Simon Wyss

It was the line of professional lenses for 16-mm. film cameras, ARRI mount and others. None of them has less than five elements, the wide angles have nine. There are the 9 mm, 12.5 mm, 17.5 mm, 25 mm, 37.5 mm, 50 mm, 75 mm, 100 mm, 150 mm, and a Varokinetal 9 to 50 mm. They appeared in 1959 and 1960. The Ivotal 50-1.4 is a special lens, it is a four-glass design. The Ivotal 25-1.4 is an Opic type, six elements. Kinic are cheaper lenses, Petzval design. Serital are enhanced triplets, four-glass dialytes of good illumination evenness through an additional rear element. The 47 mm for Bell & Howell Eyemo corresponds with that, actually a copy of the 1924 Perlynx by Hermagis. Good intercut you have among all the anastigmats which are the 19th century triplet. The Opic types go well with the many other six-glass Double-Gauss systems from the ancient symmetric Zeiss Planar to the Leitz Summar (and the much younger Summicron), to the various Xenon or Baltar. Other similar constructions are the Angénieux S 41, Kern Switar f/1.4 and 1.5, Quinon by Steinheil, Heligon of Rodenstock (mostly ARRI bayonet), Berthiot Cinor 25-1.4 (also RX), Astro-Gauss Tachar f/2. Kinic give a swirly bokeh.

There is no single B&W Reversal look. Fomapan R looks different from the Kodak PXR-TXR-4XR family and Bauchet Super Panchro would have another character altogether, were it still around. To say nothing of Adox U 17, Fotopan R, and the many more once used. You will have a negative-positive image character with a multilayer trichrome negative and a single-layer monochrome contact positive. Contrast can be enhanced with a black-and-white projection positive at a decent lab. Those who are not flexible at processing are not worthwhile dealing with. I had a film lab and delivered prints of every desired contrast. It’s not hard to do.

Was wrong on that. The push-in knob came in 1951 with the 70-DL. Today I have found a special contraption with a 70-D, a switch for ordinary operation as long as you hold down the release button and continuous operation locked. To halt the mechanism you turn the switch lever on the rear of the front bulge and push in the release button once more which brings it back up. Does anybody know this?

Thanks for the honesty Nothing replaces projected film. There are people around who service projectors. Sure I am too far away, just telling, I do brush up them little monsters, a Kodascope Eight-70 is on its way to me right now, an Ampro 8 is waiting for an overhaul, Eumig P 8, too. The Super-8 projectors are not better mechanically than the Regular-8 ones, in fact there are 8-R machines that still function faultlessly after 90 years now. Most Super-8 projectors have shorter lives. Still your Chinon can possibly be brought back to life. Give it some love.

Are you planning to have projection positives made?

Have you ever seen Super-8 camera reversal originals projected? That can have quite good steadiness. I project 8 mm films five feet wide. The only unsteadiness comes from the camera not being placed on a tripod. Everything exposed cam on sticks is steady.

Fits in with a Super-8 camera that takes 30 seconds to boot its software. My laptop PC that is a little more complicated is ready within 8 seconds.

Have the camera, which is around 60 years old, serviced. Organise a good tripod. Simplify. Remove the zoom lens, organise a compact, lightweight normal focal length lens, for this camera it would be a 25 mm marked RX or DV. Those were made by Kern-Paillard, SOM Berthiot, Angénieux, and Schneider. Don’t pay more than $250, if you’re going to buy one. Organise a side finder. When shooting in low light situations the reflex finder view is dim. Finally, to make a little film should not be a rite. It’s the historical base of moviemaking. You encounter resistance, have to take your time for a couple things, and need to think a little more than with video.

An alternative, it takes a little investment, is to have the front face of the prism polished. CADRO or CADIL is then used behind a piece of frosted leader in the gate.

