Hans Engstrom

Fake! The real one was sold by a guy in Germany that owned a camerahouse. If I remember it correctly someone from NY bought it.

Aaton LTR on Ebay Here is a Aaton LTR from the same seller that I bought mine from. He is trustworthy and if you´re lucky it will sell for around 3000 usd as mine did. Usual disclamer applies (I only bought from him and don´t make any money on his sales) It´s a far better camera than the 16BL and don´t worry about pin-registration on 16mm cameras. The registration on my Aaton is just as good as it was on my 16BL and take it from someone who owned them both, the Aaton is lightyears ahead of the 16BL. I work professionally as a 1st AC and I really can´t recommend the 16BL. Because of the blimp you will get into trouble if you for example have to pull focus wireless in a dialogue scene. It´s built like a tank a.s.o. but for the whole time I owned it I wouldn´t have used it on anything else than a shortfilm/musicvideo without budget.

Never said it was pin registred and thats my point, they are rock steady without being pin registred because of the gate/pressure plate design. Yes it was from Per I bought my LTR and as I wrote in my last post it was for $3300 so I wouldn´t call it "crazy expensive".

No it´s not. Aaton LTR and XTR have very good registration as well. I sold my 16BL for $2500 with lots of extra equipment and bought a LTR instead. I´d say that the BL is a bad choice because of the need to blimp all lenses and still it will make more noise than a LTR. In this package there´s only one mag included as well so you need to buy atleast one extra so factor that cost in as well. The 16BL can be used for your own personal projects but a LTR or SR can make money for you. One thing that will bug you when you´re shooting 16 with a 16BL is that for the same developing and scanning cost you could have gotten s16. You are basicly throwing away negative everytime you shoot. A LTR (S16) in good condition can be had cheap and is the camera that I belive delivers most bang for the buck. I was planning to buy a SR2 before I found my LTR dirt cheap and in good condition from a guy in Sweden so I bought that instead. I paid $3300 for it with 2 mags and it was on a ebay auction. I´ve been following ebay for some years now and once in a while there´s a bargain to be found. Beside the limited selection of lenses for the 16BL and the fact that it´s expensive to convert to s16 it´s a reliable camera, so if you settle for regular 16 and don´t mind shooting with the zoom that comes with the package you might be satisfied with it. But when I read that you´re planning to do 35mm blow ups I´d really think twice about the BL, you´ll want to have the largest negative and the sharpest lenses for that. I have no experience of eclair cameras so I cant comment anything on the NPR or the ACL but if you´re planning to buy a camera I really recommend you to get either a Arri SR (S16) or a Aaton LTR/XTR (S16), they are quiter, faster/easier to load, takes a wider selection of lenses as you don´t have to blimp them, will give you almost 50% more negative for a blow up and are much more comfortable (the Aaton is a dream) when it comes to shooting handheld.

If you´re going to have a big shoot you will not regret getting an experienced FAD. He/she will make sure that everyone is able to do there work and will save the production a lot of time.

Instead of constructing a low cost S16 camera they should construct a S16 scanner that can handle 400ft rolls and connects to a regular PC. Sitting at home scanning and grading the material without any timelimits would be something I really would like. I allready own a Aaton LTR and some CP Ultra-T lenses but many shortfilmproducers doesn´t want to take the extra cost of a supervised transfer and instead settles for shooting on video even though I tell them that I can donate the camerarent and filmstock if I can shoot it on film instead.

---- CONTAINs SPOILERS ---- I enjoyed The Prestige more than The Illusionist. Figuring out the twist in The Prestige early didn´t "ruin" the film in the same way as figuring it out early in The Illusionist. One thing that bothered me in The Prestige was that I thought the cat and hats was a trick (illusion) by Tesla to buy more time and money but instead it was for real "sci-fi" as we get to see how the final trick was done. From my perspective I think that showing how it was done wasn´t needed. It would have had a more mystic feeling and left the viewer thinking about the movie more afterwards if it wasn´t shown. When it comes to the cinematography I really liked The Prestige. Wally Pfister is really one of my favorite cinematographers and I think that he has shot some really nice anamorphic films in the last years with Nolan. (Insomni, Batman Begins, The Prestige)

Hi I´ll be 1st AC on a commercial next week using a BL4 Evo and I just want to know if there´s anything special I need to be aware of with the camera. There´s a risk that it can get really cold outside so I´m going to prepare insulation for it but does anyone have experience of using it in cold weather. I haven´t used the BL4 before but I have used several other arriflex cameras so I´m not worried just looking for small hints. I´m aware that some Evolution upgrades takes a lot of power if the mirror is in the wrong position when one push the start putton so I´ll as allways phase before pushing run. The shooting will begin on tuesday next week but I´ll do a registration and a lens test on thursday this week.

