 degree shutter, and to double check, take the film mag off, cut a small piece of tracing paper, place it in the camera gate - be careful of the pull down - run the camera and projector, and view the inverted image to confirm lack of flicker.

It is a Moy 16 inch head, converted by Samulson's to a two speed Samcine. There were a range made 10 inch, 16 inch and a 22 inch, for the blimped Technicolour cameras.... We still have spare parts!, not to mention possibly the head in the picture.

I think over 30 different types of Fairy lights were tested, and the final ones were from France I believe. Most of the film was shot using the Arri Variprimes.

Joe Dunton still has a 17 foot photographic test model of the Discovery, - not the final version used in the film. I don't think the real model survived.

I think there were several factors why a DI finish was used. During the shooting of the film a Photochemical finish had been anticipated, and great care was taken during shooting to allow this. I think a combination of time constraints, subtitles, and 65mm material made going a DI route acceptable.

3 chip DLP projector will be fine with regard to flicker using 180 degree shutter at 24 frames,and you will not require sync. The UHM in the Panasonic bulb will tend to photograph slightly green, and you may want to correct with 1/8 Magenta.

Hi, Xtal Express anamorphic lenses are available through Panavision, however MOY is the branding for the range of spherical macro lenses, which are mainly rehoused Leitz primes - which are also available from Panavision. Please contact me off list if I can assist you further. Regards, Lester Dunton.

As you say, most of the patents are past the useful date, although I think that possession of the actual drawings hold a lot of value!

The records and drawings, spares and patterns are still intact, but we have just moved them and are about to embark on a re-organisation project. Hopefully by the end of the summer we will have a website available for enquiries, but in the meantime we will do our best to look some of this infomation up for you.

The camera exists, 4 chip (with 2 green sensors ) , and Fuji zoom fixed to the chip block. Its made by Ikegami.

We are in the process of moving Mitchell camera, which was not part of the equipment sale to Panavision. We still have all the records and spare parts stored.

One of the main reasons for us selling to Panavision is their firm commitment to the Anamorphic lens system. Our Lens inventory is all available from PV, but we are investigating new products - these include 1.34 and 1.5 systems as well as improvements to our original lenses still in PV.- these include 1.3 and 1.5 systems. Its still early days yet, but we are excited about the future.

The name 2.35 research came from a name of a company which was set up between my Father and Samuelson film services in the late 80's. It was supposed to be a stand alone entity which would focus on developing and renting anamorphic lenses. Things changed when Panavision purchased sammys, and we excercised an option to purchase sammys's share. We then slowly reverted back to JDC Xtal Xpress names as there was no longer a need for a joint venture...just some history.