A number of manufacturers made cameras sporting a critical focuser in conjunction with a lens turret. Bell & Howell had begun the system in the early teens on the 2709 design camera and brought it back on the Eyemo 71-M/N/O/P/Q as well as the Filmo 70-D/H/K/S series. The three-port turret Filmo Eights have it also. Then you have the Victor models 4 and 5 that give an enlarged view of the image of a lens behind a port away from the taking position and Paillard where a front frosted prism is accessible from H-16, nr. 7531 on. The ETM-P 16 and 9.5 afford a ground glass in the same plane as the film is, magnified by an instantly retractable finder in a tube. Together with an adjusted rackover support (called focusing alignment gauge by B. & H.) you eliminate parallax precisely. An advantage of that system is that the camera can be loaded with film, an other is that the ground glass or prism receives 100 percent of the light coming from the lens to be set. More than that, an assistant can focus a different lens while you shoot and follow through a side finder on the opposite side of the camera. When needed, you can switch lenses in an instant. I never get tired of explaining the rackover method. Mitchell used it, Fox, Keystone, Sankyo, and more.

I strongly discourage to use those. You risk scratching the polished film rails with the rough glass prism. Glass is much harder than steel and the aperture plate is made from structural steel, nothing of raised tensile strength or hardened.

Linwood Dunn described it in 1974, mattes on the optical combination printer. In Europe the auxiliary film pieces are called cache and contre-cache. High-contrast extreme fine grain black-and-white stocks are being exposed behind defined parts of the OCN with dissolves where wanted, developed, then run in contact with colour intermediate film one after the other, the primarily exposed stock rewound the same length, and so on. After development again you have interpositive scenes that get cut in to the master interpositive. Once complete, an internegative is drawn from which one-light projection positives are struck. Ya follow?

It might perhaps be worthwhile to start to think about lighting rather than technology. Black and white is drawing, colours are painting, simplified. Bring in lights and shadows by perspective or actively with light sources, reflectors, and flags. Observe surface textures.

The Arriflex 16’s shutter opening angles are 85 degrees, so 170 degrees per frame. Tungsten incandescent lamps don’t flicker due to the hot filament that doesn’t cool down between phase pulses.

Exactly the way a mechanic does it, slide in a piece of steel or brass foil to hold one roller down, then apply pressure on the other two with your thumb nails.

Because it’s very rare as an accessory. The Bolex Auto were sold with that key but Paillard retained it for the early H cameras. You could chose between key and crank at the time, the code was SLUZE. Sometimes an H pops up with a key and a crank.

I’ve got the impression of a rather neglected camera to put it midly. A 1926 winding key on a REX-5, astonishing. The key is worth more than the camera among collectors. Of course can you use it that way but the story I perceive is that the telescoping wind crank is missing. The leatherette on the lid is also worth mentioning. Did someone try to dampen the noise for sound takes? An indication to former professional jobs. Professionals often treat equipment cruelly, the lesser professionals.

In fact it takes a little longer, all masses need to be accelerated up, so only about the last quarter of a load will be exposed at the desired speed. If you assume 150 feet at full speed, you have 6,000 frames, six seconds.

The protrusion from the lens back face, thread inclusive

Not only Switar, there are also RX Pizar, but else you grasped it.

Kern-Paillard lenses for Paillard-Bolex H Reflex cameras are marked RX, the early ones DV for direct vision. All others are interchangeable freely. AR, by the way, stands for anti-reflex coating, nothing more. Switar was the expensive line, then you have the simpler Pizar designs, and the economic Yvar collection, mainly triplets. The telephoto macro Yvar are four glass.

Chemophotographic resolving power is not measured in digital terms. Usually line pairs per millimeter or per inch linear length that are on the verge of being discernible are noted. The image format and therewith the film size are secondary. The calculus goes line pairs per unit of length in relation to the image area. Typically you have 150 or 200 line pairs per millimeter with negatives. Print stocks have higher resolving power, so the negative is the weakest link in the chain which is logical because the taking stocks are of about ten times higher sensitivity than print stocks. Today’s taking lenses often resolve double as much as the negative. Projection lenses theoretically similar. In practice, a lot gets lost. The video should be projected to same size as a print, if you want to find out.

Can you make out anything of it when you look throught the finder?

The principal deliberation should be: do I want the double-prism reflex system or do I prefer optical freedom? With a standard model you can use almost any C-mount lens there is without constraints, with a REX you can’t. Rearwards protruding wide angles conflict with the prism block. The prisms introduce astigmatism and soft focus to focal lengths shorter than 50 mm and at diaphragm apertures wider than f/3.3. You’re more or less bound to the RX corrected lenses made by Kern, Berthiot, Angénieux, and Schneider.

It’s Comat, not Comet. The Super 0.7" is a four-elements dialyte.