Aapo Lettinen

Normally I try to use negative fill (to remove green from directions it comes from the strongest like from green leaves the sun is hitting directly, or the green undergrowth like grass etc on the ground) and neutral fill / soft artificial light to counter it (from most suitable direction). This also helps to up the exposure a little --> stop down the lens so that the rest of the forest looks more moody (darker) . Sometimes it helps to use large neutral coloured stuff like molton or tarp on the ground under the actors when shooting mediums so that the green reflecting from grass etc. is taken away

I made some plans and will likely build some kind of motor for the npr in winter. I would prefer having at least one preorderer and the first motor traded for a working Eclair NPR camera body(no motor), viewfinder and magazine so that I can use that camera for running my prototype tests instead of using my own moldy camera which does not have a working mag. So if there is someone wanting to trade a spare npr body for a new crystal motor, let me know and we can discuss about the details and schedule.

Yeah there is cleary something going on with the design because it is way more complex than other stuff from same era i have seen. As for the mold restoration, I heat treated the mags and uv treated the camera body and motor and viewfinder. The smell still persists even after couple of vinegar treatments ( it seems to work on paint but rubber keeps the smell perfectly ) so I think I will put the whole camera kit on ozone later on.

it might be possible to replace some of the internal rubber film guides with 3d printed plastic parts I believe. the main issue for me is that the NPR magazines seem to be way too complicated in design for what they are (using lots of unnecessary looking parts adding tons of complexity and making them very difficult and time consuming to open and service) which might make it impractical to repair the badly damaged ones for it being just too much work to take them apart and back together again. I mean, it took me an hour just to disassemble one, just to take it apart as fast as I could, because it having so many individual parts and everything mounted with bazillion tiny little screws of which half are rusted and difficult to remove. Did not count but it has to have like from 100 to 150 individual parts in one magazine which is insane when comparing to almost any other magazine which can handle similar task with may 30 or 40 parts including all the screws. And the internal rubber film guides are just bad design choice, no matter how much they could theoretically lower the running noise (not much at all I assume) because rubber degrades and may be impossible to replace after so many years unless taking working parts from another mag

I think film is nowadays mainly used because people like the workflow, not strictly because "a certain look could only be obtained if using real film". It might be easier to get certain looks with real film but most can be emulated well enough that the audience gets the same feeling and mood from the end result even if it does not look exactly the same. Modern films have had so good technical image quality for the past 30 or 40 years that it is often difficult to get a "moody film look" by just using film and doing nothing else, one really needs to work on the look on film too to get it right and if being lazy it will just look "too good" or "too boring" or "average" and no one might even notice any real film was used after all ? As for the Dune project, I think it would gain nothing from film origination and would just have slightly lower technical quality without any real storytelling benefits if film woud had been used. If the different workflow would had benefit the project in some way (concentrating on different details because of the workflow difference) then it might have different end result. But my main point is that subtle differences almost always go unnoticed and have no real benefit in the end. If wanting to have a different look, make it really stand out instead of trying to "just add little bit salt over it" and people complaining that the film was otherwise good but one scene had some slightly distracting noise in the shadows (real film grain which only made a difference in one scene of the whole feature film because you tried to make the format subtle instead of making it stand out)

It seems that the magazines are not restorable. There is too many moldy internal rubber parts (the NPR seems to have rubber parts in the magazine throat etc various places) and overall the NPR mags seems to be extremely overengineered and complex for what they are so it is just too much work to repair compared to purchasing a used not mold damaged one from somewhere else. So a disappointment with the magazines. Maybe can use them for spare parts (screws, axles, etc). Everything which is rubber is too moldy and nasty and needs to be thrown away. On the other side, the viewfinder seems to be pretty fine and the camera body seems repairable and not too oxidized or moldy. Will see... at least it turns so I can make the NPR motor project in any case, stinking camera or not ?

Thanks! I started to try the heat treatment now, hope for the best. I am prepared to purchase another magazine if destroying the existing ones with heat ? if it works out then the next step will be to wipe the larger surfaces with vinegar to reduce the mold smell and after that thorough cleaning and partial disassebly so that I can clean and restore the mechanics. For the camera motor, camera body and viewfinder I am first using 4 or 5 hours of strong UV light to kill the spores on outer surfaces the best I can. Possibly using vinegar to clean the outer surfaces. Then complete disassembly and irradiating the insides with UV light too for many hours. After that, thorough cleaning, oiling and reassembling. Hope this plan works out. will adjust if necessary and as long as the camera body and the viewfinder survive the project will be a success ?

