Dom Jaeger

I've had to rewind film in an SR many times doing steady tests. It's definitely not as easy or as controllable as with a Bolex or Beaulieu, but it can be done. The safest way is to remove the film from the mag and rewind it in a darkroom with some rewinds. You can do it with the film in the mag if you're not too worried about cinch marks by doing the following in a change bag or darkroom: Unlatch the film from the hooks on the pressure plate. Open both doors of the mag and secure the take-up roller arm out of the way. Use your left hand to manually wind the film back onto the feed spool while your right hand lightly keeps the film in the plane of the take-up spool. Because the drive gear turns the take-up spindle at a faster rate than the sprockets feed through film, when you reverse the direction the film will slowly unravel on the take-up, so you need to keep it in place and before it unravels too much, periodically wind the take-up back tight while holding the drive gear with your other hand. It's a bit annoying but OK for shorter lengths like a steady test. For actual footage you want to use, like double exposure experiments, I would recommend removing the film and using rewinds. The other issue with using SRs for double-exposure is that they don't have a frame counter to accurately gauge where you might want to overlap scenes, so you would need to estimate it from the footage counters. The best camera for doing 16mm double exposures I think is the Bolex. In a properly maintained camera the frame counter is very accurate and counts up to 1000 frames, and the camera has a dedicated second claw for cleanly moving the film in reverse. It will not jam or damage perfs unless the camera is poorly calibrated or damaged. Bolexes were the animation and experimental film camera of choice for decades for a reason. But you could also use a Beaulieu, Cine Kodak Special, Arriflex 16 St or any other 16mm camera that has a frame counter and the ability to run in reverse or use a rewind crank. The frame counters on these cameras tend to reset much quicker than a Bolex though, only 100 frames on a Beaulieu or 40 on an Arri St for example.

The optic closest to your eye is held by a lock ring deep in the eyepiece tube that needs a custom spanner. The other eyepiece optic held by a clamp ring needs to be removed to access it, then on reassembly the mask needs to be re-aligned, as well as probably the front viewfinder prism. The diopter adjustment lock can bind if it’s screwed down hard or lubrication is old. Don’t use something like a plumber’s wrench that will damage the knurling.

I have one of those Cinematography Electronics strobe guns, great tool. But yeah, nothing to do with the Steady Tester.

You need these mounting plates: You also need the screw-in optic at the front, not the eyecup vertical eyepiece. Some cameras will already have these fitted.

Yes I guess you could use that tool with a frame print of a grid, though you need some way of rotating it for the second pass. The Steady Tester uses a continuous light source, not a strobe.

There are still people around who can work on film cameras, mostly in rental houses where the service knowledge was always learned, and practiced regularly. I work for Panavision in Australia, there are two of us here with over 25 years experience on Arriflex, Panaflex, Arricam, Bolex etc plus an experienced electrical tech. There’s another guy in New Zealand, several in London and LA. Arri Rental obviously has people maintaining their rental fleet, same as Keslow. There’s Andre Martin at AM Camera, the guys at Visual Products, at Duall. Probably still some knowledge at places like Abel Cine. I’m sure there are people in Europe other than Danny or ex Arri guys in Munich, just need to find them. If there’s enough interest Arri might be convinced to do some training on their analog cameras again. So I would contact rental houses in your area that have film camera and ask them who they use for camera maintenance. An SR mag isn’t very difficult to service for anyone who works on fine mechanics. In terms of the future, places like Panavision, Arri Rental, Keslow etc are the most likely to have some knowledge transfer going on with younger techs. It does take years to properly master, especially the mechanical finesse and knowing each camera’s quirks. Rental houses also have the tooling and equipment to service cameras, including good machine shops. So it’s important to support those place if you value film. What is somewhat problematic is having relatively inexperienced people taking cameras completely apart and losing certain calibrations that need factory jigs and specialised equipment to set accurately. In the past you could trust the factory sealed settings. Parts will always be an issue, but anything can be manufactured or upgraded if you have a budget. What often happens is that cameras get cannibalised to keep other ones running, so a big inventory is useful. It’s been interesting to see the evolution of HD taps and modern battery solutions. I’ve been doing Bolex service workshops as a way of passing on some knowledge about this stuff. I’ve written online guides for simpler cameras. Pro cameras like Arriflexes and Arricams are a bit harder as there are certain tools you simply have to have and each camera is different.

