Frank Wylie

Stefan, Here's some misc. info; http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=11143 Also: Not a manual, but you might contact these people for advice: http://www.processreversal.org/devry-standard/ Good luck!

That's a nice trick! I think our 16mm Steenbecks are the ST-900W model and I'd have to have another look at one to see if that might work on that model. OK, sorry for the thread hijack; back to the regular show...

If the magazine is defective, a qualified repair person should spot it instantly. If your 60M magazine runs fine, it only makes sense that the defect lies in the 120M magazine. Good communication with the repair shop helps speed the process and minimize repair costs. Yes, repairs are expensive; what about film isn't? ;)

Most of the stations I worked for, or visited, in the days of film, simply used a Viewer and a squawk-box type amp. Some would shoot mag striped reversal, process the film and run it through a magnasync displacement recorder that would put the audio in dead (or editorial) sync back on the stripe itself. The film would be edited to desired length and then run back through the displacement recorder to restore the proper sound advance distance and the edited piece would air "live" via a film chain during the news broadcast. Some would lay the striped sound off to fullcoat and do a dual-system cut and run it interlocked "live" on a film chain during the news broadcast. Of course, everyone had their own way of working and I am sure there were many variations of workflows to get film news on-air.

Our 35mm Steenbecks are modified at the factory with a slightly reduced diameter prism sprocket and reducing lenses to show a full aperture image out to the middle of the perforation on each side. (You can learn a lot about the provenance of an element just by watching the perforation print-through of a copied element). While we almost never run originals on these, we do routinely run dupe negs, interpositives and sound dupe negs/positives for quality control purposes. They work fine and, as long as you keep them scrupulously clean, in good running order and thread them properly, they do not damage the element. Flatbeds are particularly nasty with married elements (elements with a printed-in track), as the sound advance distance is very precise and any hint of shrinkage on an element will result in perforation damage IF run with the composite sound head engaged. We have toyed with the idea of modifying the sound head to pivot the distance of a couple of perforations toward the picture head to accommodate shrinkage, but in the end we decided that would only encourage people to run marginal elements; not ideal for an archive... Luckily, we now have access to gentle, high speed digital scanners and can make a digital reference copy to evaluate content on these elements.

Are you shooting digital or film? Flood bulbs and LED panels? Are you sure about the color temperature of each light source? Will they mix successfully? What's the interior color of each room? Are there primary colors on the walls? I'd suggest you examine each room, determine the dominant color cast the interior decoration produces and start from there. Hopefully, the walls will be neutral to low saturation colors, or you'll have a hard time forcing a look different than the dominant existing color scheme. Shoot some simple tests with the lights you plan to use; don't wait until production time and get burned! Paper Chinese lanterns with practical lights on dimmers are great for B&W work for soft fill and general coverage, but more tricky for color, as the color temperature drops as you dim a tungsten bulb. Cheap lighting tools I use usually consist of white foam core board for bouncing light (glue some aluminum foil that has been crumpled up and flattened back out on the backside for a 2nd type of bounce light), toughspun or other diffusion material to diffuse light, mirrors to divert sunlight into a room and then shape with other tools (tricky sometimes as the sun does move remarkably fast on a set!) and a good bolt of black felt for light blocking and shaping. Just a few thoughts...

Buy yourself a pair of split reels for your projector... https://www.ebay.com/itm/16mm-Aluminum-Split-Reel-1000-ft-Used-Good-Condition-film-movie-/351459225000?_trksid=p2385738.m4383.l4275.c10

Lars, that was a significant omission, that the stock is very old and improperly stored. The assumption is always that you are using new stock to test a camera for operation. We have found that shrinkage over 0.7% (linear) in 16mm will be destroyed on a Steenbeck flatbed viewer. Film shrinks in non-uniform ways over time. You are courting disaster using this stock for anything but just experimentation. Your feed sprocket is probably damaging perforations on shrunken areas of the stock just prior to entering the gate and once the damaged section (now with "lowered" perforation bottom edges) passes through the gate, the claw misses the next non-deformed perforation and you loose the loop. Test the camera with a bit of new stock; I'll bet its fine.

OK, I watched it again too and you're probably right; It's hard to judge exact timing from a youtube video. I viewed it this time in full magnification and it appears your test footage is damaged prior to entering the gate. Watch the edge of the film above the feed sprocket and you'll see the damage pass through just before it hits the sprocket and into the gate where it looses the loop.