Were you able to check the gear ratio? I will assemble the circuit boards in late August, probably between 20. and 25. of August. ---- If someone else would like to order the 1-speed kit too, I am still accepting orders til August 10. The orders need to be paid for by August 15 so that I can ensure they stay on schedule

I purchased a non-working NPR body recently which I will try to restore to working condition. It has a non working single speed Alcan motor but I think I will make a new multi speed crystal motor for it which would be optimized for handheld shooting and likely would be smaller than the Alcan motor. So I am planning on making a completely new multi crystal speed Eclair NPR motor which is smaller or at most similar size than the Alcan motor. Some kind of display, either 10 or 12 crystal speeds, likely works at 20v or 24v. Optimized for handheld but tripod mounting possible. Price range would likely be from 1200 to 1400usd per motor depending on how many paid orders there would be. One motor possible to trade for Eclair camera bodies and/or accessories (acl, npr, cameflex). I am busy working on another project at the moment but can likely have the npr motor finished in Spring or Summer 2024 if preordered in Autumn/Winter 2023. In the meantime we can discuss about the most useful framerates and what kind of features would be mandatory for a motor like this. I am always trying to optimize the feature set to fit certain proce range and form factor so I don't want to make timelapse feature for it (makes the motor larger and doubles the price) and electronic shutter parking is not guaranteed (limits motor drice and controller choices and makes the system larger sized and more expensive)

thanks, tons of useful information! will try the vinegar soon. it would surely take most of the mold smell out as well ? I was thinking of treating the magazine doors by heating them to over 60C which is supposed to kill the mold spores. hoping that it would sterilize the soundproofing materials well enough that I could at least use them for camera tests. do you know which kind of filling the soundproofing mag door covers have, is there something which could melt away in such temperatures?

Hi you all! I purchased a non-working Eclair NPR which has some mold damage, especially in magazines (soundproofing materials etc have some mold on them) and some corrosion damage as well. It was pretty affordable and I mostly purchased it for reference and testing when developing crystal sync motors for Eclairs (to take dimensions from) so it does not need to be in full working condition... but I would want to try to restore it the best I can if it seems to be possible and make some videos of it just for fun. What would be the best way to try to clean camera surfaces (metal, optics, mirror, rubber parts) to try to make sure that the mold does not attack it further/again? one of the mags has door oxidized shut but I will only need one mag and can purchase new mags if needed. the camera body is the main consideration, it seems to turn and work correctly though have not checked the condition of the optics yet and need to take it apart.

the only NPR motor I had previously was the 220V 50Hz 3 phase motor. The non-working Alcan arrived today, it has mold damage but I am sure I can figure out something for it later this Autumn ?

generally speaking you only need spectrometer to balance different lights to each other and everything else is done in post nowadays (like correcting overall colour cast of a scene, rarely done with in-camera correction filters because overall corrections easy to apply in grading and the end result pretty much the same). So you would need it if having different lights and you want to balance them against each other. For overall colour temperature differences the digital cameras with even a basic monitor offer enough tools to replace the separate colour meter and again, if you cannot affect the colour balance on set there is no need to know how off it is so only needed if you can alter it with lighting (for example if you have a green cast in forest scene and you are able to use artificial lighting to counter that) Exposure/light meter is useful to quickly check contrast ratios and overall light levels but it is extremely rare to actually use it for setting aperture on a digital camera. Knowing how to use in-camera scopes is much more useful, the camera basically already is a exposure meter so a separate one is often useful only for checking overall light level (if there is enough light or not) or checking contrast ratios IF you have experience what different contrast ratios should look like (mostly film shooters have this kind of experience so it may not be practical for digital shooters unless wanting to learn it for fun)

I think in a low budget rental world like that, the replacement camera can be some other model than the original one. For example just throwing a 35BL in if the Aaton35 fails. If the client has any experience with film cameras and film shooting in general they would be very happy to make the switch if the alternative is to stop the production entirely... if they continue whining then they should just pay you proper rates or go to a bigger rental house ? Purchasing multiples of same camera model is not fun for a owner-operator but purchasing many different camera models, one of each, can be useful and if there is at least two kits which are capable of sync sound the remaining one would be the backup

Daniil is very skilled technician and can make other 2-perf modifications too, for example for Eyemos

