Aapo Lettinen

One reminder about the project: These motors are preorder-only items as I cannot afford making extra ones, they have so many expensive parts in them. Additionally it would lower the quality if I would use part of the budget for extra ones so I will only make the amount ordered as lowering the quality would not be fair for other people who have paid beforehand 🙂 if wanting this motor, either the basic 2-speed or the advanced 10-speed model, please let me know this Autumn as some of the motor components are purchased and custom made all at once and it may not be possible to guarantee the original 1300/1900 prices if ordering late. payment schedule can be arranged if needed but I will likely get some of the parts made already in September or October so it is necessary to at least know if there might be extra orders later on 🙂

I got a working NPR camera body here now and can start designing the final mounting plate when the brushless motor drive I have chosen arrives. I will first finish the mounting plate and get it cnc made out of anodized aluminium so that I have the basic platform to build on and can already run film tests. So I will first make the plate which connects the motor to the camera body. I will then build the control electronics into a external case, first one speed and run lots of tests with it and then starting adding speeds. I might shoot some test material with the work-in-progress electronics if the budget allows and there is time. I will then finish the bottom part of the motor when having the final electronics made so that I know the exact dimensions and shape of the circuit boards and all the features work correctly. Will post some images of the progress when having the final mounting plates made. I just got some ACL parts made out of aluminium with similar anodized finish and they looked great so I am sure the same finish works on this motor too 🙂

most of the older underwater stuff I have seen shot on film was either mediocre or plain bad looking. there was lots of opinions in 2000's already how video cameras are so much better for underwater, back then the top ones were F900 series gear so nothing compared to what is available today. pool stuff may be pretty OK on film but if the water is not absolutely crystal clear and the lighting perfect the film would just be bad choice for underwater I think. unless it is some kind of art piece where you are not supposed to have clear vision anyway. A typical "underwater scene" on a "normal movie" would be someone accidentally falling into water or a car splashing into water. so typically a kind of low angle silhouette towards the surface and something splashing in. that would work on film of course and very short footage amount available could do for the couple of takes of the single shot needed. Shooting other directions like sideways and downwards the contrast starts to lower very quickly and light levels vanish, so if wanting more coverage the film would already show its limits (unless again shooting in a pool with crystal clear water and controlled lighting and blasting 18k's into the water to get some base exposure)

Yes, money and logistics. Sometimes heavy cameras but fully built cinema camera is heavy anyway no matter what format it shoots. The accessories just add a ton to it. Sometimes one needs to shoot digital if there is not enough light for film. But even then one could shoot some part of the movie on film by selecting scenes which benefit from it the most. Film being super expensive is not true if one makes hybrid productions which combine film and digital. But most of the people, especially those starting out, are mindlocked that there is a very specific and only way how movies can be made and they don't want to plan carefully to make hybrid production possible so they tend to make up excuses to justify their choices like "you can't shoot 100 takes of every shot if using film" or "I need to be able to grade and edit the material in an hour after it is shot so that I can be sure we didn't miss it" or they are afraid that one gate hair would ruin the entire movie, and so on 😄 film camp often claiming that all digital looks bad and makes you lazy etc. Well digital can fit some projects perfectly and sometimes it just does not make sense to shoot on film, for example if the camera needs to be very small or lab is very far away like on different continent. Stuff like underwater shots, very low light, extremely low contrast, etc just don't make much sense to shoot on film because you will need to digitally manipulate the contrast a lot and grain texture makes it really difficult, basically necessitating removing the grain, making contrast corrections and then adding digital grain to make it look like film again. especially the very low contrast uncontrollable lighting like underwater and fog with possible bright highlights every now and then makes film shooting very unfavorable as you would need to add weird gamma curves and hundreds of % of midtone contrast which would explode the grain and can actually cause solarization type of effect on grainy image if contrast change is extreme

the motor belt, the "normal looking one" is easy to get. I have extra ones too which I could sell and some persons closer to you should have too. Or cheaper alternative would be to find something similar enough like Steve suggested. The special belt which drives the takeup spindle and the footage counter is more difficult to get. I think they were commonly called "clutch belt"? I used to buy them from Whitepoint when they still sold on ebay but nowadays you may need to find the closest matching alternative. Go to someplace which sells tons of different belts if they have anything similar enough. Replacing this "clutch belt" is much more challenging than other belts because the main circuit board is on the way. then there is the external belt which drives the magazine, that is just some very generic "rubber band" style belt which can be replaced with anything which has approximately similar dimensions. Visual Products in the States repairs CP cameras and probably would have belts but they would of course cost much more than something bought from a generic belt store. the Whitepoint belt kits with all the belts needed for CP used to be a little under 100usd or so.

