Robert Hughes

You may want to look at a Bell and Howell GSAP 16mm aircraft gun camera from WW2. They are smaller than Super8 cameras, run on 28VDC and take 50' magazines of 16mm film, and are well nigh indestructable, as can be attested to by the fact that they were bolted to fighter plane wings right next to banks of 50 caliber machine guns. The civilian version, the B&H model 200, is a windup camera available for about $20 on eBay nowadays. It takes fine pictures also.

And I think all generalists should be shot. :)

In Minneapolis, Cinesound 2 Ask for Dennis O'Rourke. He's been providing this service for many years and knows his stuff.

Not being a film pro I can only hazard a guess, but it may have to do with the extreme level of blow-up involved from a 35mm print to the screen; anti-halation techniques that work for 5" x 7" paper prints may not hold up to the higher demands of movie film projection?

Cinema-ticity? Cinema-locity? Cinema-mosis? Cin-ereal? Cine-lisciousness? Dixie cups!? Or two finicky women with expensive tastes, are stone silent, always negative - and things never develop unless you're in a dark room. <_<

From what I recall, the 70's looked about like today, except the hair was bigger, the clothes sillier and kitchens had harvest gold and avacado appliances.

Rhinocerous - rhinocerii Hippopotamus - hippopatami Radius - radii Hawaius - Hawaii Bolex - Bolii or is it Bollux? I have an Auricon conversion, and can make out the faint letters of the conversion shop: "Sollen", or "Yollen", or something with 2 'els' in it. Does anyone have any information on this camera? Auricus - Auricii? Sounds like a Star Trek alien species.

My anger control story for the day: One AM call for a 1PM show: After nine hours rigging, working the man lift and hanging truss, the lift was pooped; I couldn't get it to move anymore. We plugged it in and I had an assistant walk with the power cable while I eked a few more positions out of it. But someone called me off to handle another errand, so I left the lift, battery exhausted but plugged in and recharging, so I could move it before showtime. Some time later, I came back and found a video guy had taken the power cable off my lift for his distribution amp - OK, well maybe he was perhaps doing a test and intended to return it when he was done, so I informed the DAV that I needed power back to move the lift and he said fine. Two hours later, my lift was still unplugged, dead in the middle of backstage and the show's starting in a half hour. Thought I, "Well I'll just need to borrow this back for a few minutes and move the lift, then give him back my cord" which I did. Of course, about 1 minute later a very angry video tech came over and got up on his high horse about my messing with his work. I called him on it, that he had stolen the cable from me originally and now a dead lift was sitting in the middle of his projection area. He didn't deny it, he just didn't care that he had screwed over somebody else for his own convenience. I used the cable and moved the lift, then plugged his dist. amp back in, then took a break, before I did something appropriately uncivilized.

I guess I don't post here enough, gotta work and sleep and that cuts into my Internet usage, sorry.

Depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Who is your audience? What is your destination format - Television, Internet, Theatrical/Cinema play? Most audiences feel that video provides a sense of immediacy to a subject - "it's happening now", as opposed to film origination, which seems to put up a formal or historical distance between subject and viewer - "it happened then". Audiences have associations with different formats; normal Super 8 footage reminds people of grainy old home movies; regular DV without special lighting has its own modern home video stigma. Put well shot 35mm against equivalent HD and the differences are more subtle and the picture is rigorously sharp and detailed. If you aren't needing extreme sharpness 16mm (and Super16) is versatile and compares favorably to DigiBeta SP video. Consider the costs; a 2 1/2 minute, hundred feet spool of 16mm film costs as much to purchase and process as two, 60 minute DigiBeta tapes. But if you only need a few minutes of film for the project, the stock cost differential is not as important as the relative costs of equipment rentals. Keep in mind that video records sync audio onto the video tape; if you want sync audio with film your equipment and procedure complexities mount significantly. Consider your post production options. Do you need to telecine film to video (extra cost)? Is HD an option with your post house? Are you needing different end user formats - HD/SD/NTSC/PAL? What is your budget to bring this project to completion, and what is the minimum result that you can accept?

OK, then how about just skip the middle format and do a Piper Cub to hash pipe converter? Not that I'd be able to fly with either one nowadays. :blink: Man, don't Bogart that there film spool...

Hell you could probably convert a Piper Cub or a hash pipe into a DS8 camera, too, but why bother? There are a jillion Super8 cameras out there, just use one of those.

Flash Update! My CP-16RP is running! Thanks to Ken at Whitehouse; he sent out clutch pads, clutch belt, drive belt (which seems a bit big for this machine?), and a magazine belt, and he encouraged me to give it a go, so I did. This machine has seen hard use with SABC South African TV during their troubled 70's and 80's, its last overhaul date was 1986, and the mechanism was filled with SA dust and frayed pieces of drive belt. After a liberal cleaning and rebelting I slapped 20 feet of film into it today and - to my suprise, amazement and joy - it works! Makes me think I can fix a rainy day... Someday when I've got $2K sitting around I'll send this beast in for a proper overhaul and S16 conversion. But for now, I'm set, and for about $100 in parts. Now, on to the Great American Indie Picture!