I should get a non-working Alcan motor later this Summer and can check if I can figure anything out about the electronics. or if it would be possible for me to make simple replacement crystal controller for it which would not be overly expensive and would enable restoring these motors back to working condition by replacing all the other electronics than the motor itself. Might be possible if at least 3 could be sold. Will see when it arrives

typically making a mechanically simple new motor using off-the-shelf motor and components with minimum amount of custom machining would make a ACL or NPR fitting motor to cost from 1k to 2.5k usd depending on how many are ordered and pre-paid and how compact it needs to be, if shutter parking is needed and how manual inching is arranged, etc. my 16-speed ACL kits were just a little over 1k a piece and I am planning on making very simple 12-speed crystal motor kits for the ACL for about 850usd a piece. That is about the absolute minimum which is possible if compromising enough on the design to still keep it good to use for actual filming with the biggest annoyance being the slightly difficult manual inching and lack of shutter parking

To me it is always necessary to consider what it would cost and how much work it would be to replace the original motor and electronics of a camera with completely newly made different ones because especially on more expensive high quality cameras the original electronic parts are very rare finds and they will run out at some point (or in a way already have been as far as I have understood) . If the camera uses a built-into-the-camera-body special custom made motor which is of course more compact too than off-the-shelf ones, that is insanely difficult to replace with anything off-the-shelf and it is likely that one would need to get the motor drive itself custom made which is not practical unless there is dozens of cameras to be converted at the same time (which there isn't) and unless those dozens of conversions are all paid up front (which they aren't) and unless there is enough money to make the conversion in the first place (which there probably is not considering that I would estimate it would cost something from 5k to 8k per camera body to convert them) . So this "we made a really cool super compact and nicely enclosed camera body with the nasty motor parts built in" approach does not work nowadays when cameras need to be updated one by one. In comparison with the Eclairs like the ACL, my 16-speed motor uses a off-the-shelf motor drive and few simple and affordable cnc machined mounting parts to roughly mount the new motor to the ACL body. It was possible to make in small enough batches and affordable enough that people had money to buy it and it only took a year to develop. Mind you that I was only able to sell 5 of the ACL motors total so far so the batch sizes are very small and we just have to live with what can be done with a budget of couple of thousand usd of developing money. If the ACL would had had a built-into-camera-body super compact motor like the SR for example has, it would not had been possible for me to make a new motor for it as there was not enough orders that I could had even got the motor drives made, let alone rest of the electronics. The only possibility to make these things nowadays it to use off-the-shelf motors and electronic components so that only the circuit boards and software need to be custom made. it is still tons of work and not generating any revenue but at least it is possible to make in the first place without being a millionare investing one's own money to it without getting anything back. I mean, it is fun to make camera electronics but it is mandatory to at least get my own costs back and that is impossible if there is too expensive outsourced special made parts in the system. A good quality off-the-shelf motor already costs hundreds of usd a piece and a custom made one would likely be thousands a piece with minimum orders in place. No possibility to finance that kind of project if only selling like 5 or 10 of them total

there is couple of 8v gel or agm battery models available which should work electrically pretty well. don't know about the box though how well they would fit. one possibility would be to use a 12v battery with a adjustable step down converter to get to 8v level, that would require pretty large converter though... I think something like a 20A model or such could work

Eclairs should be much easier to repair and find spare parts for than Arris or Aatons. They are lower quality cameras and often more used / lower condition than the Arris or Aatons but 3 to 4 times cheaper as well. Eclair motors are not easy to repair if they fail (just like any other crystal sync motor) but at least there is replacements available (some AZ mods, some of them made by me, etc.) whereas on Arri or Aaton it may be very difficult to restore them back to working condition if the electronics fail unless being extremely lucky on finding original spare parts. There is pros and cons on Eclairs but generally speaking a external motor approach like theirs is tons easier to replace with a completely new out-of-scratch solution, than a built in motor like on Arris and Aatons where one would need to build the new solution inside the camera body which would be extremely work intensive and time consuming and thus very very expensive (, even so that it would be much cheaper to just purchase another camera body instead and leave the non-working one for spare parts. So for "future proofing" the Eclairs are much better but on other aspects the Arris and Aatons are better AS LONG AS THEY WORK CORRECTLY...