That´s exactly my experience as well. I used to think that the SR was kind of nice shooting handheld with, then I tried a XTR and it completely changed my perspective on how a handheld camera should be. That´s one reason why I bought a LTR instead of a SR.

Just got some material from a shortfilm I shot last month and that´s going to be cut later this month. I got the material on a DVD that´s been transfered on the fly so the quality is really bad. The DP that was going to shoot it couldn´t so I climbed on board just a week before shooting begun. This was the first time in a long time that I shot something again. When I climbed on board the project I really tried convincing the producer to go s16 with my Aaton and with stock that I could donate but it didn´t happen. We ended up shooting with a Sony Z1 using a mini35 and Zeiss superspeeds. The lightning was all tungsten and I used a 4 x 4 kino as toplight most of the time. Shot most of the film with a 1/8 Black Pro Mist. Total budget for lamps, mini35 and lenses was only $500 so we got a good deal frome the rental house. This is a frame from a dolly shot.

Yeah it´s the first time I´ve been this lucky. Theese will do fine on low budget gigs, on the last shortfilm I shot I had to take out all the HMIs from my list to get it in under budget.

A TV studio where I live moved out from their building into a new one a year ago. They sold everything in the studio to the owner of the building. To make a long story short they where going to sell the lamps that was inside the studio so I went there looking. When I asked for stands the janitor answered that there where som stands and lamps that where stored downstairs and that I could have for free because it was just junk that they where going to throw away later the same day. When I entered the room and saw 3 1200w HMI´s complete with ballasts, barndoors, cables, extension cables and one extra bulb. I managed to keep a straight face so now this "junk" is inside my apartment. I tested all of the lamps and they work flawless and are very quiet. The fixtures had a runtime of 200h, 800h, 1000h. As mentioned in the topic the lamps are Quartz Color Sirio Mark2 1200w (2070) the ballasts are marked (2077). If anyone have any information about theese fixtures please share.

Wow, you should have made a bunch of them as I guess many LTR owner including myself wouldn´t mind owning one.

Worked with Peter Stormare last week. He was really funny and down to earth. I was best boy on the feature and when he was done for the day he joined me when I was attaching cloth to a frame (called sail in Sweden, don´t know the correct english term), he even carried it with me to the set.

Thanks Tim I meant to write grid, not checked.

I like to perform the steadyness and registration test shooting a checked paper centering where the lines cross, rewind move the camera centering a blank spot. You should underexpose by one stop when doing this test.

I think it´s better to sell it as is and inform the prospective buyers that it can be s16 modified for £750. $3000 sounds very high for a standard NPR (depending on what accessories and lenses you have). A converted ACL went for $2400 recently.

I like to mark the mags as Mag A, Mag B, Mag C a.s.o. that way the rolls in my filmreports gets named 26a, 27c, 28b a.s.o.

S16 ACL Here is what looks to be a good deal if someone is looking for a s16 camera. Please note that I don´t know the person selling it and I have not inspected the camera.

If you´re on a tight budget why not make some block batteries? You can buy sealed lead/acid cells that will fit in "fanny" pouches and make your own batterybelt for a fraction of the cost you´d have to pay for a Bescor.

Thank you very much for this info, guess I´ve been lucky sometimes when I have been spliting focus. As you said I´ve however allways asked the operator if it looks good and usually the gut feeling one have is correct.

Nice beauty shots. Hard to judge the grain on compressed jpeg files. As the background is white without a lot of details and the lighting is soft the eye will focus on the grain, that can be the reason why you think it looks to grainy.

Now I´m confused. When I´m in a situation where I´have to decide if it´s possible to split focus or not on s16 I just punch in the numbers as if I was using a 16mm lens even if it´s a lens designed to cover 35mm or even 35mm still format.

As you´re shooting at 25fps the only thing you have to do is to phase the scanline from the screen, that is if you´re shooting a crt television. If you set the mirror to 180 the scanline should be at the same position as you see in the vf. If you´re shooting a lcd or plasma it´s even easier.

Received the supportbars. Thanks