yes tennis balls protect the floor when moving stands and like David said you can probably add some cinefoil or other stuff over the most problematic lights. At least if the ceiling is not super high and you have ladders available. If the ceiling lights generate heat you may need to leave some room for air to circulate so that they are not "fully taped shut" but the cinefoil kind of hangs from the ceiling and blocks the light from going downwards but the sides are more open so that the lights don't overheat. with old school fluorescents we used to rotate the tubes just a tiny bit to switch them off but still hold them in place, some people removed the ignitors instead and some did both. this may cause overheating in some combinations so need to know what to do and watch over them all the time (and not forget to switch them all on after the shoot, the client does not know what you have done to the lights and they may not be able to figure out how to switch them back on or may think that they are entirely broken). the cinefoil etc stuff can be easier and faster especially if the lights are not fully open and thus bulbs are difficult to get to. If they have drop ceiling you might be able to hold the cinefoil pieces or other stuff in place with magnets as the framing is supposed to be steel in almost every installation. taping may sometimes peel off paint from ceiling tiles if they are low quality so may be better to tape or otherwise attach to the framing instead if there is one.

some of the biggest issues would be potentially ugly colour of the light, the possible flicker and light coming from unfavorable direction so that it makes people look ugly (for example a very hard top light which leaves the whole face into shadows and overexposes the hair). Especially the light direction is often really bad and if you can't block or diffuse or switch off the original lights you just need to add lots of additional light from more favorable direction (for example soft side light) to try to overwhelm the space's own lighting. Usually the overwhelm method has pretty OK end result, you may see some wrong coloured light like green-ish or purple-ish light from the original lighting on the hair but that is usually not an issue on interviews and event stuff as long as you main lights look really nice on faces. I often needed to shoot interviews this way, by overwhelming the original recessed lights with tons of my own lights so that one barely notices the original ugly coloured top lighting of the room. Typically I shot stuff in office rooms where one switch controlled the lights of the adjacent rooms too and they could not be switched off for the interview because other people were were working in the other rooms and could not see anything if the lights were off 🙂

I think the issue would be that most potential users don't have much possibility to test out different printing services and settings and materials and thus they can easily see it being too difficult to get these made if they only need one or two. I don't think Jenny would personally need to get these printed and sell them one by one but SOMEONE would need to do that if wanting to get them used more by regular users. Typically for this kind of stuff one would first collect enough orders, take the money and then make all the printing and shipping in one batch to keep the costs down. Kind of community project and nothing commercially viable but one would get the testing costs covered and would get enough profit to buy one roll of film to shoot as a compensation for all the hard work needed 🙂

Yes it was supposed to be great for news gathering etc stuff but was so late in the market that video cameras were already there. Pretty rare camera, I think they made couple of hundred of them. I know someone in Europe who said they use Bolex Pro for narrative stuff. I think they were renting them too. People using them for short films etc. and he said it was pretty handy for indie use when in proper condition. I was investigating on making a new external control unit for the camera because the original one is pretty clumsy and I think they didn't have enough control boxes for all their cameras. I checked the motor system briefly and said that it is fully possible to make a crystal control box with more speeds and much more compact than the original. maybe making something finished for the Bolex Pro in the future, will see

but it ruins the whole project if you need to use professional printing service for it to work, the whole idea of open source gadgets is to do everything at home and not need to pay someone else even if the end result would be better 😅

the value of the package seen on this thread is probably something between 2k and 3k usd. If someone would like to give it some extra collectors value why not but compared to other cameras with approx similar features it is definitely not worth more than 3k even if it works. One thing I have noticed about purchasing stuff from island countries is that they often have humid environment most of the year and there is higher risk of having corrosion and mold problems on equipment bought from those countries. Depends a lot on how it was stored and used but noticeably higher risk nevertheless. For example UK, Japan, some US states like Florida and Gulf of Mexico area, some mid and south american countries, most of New Zealand, anything close to equator or having monsoons like India, Indonesia, etc. are generally higher risk than the cold drier countries. If the equipment was used close to sea it may have quite a bit of corrosion from saltwater mist as well. Another thing is something bought from Middle East, Central Asia, etc. which can quite often be full of sand and dust. Very bad for anything mechanical and needs complete disassembly to try to save the bearings. Just something to keep an eye for. Island countries and warm-ish coastal states = possible corrosion and mold, Dry inland countries = very likely tons of sand and dust inside the gear.