here the household incandescent bulbs were phased out years ago but it is still possible to special order certain types of bulbs if needed. Generally they are allowed to sell the "hammer bulbs" (extra durable ones with thick glass and more sturdy filament) and high temperature ones, and one can still order certain wattage normal bulbs at least from abroad. Both clear and frosted bulbs are still available in normal E27 used here. I would imagine the ban working similarly in the States, the "hammer bulbs" and high temperature ones left alone because they are very hard to replace with leds and meant for special uses rather than normal household lighting. One should be able to get "hammer bulbs" with the same base than normal bulbs so that one could replace normal bulbs with them in practicals on film shoots. One other thing is that on most parts of the World, companies are allowed to order and use different stuff than individuals and should be easy to get incandescent bulbs for your company when making movies. The bans and such tend to drive the prices up though so that would be a reason to stock them if needing lots of bulbs on shoots

the one 16-speed motor kit I had in storage is SOLD now and there was no additional orders for the 16-speed motors before the deadline. Can say safely now that the 16-speed version can be discontinued, will store the remaining materials as spare parts and I will continue with other projects from now ? A total of five kits was made with the external crystal control box (the "Main" version) of which I kept one for myself, and I made one built-in version which was built into the camera base. So a total of 6 new motors made for the ACL during the project. I was originally planning on making 8 but six is not bad at all and I'm happy that they worked so well in the end. ---------- So the 16-speed crystal control motor is discontinued now and I will only make repairs and spares if needed, no new motor kits are sold. ------- But it is possible for me to make simpler 12-speed rotary selector displayless controllers for the ACL with exactly similar motor unit than the 16-speed system used, only the control box is different with just a simple speed selector for 12 crystal speeds and likely has a variable non-crystal speed knob too. It depends on the batch size how much per kit they would cost but likely from 850 to 900 usd + shipping. If there is any interest in these, I can make a batch later this year (likely somewhere between October and December) . Let me know by DM if you would like to order a 12-speed kit like this. They need to be paid for about 2 months before starting building them so that the exact price per unit can be worked out (knowing the exact batch size).

I shot the last project with the Panasonic S5 , recording prores422hq and proresraw with NinjaV recorder. Mainly I wanted to use it because of lens options ( I used a mix of old spherical Lomos and Nikon AI-S lenses plus some Tokinas for wide angles) but for light sensitivity too. With very small crew I need to light efficiently and needed quite sensitive camera for that reason. Something like a Blackmagic could had been an option but there is no way in hell those things could be gained nearly as much as the S5 and most of it did not need to be raw so no practical reason why would had needed to take less sensitive camera. Another thing is that "dedicated cinema cameras" consume tons more power than stills cameras which have very efficient ASICs and with limited charging possibilities it was way easier to shoot with the S5 + NinjaV setup for needing less batteries and could use cheaper batteries too. The third reason is that a mirrorless + separate recorder kit can be made extremely short and compact which was very important when shooting in small ints and in a cavern needing to squeeze between rocks to get some shots. The fourth reason is that a mirrorless camera can have a built in image stabilizer which saved couple of the shots which would had been garbage with a "cinema camera" for being too unstable and having no room for any kind of tripod or stand to rest the camera on. so when shooting on real locations with minimal crew and gear it can be very efficient to use a dslr if the recording format is just high enough quality. "Cinema Cameras" are good for situations where there is more room for the kit and enough crew and power to light everything to 800 ISO. Like said previously I shot comfortably at 12800 ISO at times with the S5 + NinjaV which would be outrageous with a "cinema camera" and likely would mostly have noise instead of usable image

this is one of the issues of today's world too. You don't need to practice and have skills because it is allowed to learn on the fly and waste everyone else's time on set for not doing your homework and needing to test everything on the actual shoot rather than pre prod. one can learn to light and plan efficiently on digital too (without film experience) if needed but that is not considered mandatory because with digital one often has this attitude that resources can be wasted because it is somehow seen "free" to waste them... whereas with film you can't do anything without those planning skills so you need to have them first and THEN can start shooting great stuff. Quite often when working with 'digital-only' persons I would want to switch off the monitor and hide its power cable so that they would stop running back and forth between the set and monitor to test simple stuff which could be adjusted in 5 secs if just looking at it with your eyes ?

here it is quite rare for indie filmmakers to have any real film experience. even rarer that the experience would be on 35mm instead of just having shot one roll of super8 in the past and claiming that they know all about film ? Film experience can be a way to promote your skills and to be remembered better but in the end all the paying customers want video anyway. They love to talk about film stuff though so it is a good conversation starter and offering film origination in pre prod is a nice way to show them there is multiple different ways to make the project and that we will always do our best to find the best possible solution for them. so it is important to show that the working style and shooting medium is not dictated by the skills of the DoP and the availability of gear, just only by what suits the project best ?