Simon Wyss

Amidst my first case of Beaulieu News 16 I’d like to share my fresh insight. A client has sent me two examples, one for spare parts. The mechanism of both doesn’t budge. The motor spins. After four hours of ruthless disassembly of the parts example, I cut all the electric lines that ought to be soldered off correctly, I have come to the conclusion that this is the worst 16-mm. camera by far. The fastest moving parts, that is the motor coupling, the friction clutch behind it and the speed sensor, form the innermost group. One has to dismantle everything in order to separate that group. A fresh rubber coupling? Friction parts? I don’t know where to procure. The problem with the present examples is that no spare parts are useable, they’re all totally rotten. The speed sensor grinds. It is impossible to lubricate anything of the gear train or a bearing from the outside. These were just made to make money. Today, more than half a century later, the remaining Beaulieu News are dying. Mechanics always come first, then optics, then everything else. If somebody wants to endeavour a thorough service, s/he better prepares to at least a grand in cost, at least with me. On the photo I’m showing the motor receptacle. To the left of the gear is the clutch, on the right would sit the sensor.

You have fresh colour films in Double-Eight, Ektachrome 100 D, Vision3 negatives, and print stock. Dennis Toeppen, Daniel Wittner, FPP and others are active there. Alfred Kahl in Germany has offered 2 x 8 mm colour stocks, remnants of which are still for sale.

Yes. What is it that attracts you with Bausch & Lomb?

You won’t like this. Series II and III were made in times when people cooperated, you know what that is? They worked together, hand in hand. The Kinetal line of 1959 is from a different time. Humanity was already on the ever accelerating social downchute, first of all, however, no longer respecting the other. Believe me, I am one of the damned generation (1958 to 1972), I know about BS and how it’s sold. So, although older than the Kinetal the older series can perform better because they were made more carefully. Simple as that

The 15 mm Baltar is the same design as the longer focal lengths. If you refer to the one offered right now on ebay, it’s a fixed-focus lens, maybe not what you’re looking for. Which camera are you using?

The Bausch & Lomb Baltar formula is a Zeiss Biotar variant, Merté’s six-elements design of 1927. Zeiss made it as f/2.0 and f/1.4. Wollensak, dependent on Bausch & Lomb’s optical glass manufacture, built the f/1.5 Velostigmat from 1928 on. Meyer had the Kino-Plasmat f/1.5 since 1926. So there were a number of six-elements double Gauss lenses on the market after the first asymmetric Planar descendant that is named Opic, 1920 (f/2.0). The symmetric Zeiss Planar is from 1896. A 15 mm Baltar is a wide-angle system for 16-mm. film. It was a surprise in its time because wide angles used to be three- or four-glass. The value today will be estimated by the image it delivers and that depends mostly on whether the lens is bloomed or not.

Push the cores out the winds and save them, can be used again. Give the rest to the waste collection. You will feel relieved. Is it this you wanted to read?

The thread title comes like a newspaper headline. Shoppers Rush Before Shoe Ration Coupon Expires Maybe I’m annoyed because I’m closer to people who have fled from a war, to this country also. If you wanted to allude to war, it worked. I got hooked by 1943. If it’s about photography, I don’t follo. If you wanted to bring up today’s madness of millions of packages sent around because (mainly) women return shoes and clothes they don’t like, you wouldn’t say anything in that respect. It’s perhaps the vanity that goes on my nerves. Maybe it’s the childishness to simply throw something out in wait for reactions. I am an old-fashioned, grumpy, mean retard from before computer age. Now we have both explained ourselves.

Daniel, you are certainly a nice fellow but, if you please, cease posting things like that that have nothing to do with cinematography. What’s the purpose of this?

Nobody is forced to buy anything via ebay, to use Super-8 neither.

A model 71-AB with the electric motor drive shaft and bracket added, from between summer of 1927 and spring 1932. The lens is a fixed-focus triplet.

That’s a spool for microfilm. The standard hundred-foot spool for Double-Eight film looks like this:

Maybe yet yourself by having let open the finder dowsers I have inclined towards the film manufacturer because nothing else seems possible to me. A chemical error would need to be a drop falling on the film at one of the upper rollers outside a bath, something very uncommon with the E-6 process. What could be an issue, rather unexpected though, are pressure marks but who would have pounded on the stock and under what circumstances?

Kodak. Employees use green torch lights to inspect the web during manufacture. Someone must have come too close.

