Simon Wyss

It will be in the worst place and need to be pushed out the frame.

The underwater thing was just plainly stupid of Paillard. Under water you want a camera with the widest shutter opening possible. The early models up to serial number 100,400 have a 190 degrees shutter opening angle.

To calm your nerves, there aren’t that many aspect ratios in the cinema. Actually, there’s only one, 3:4. The rest is bullocks. Booh, booh, fade out. I’m an old fart. Okay, there were about five different ratios in the beginning. Yeah, Le Prince has hot square images, 1:1. The Lumière cinématographe has a 4:5 aperture plate. Latham’s Eidoloscope shoots 3:7. Then you have Panoramico Alberini, about 2:5. Dickson with Edison made 3:4 images. All that up to 1900 Then half a century no changes. Fox Grandeur in between, alright, but that had disappeared again. In 1952 CINERAMA, followed by all the other wide-screen processes. Television, video? Laughter, fade out The single oldest image aspect ratio still in force and the base of all film cinematography is 3:4 or 1:1,333. It’s here on 35mm film, on 9½mm film, on 16, on Double-Eight, DS-8, Super-8, Single-8. TV screens were 3:4 for half a century. Have you ever seen a wider telly tube? Computers and the digital world make all the fuzz. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. And then again I’ve lived the old times.

I believe you won’t see a difference between prints made from those films and off ORWO UN 54 or ORWO N 74 negatives. If you want to shoot on fine-grain stocks, you have panchromatic internegative films. The ORWO films, manufactured by InovisCoat, are way more modern than Kodak’s black-and-white stuff, they have anti-static layers and dry much faster.

I can make you one, aluminum, lined with velvet. Write me, if interested. Am already at one for the EMEL cameras.

As Dom explains only lenses made specifically for the H-16 Reflex and marked RX give sharp images at focal lengths shorter than 50 mm and at openings at f/3.3 and wider. SOM Berthiot, P. Angénieux, and Schneider-Kreuznach made RX lenses, too. The Kodak lenses aren’t bad per se, the 25 mm Ciné-Ektar or Ciné-Ektar II might sell, CE for $$ (four-glass design), CE II for $$$ (seven elements).

You’re the only one.

So you have a RX-3, big base, T-I lever. To remove the finder you first undo the four screws in the tube cover. Then you can pull the cover towards the front and up. If never opened, it will have (most certainly) rotten foam rubber underneath. After that you flip the finder dowser up and undo the four large-head screws on the tube base. Then you lift the tube vertically off with a little wiggling. On reassembly make sure the ocular slot coincides with the stud on the rear mounting plate.

Re. the modification we read on page 449 of the JSMPTE for June 1960: What timing would have been accomplished is out of my knowledge. Traid made modifications to Bell & Howell GSAP cameras in view of an event timer, pulse-operated interval runs, strip or “streak” operation, and 100 fps function. The additional rollers speak for high-speed operation.

Which model is it? Can you state the serial number, please?

Yeah, similar to the Arriflex 16 with the difference of the swivel axis closer to the film and further to the rear. The rounded protruding knobs along the gate are a cheaper version of the CP ground steel balls which on their turn go back to the round flat pins with the 1933 Ciné-Kodak Special. A truly perpendicularly acting register pin is found in the Doiflex-16 which is not a copy of the Arriflex 16 but a design on its own. It was given a similar outer appearance because the Arriflex 16 had become the most successful professional small-gauge camera up to the early 1960s. I’m preparing an article on the more probable development of it, I mean more probable than what ARRI and its surroundings tell us.

Lush. Maybe Brian Britchard has an idea. Ask him

A 25-ft. roll of Kodak Pan reversal film in Double-Eight cost $2.25 in the summer of 1932, returned as processed 8mm film comprising 4,000 frames. That would be $42.14 as of today. A 100-ft. roll of 16mm Kodak Pan reversal cost $6 then, today $112.37, also 4,000 frames. A 100-ft. roll of Kodacolor reversal cost $9 in 1932, today’s $168.55. The first rolls of Kodachrome as Double-Eight cost $3.75 in 1936 ($69.22), a 100-ft. roll of 16mm Kodachrome $9 processing and return included ($166.13). https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

There are some fascinating designs. The Agfa Movex Reflex has a special spring that pulls through entire spool lengths. The English Specto 88 runs for over a minute on a wind. The EMEL can be cranked further on after the spring is down besides that you can rewind it during a take. Many other cameras allow to retighten the spring while shooting. There are Double-Eight cameras with an electric motor built in, one of the oldest is the Eumig C 4. Younger models are quite slim and compact, say the Canonet. Let’s just forget Super-8, it’s not worth the air we’re breathing while we’re talking about.

Have they? I recommend Double-Eight, still the least pricey film system. You have black and white raw stocks as well as colour films. What might surprise you is the fact that there are many good to very good old cameras, viewers, and projectors around. The older, the more likely all-metal constructions. You can find simple, medium, and elaborate models. Some allow to attach an electric motor, the youngest Paillard-Bolex H-8 even take crystal controlled motors for synch sound work.