Orwo has a 16mm B&W stock that is available in DP (when in stock): http://www.orwona.com/orwo-un54-100-asa-16mm-negative-or-reversal-double-perf-daylight-spool-100ft/

Just speculating, but the pressure pad on this particular magazine might be slightly weak or out of adjustment. This would not allow sufficient "recovery" time (spring-back) to engage perforations "at-speed", but allow correct engagement at slower rates of feed. If your 60M mag works fine, I would speculate that it's just that magazine, but if the camera has not been serviced in a long time, there could be other issues that only show up on the higher capacity magazine. If the 60M mag works, try comparing the coupling mechanism between the mag and the body of the camera. Is one magazine looser than the other? Is there a lot of play or slop in the drive mechanism? In any event, it sounds like a service call would be in order. There is an old saying that repairs are cheaper than reshooting...

As Dom says, it's a rackover (rackup?) device for critical focus, and should not be used for composition. Compose through the attached viewfinder, but be sure to adjust the parallax offset on the viewfinder. These are fantastic cameras once you become used to operating them; it just takes a while to get in the proper mindset and develop a routine. Somewhere I have a "how to use a bolex" handout that Ohio State University used in their Department of Photography and Cinema studies that is very helpful. I will try to find it this weekend and get it posted.

Since your bottom loop fails first, it indicates to me a gate transport issue. Somehow the pull down claw is missing perfs at-speed and allowing the lower loop to fail, thereby pulling the film through the gate and rapidly collapsing the upper loop. You need to have the pulldown claw and gate pressure examined on this camera/magazine combo. Do you have another mag to test it with? If it happens on more than one magazine, it is probably that your mag to camera body tolerances are incorrect and need to be adjusted.

Dom, Thank you for your interest. I will try to participate as much as possible and don't claim to be a all-encompassing expert, but am willing to share what I know. If you have any questions in particular, I'd be happy to try to answer them when I get the time! Cheers, Frank

Michael, Thanks. I wasn't intending on chasing this too much, as I have 80 silent features to time in 6 months. I just dislike leaving these theories out there unchallenged. Frank

"Neither Howell nor Bell had an idea of what was going on in Europe with motion-picture machinery. Le Prince had. He may have contacted Spoor. Howell agreed reluctantly to team with Bell, Bell had to push him. Then Howell was blackmailed. He gave his name. Le Prince fed his lifework to the little firm. A theory" The basis for denying Bell and Howell the ability to perfect a camera on the idea that LePrince (a man how ENTIRELY disappeared from history and left no trace), who came from a foundry background, is totally absurd. No idea? What cameras do you think the filmmakers who weren't part of the Patent's Trust were using? European cameras; Pathe, Debrie, Moy, etc,; there was no vacuum. Chicago was one of the, if not THE, center of precision machining technology of metal in the USA at the turn of the 20th century. Ever heard of "jobbing" or outsourcing your castings? George K. Spoor was a blowhard that aggrandized everything he did at everyone else's expense and by 1956, who was there to refute him?. So much of the literature of those "Cinematic giants looking-back" is transparent fiction that it should be obvious to anyone who has done any meaningful research into the era. As for the wooden camera "controversy", I remember reading from earlier sources that Osa and Martin Johnson lost a British Wooden Camera to termites, NOT a B&H. Now it might be that this was conflated through the years in subsequent publications to imply it WAS a B&H camera, but that's not what I remember. I worked on the Osa and Martin Collection and timed many of their original negatives for preservation, so I got to see many of the cameras they used, as Martin loved photographing themselves photographing wildlife. There were many types of cameras, several being Moy Bastie and other British tropical cameras. I just don't have enough time right now to dig down into this an refute it entirely, but I strongly disagree with your theory.

As Mr. Mullen stated, yes there were 2 perf variants of flatbeds, projectors and such. One note of interest is that the 2 perf neg had to be A/B rolled with mult-frame handles on the ends of each shot to put the physical splice outside the frameline. The optical printer, outfitted with the proper anamorphic lens in the path generated a squeezed interpositive from which printing dupe negs could be generated. Beyond that point, the photochemcial process mirrored typical productions of the era...

All good points, but those volumes don't have to be the ones that Kodak established for their scale of operations; which seemed to be Total World Domination at full-tilt and the market be damned and take what we make... Fuji went through a painful restructuring and diversification that seems to have paid off in solvency, and I'll bet that some of that had to do with readjusting their coating alleys and processes to a more rational volume for the existing markets and heeding the actual buying desires of their customers. I don't mean to beat-up on Kodak, but they really seem inflexible in their outlook and seem determined to fly into the ground with Perez at the helm rather than adapt to changing markets. So many people want to equate the death of Kodak with the death of film and that's just not a rational premise. It will be a blow, but it won't be the death of film.

Ron Lowry (ex kodak engineer) is giving classes on brewing your own emulsion and making your own sheet film. A quick search on Youtube brings up a hand-made 35mm film coating machine. I really, really hate it when it is declared emphatically that film is obsolete, unreproduceable and gone unless you follow (insert pet path/theory here). Film is surviving as a cottage industry. Please do some rudimetary homework before declaring any format dead. Try Orwo, Foma, Illford and Fuji to start with...