You can send the ocular to me, I have the tools to open and close it. To my eye separation or fungus in the rear achromat, fixable

Dennis, would you be interested in standard daylight spools, ISO 1020, made from aluminum, lacquered, with a four- and a three-splines opening? I could have them made, 100 ft. and 50 ft. sizes. There were six Double-Eight camera models that take 50-ft. rolls. Paillard-Bolex H-8, 1938‒1971; GIC 8, later as Movirex and Super Movirex, 1949‒1961; Pathé Lido 8, 1958‒1964; Fairchild Cinephonic Eight, 1960‒1964; ELMO Zoom 8-TL, 1964‒1966, and Fairchild Professional Sound Model 900, 1965.

People have no idea of the Paillard-Bolex H cameras. They had cost around today’s USD5,000 with a normal focal length lens new. The drive spring was relatively new at the time, maybe a year old or two. The spring barrel’s gear was fresh and lubricated. The clutch group’s gears where not too small forces roll over the tooth flanks were also fresh. After 50 years, if we consider the late models, springs can have become tired, even bear a bend, if one has sat partially wound for years. The drying grease has been pushed off the tooth flanks, gears worn. Turret lever brackets are being bent by brute force because it is not bothered to clean and lubricate the turret. Filter slide grooves can be damaged just slightly but with an influence on FFD. Optics threads can be upened from abuse, only a few hundredths. Claws are easily bent and not readjusted. Film drive sprockets can have damaged teeth. NEAR MINT descriptives can be blatant lies. The technical value of an H-16 Reflex of the 1960s or 1970s, sans lenses, lies at around USD 800 to 900 maximum. I hate to say it loud but I must: prices above a grand are in most cases just bold. I am aware of the ongoing Bolex craze.

Foma Bohemia are the chintziest, I have measured 406½' with a 400-ft. load. Hundred-footers vary between 108 and 115 feet.

A longer thread allows one to use shim washers or shallow rings to increase the pull-out. By that one can enter the focus range adjacent to the shortest possible distance of a lens.

Oh, yes, you can wind the spring of Filmo and Eyemo noiselessly. Method One is to regrip the key as you do with an early rigid key. Method Two is to procure such an early key. Method Three is to use a winding crank. I have already used a screwdriver. You can use anything that fits the square opening in the spring core. Think it’s 0.28" □. I prefer the non-coupled turret finder because it allows me to pick a wider angle or a narrower for following an object, if it serves me. I can put on a very long focal length finder lens for searching purposes while having a normal lens ready for a take. I always opt for the open concept.

The 240/GB 627 has a tensator spring and a mechanism different from the Filmo 70. Loop formers were also given. The 70 is heavier but way more rugged and reliable. Perhaps a matter of taste what concerns the number of lenses that you can put on. What the 240 does not have is a critical focusing system in conjunction with the alignment gauge for accurate close-ups and macro work such as you have from model 70-DA on. 70-HR and following take 200- and 400-ft. magazines. The 240 was a modernized cheapo alternative of the Percy era.

Could have happened on a perforator. How dreadful

This is an image of a reversal camera original. You see the frames slightly overlapping, evidence of only few camera models. Most apertures are less in height than the pitch but still higher than projector apertures. However, you also have reversal prints. These basically also show black where no exposure took place (on the printer) but you will see a printer frame almost always larger than the standard camera aperture. Some printers introduced markings on the edges somewhat similar to the various shapes from cameras. They can be two round dots or rectangular impressions and the like. Black-and-white reversal print stocks were used and colour reversal print films. Reduction prints were made as well as contact ones. Blow-ups from 9.5 mm and 8 mm existed, too.

Is there an extension ring left on the rear of the lens? That would explain the matter.

Re. oillite bearings. These are typical of the years from 1958 up in camera mechanisms, the sell-and-forget mentality. A movie camera differs from household apparatus in that it must work in the cold as well as in the heat, more like a car. Do we have oillite bearings with cars? Not in the crucial places I’d try to install a felt wick oil system, if a customer wants it. A felt lining of the surrounding area would swallow excessive oil. Two or three bores would need to be made to some parts as oil inlets. The alternative is service at regular intervals. The main problem of camera maintenance TODAY is that the cams only rarely see dozens and dozens of rolls run through them. In my experience those who scream the loudest for perfect lubrication expose three hundred-footers, then stop filming. As important as the lubrication of shafts in plain bearings is that of gears. Most camera manufacturers have never spent a thought to how gears could be well smeared. Often burrs are present on the tooth flanks prohibiting a good oil trail.