Today is the deadline for final orders of 2-speed ACL crystal sync motors. This motor type has internally switchable 24/48 and 25/50fps crystal sync and wild variable speed which goes up to over 70fps if needed. Works with 18 volts, can be used with for example a power tool battery or one can use higher voltage battery and step down converter to power it. The motor is powerful enough to run the ACL reliably with full 400ft loads. Pictured is the empty housing to show the size of the motor compared to the ACL with 400ft mag. I will need to order the rest of the CNC machined parts for these soon and this is the only batch of these made, after which I will concentrate on much more expensive designs. So the final chance of getting a affordable ACL motor if needing one. The 2-speed model is 830usd, can be paid in 2 parts if needed, or if paid all at once one would get free shipping. I also have a 9-speed (18 crystal speeds total) version of this motor which is 1100usd. There is still some 2 weeks left to order those ones. The ordering for the 2-speed model closes today. Both motor types will be delivered in late August / early September 2024.

yes of course you will want a cage but it does not need to be the most expensive one. And one can lock the PL adapter to the baseplate too if the cage does not allow it. locking to the cage is ideal but one can manage without the cage and pl adapter being from same manufacturer and expensive. Of course if the price difference is small, then why not. But if the cage costs a grand I would skip it and purchase better camera body instead, if there is tons of expensive accessories thrown to a simple mirrorless kit one could buy a more dedicated real video camera instead and forget the mirrorless entirely if not specifically needing high light sensitivity or ibis which most reasonably priced video cameras lack. using PL lenses might be necessary on some productions especially if the mirrorless camera is used to supplement a larger and better A-camera. but I think most of the users who would do indie films with mirrorless cameras don't use PL lenses at all because they are more expensive and offer little benefits if not having a separate focus puller or if not needing parfocal zooms for regular zoom-ins (which are rare in actual filmmaking though on experimental stuff more common. I have been on exactly one professional movie production which used zoom lens for actual zoom-ins and zoom-outs, every other productions have used zooms only as variable primes or shot on prime lenses alltogether. So it is very, very rare to actually need a zoom lens for zooming and actually needing it to be a real parfocal constant aperture cinema zoom). So I would not assume all mirrorless users automatically need PL mount even if making low budget indie shorts and stuff. Most of them are using EF-mount or similar for 99% of stuff anyway. Personally I use Nikon mount lenses most often and only hook up the PL mount if needing to use Lomos.

Ideally a mirrorless camera body would be somewhere around 2000 - 2500 usd range if wanting it to be good quality and the cage + pl-mount + baseplate + rods + shoulder pad + handles etc. kit somewhere around 1 grand or not much more. Then separately some kind of monitor and battery system you can use with other cameras too. Just use the Chinese cages and pl-mounts etc parts and some second hand used mattebox and ff if it is for low budget use or a c-cam or d-cam. Using very high priced new premium quality accessories with it is not necessary in most cases or if it is, use something very universal which can be used with other cameras too as you will likely update the camera body every two years but the accessories need to last you much longer and you will very likely switch to different manufacturer ecosystem even multiple times. That is also why I don't recommend high priced cages as they are very camera model specific and you always need to buy new one when updating the camera body. Personally I have only the cage camera model specific and pretty much all the rest of the stuff is interchangeable between cameras and some of it very old, the FF is a used Chrosziel from 80's and most of the baseplate and mattebox stuff is from the times of my first dslr, about 15 years old, same with most lenses. It even happens to be that the two Panasonic mirrorless cameras can use same batteries so did not even need to buy two sets of batteries, saved some 200 on that. It is important that the external monitor, possible transmitters etc. use universal style of batteries (in my case NP-F 960 style, the same than the recorder and smaller Led lights, again big savings) but the mirrorless camera itself can often manage with its own tiny batteries because they usually last from between closer to 2 hours or even more so you should be fine with 3 or 4 batteries

don't know this particular project or cartridge but I think this thread is a good example of how people expect too much from the home 3D printing technology, trying to use it for purposes which would have better end results if entirely different technology would be chosen. I think it is that "OH THIS IS SO COOL I CAN PRINT STUFF AT HOME, NO NEED TO BUY ANYTHING ANYMORE" thing which blinds people a bit and they think that the technology magically solves any and all issues there is 🙂 You know, it is not mandatory to 3d print the whole thing even if some 3d printing is used. you can get stuff machined out of different materials too if it would end up being higher quality choice than printing. And there is professional printing services with much higher quality than average home printers can do. ------ For example, people were asking me if i'm going to make load bearing parts with home 3d printing because me mentioning some 3d printing would likely be used on a motor project. Well I can break the home made print with bare hands, absolutely NOT going to trust it holding the full weight of the 16mm film camera! there is a aluminium cnc machined "skeleton" underneath which holds the weight and makes it rigid and the (professional)3d printed stuff is just outer finishing layer to make it nice looking and dust proof. But if something similar would be made open source they would absolutely be like "yeah we will 3d print it all with this 80bucks home printer out of cheapest PLA we can order from China, it is so cool to print the entire motor at home!" Another example is people doing film spool flanges with 3d printer. Not want to be sceptic it might work OK if remembering they are brittle and somewhat uneven... but you could just get similar shape of flange made out of aluminium for like 1 or 2 dollars and does not waste hours and hours of printing time. It would not be as "cool" as the entirely 3d printed gadget but it would be much more durable, better looking and much better working and actually cheaper too in most cases.