With jokes like that, no wonder nobody will give you a decent quote ;)

How to become a filmmaker: - Buy a cheap Super 8 camera and a roll of film - Shoot the roll of film - send it out for processing - watch the results and see what you like, and avoid what didn't work - Buy another roll of film and try again. PS It doesn't have to be super 8, you can do it with DV, but believe it or not it's harder to learn with DV because video shooting is so effortless. With film, you've got $$$ running through the gate every time you pull the trigger, so you gain more of an appreciation for conservation of film and time.

Congrats on your first Super 8 outing. That was a sweet little film, it had a Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" Feel to it - I could almost hear "Good Vibrations" playing in the background.

Matthew, have you noticed that the majority of your posts are financially related? This is a cinematography forum, not a bazaar. A camera costs a lot, some cost a heckuva lot. Books cost less, except when they cost more. Go buy the Malkiewicz book, it's probably around $50. It's been standard reading in film schools for decades, so if you wanna be a cinematographer it's got the answers for questions you need to be asking.

Why do you ask? Just morbid curiosity? I've got a Kodak Instamatic in the attic I'll sell you for $2.5 Billion dollars... you want it with or without the Peace Symbol sticker on it? :P I'd imagine that 65mm, IMax and Cinemascope cameras would be very pricey, because they are used only on a comparatively few, hugely expensive productions.

Ah. Pardon my snootiness. You are a producer/investor as opposed to a beginning cinematographer/indie filmmaker. The distinction is important. We see a lot of students here who would rather have other people answer their questions than look up the answers for themselves. No, your equipment is very definitely not crap. You have made a significant investment in video production gear that can produce very good footage. Location handheld video packages typically mount a stereo shotgun microphone on the camera for closeup audio; you can expand on a sound package for video by looking at a separate boom-mounted shotgun microphone, wired or wireless clip-on lavalier mics, and a production audio mixer. Normally the audio is recorded onto the same tape as the video signal, so you would feed the output(s) of the on-camera mic or the outboard mic mixer into the audio inputs of the camera. Sound setups can get more sophisticated, particularly for multi-camera productions, but the above listed gear will provide for most of your needs at the recording end. But before you spend a lot more money, go with your video guy to a local video equipment rental house and hire them to give you a demonstration of a studio package. They can show you the standard gear used in your area and how all the pieces add up to create a production. You can learn enough in an afternoon to keep you busy for the next 6 months.

Several labs can successfully process Fomapan, but some labs that thought they could process it in the new Kodak reversal process got suprised and came back with ruined film. "Rumor has it" that Fomapan doesn't work well with the bleach in the new Kodak process. Before you send off anything important on Fomapan to a lab, make very sure the lab understands that you are expecting them to process Fomapan film, which may require a separate processing machine & chemical kit than Kodak films.

Man, I'd love to work on that. When I drive thru Philly I always look at the SS United States and think what a shame it is, the grand old liner slowly rusting away. I'm down in DC and until 2 days ago was free for next monday. But, as Downix said, it's pretty short notice...

You might consider placing a mirror in an appropriate spot and shooting through the mirror. It will give you some extra distance to work with, allow for a less wide angle lens, and perhaps you can work the imagery and metaphor of the mirror into your scene.

You just spent $5000 on an HVX200 camera. Now I recommend you spend $5 on a book. [abusive rant ON] There's lots of books out there in many different formats; big, tall, short, fat, some with pictures (even in color) and many with words in them also. Some books have big words like "cinematography" in their titles that would answer many questions you may have. Why don't you look for some of these? [abusive rant OFF] In particular, you may want to look for a book that will tell you how to use the equipment you already have before you spend another $5000 on sound gear that may be redundant. You, as with many others beginning to learn about filmmaking and videography, are making the mistake that you can plunk down a credit card and buy a point-and-shoot solution that will look as good as the work of craftsmen that dedicate decades of their lives to learn and master a technically demanding craft. Don't be fooled. The HVX200 is a fine camera but until you get serious about learning about what makes a movie tick your investment remains a pricey vanity item, a home movie camcorder. Cinematography.com has a list of books that are invaluable in learning about the field, and include chapters about audio for video. By the way, PCM is Pulse Code Modulation, the way digital audio works. It's the lingua franca (sp?) of digital audio. All CD's and any other uncompressed audio media you've heard is PCM. There are many different variations on PCM (12 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit, 44.1KHz, 48KHz, 88,96, 192KHz, etc) and they have their pluses and minuses for audio quality versus data used. Your camera's manual will tell you what PCM formats the camera supports.

And if an Arri is out of your price range and you are mechanically handy with small tools, you might consider an Auricon or CP16, which are older American sound sync cameras which can take good images and not force you to sell your mother for the down payment.

Olex is saying you can turn around the lens for close macro work. Lenses usually capture images that are much farther away from the lens than the film gate is; when you shoot close macro, the subject is closer to the lens than the film gate is. In order for the lens to transmit reflected light to your film most effectively and with the least distortion, you take the lens off the camera, turn it around so that the lens mount faces away from the camera, and use a light tight extension tube to set the appropriate macro magnification. Try it, it really works.