Eelco is great, love the design!

We just had a feature use Verita without issue, though that was 35mm. So you tested the first camera after the shoot with 7207 and it ran fine? And the second camera body seemed to run fine with the same Verita batch stock that kept jamming in the first camera? And you had compared perf spacing between the Verita and 7219 and they seemed identical. I think you'd notice a difference if the spacing was so out as to cause indents above the perfs.. even small errors show up after a few feet. Plus if it was a stock issue why did it work fine in the second body? Unless there was something really wrong with only the rolls used in the first camera which you didn't pick up doing your comparison, or the first camera had a mechanical issue that somehow went away (maybe something odd like a piece of tape blocking proper mag latching or something like that), then logically the only option left is loader error.

Rental house camera or owner operator? Anyone messed with the camera recently?

Depends how experienced you are with pulling apart optical assemblies as to how easy it is. I wouldn’t recommend trying to service this with no experience if you value the equipment. You need the right tools as you do not want to damage screws that may be corroded in or are otherwise hard to undo. Plus great care handling and cleaning the optics. There’s a rotating pechan prism assembly driven by planetary gears that needs recalibration after disassembly to keep the image level as the elbow is rotated, plus other prisms and optics. The pechan prism often develops haze between bonded surfaces which is not cleanable. There is also another prism and optics in the camera front that can get hazy or develop fungus, so your issue might not be in the J bar alone. The front may need to be removed, which is not too difficult, but the flange depth should be checked after reassembly. So while not super difficult, I would recommend sending it to an experienced tech for cleaning rather than trying it yourself.

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No idea about the question in the thread title really, or what’s going on with you and your local filmmaking community Jon, but the new lab here in Melbourne should start building more interest in film originated projects in this country. We just wrapped the first 35mm feature shot in Australia since 2012 and there’s more coming. The crew loved working with film, a mix of young people who had never worked with the medium professionally and old hands whose knowledge was essential and valued. I‘m pretty optimistic interest will only grow.

I wouldn’t assume it’s the lens mount that’s the problem. A better adapter, like the sort that lock against a ring you put in the groove (Visual Products, Duclos) could help remove the rocking, but I suspect the softness is a question of needing to have the back-focus checked by a technician with a lens projector. For a fixed focus wide angle lens like this it’s essential. Also worth having your camera flange depth checked.

Sure it will work. All C mount lenses , including RX ones, are collimated to form an image 17.52mm behind the mount flange when focussed at infinity. Reflex Bolexes still have an optical flange depth of 17.52mm, but the physical depth is extended by the glass prism because it refracts the rays coming from a lens and causes the image to be formed further back, but that happenes to any lens. RX lenses are simply computed to negate the aberrations that the prism induces at wider apertures, due to the shallower exit pupil and more angular ray cone that wider focal lengths often have. Lenses longer than 50mm are never RX, but clearly still work on a reflex Bolex. That wouldn't happen if the RX optical flange depth was actually over 3mm different. The same logic applies to non-RX lenses 50mm and below, it's just that they can be susceptible to aberrations depending on their exit pupil depth.

You can buy a low-end Mitutoyo micrometer that will measure 0.01mm for about $50, Chinese brands can be as cheap as $15. If you're interested in lens/camera service or calibration, a micrometer and Vernier calipers are essential. 0.01mm (1/100th of a mm) is as fine as most shims go, usually made of steel that is so thin and papery it's like gold leaf. Household aluminium foil is much thicker, likely to be 0.15mm thick at a minimum. Lenses (and camera flange depths) need to be shimmed to within around 0.01mm for accuracy, especially wide focal lengths and 16mm zooms. On a collimator, the image will always be brighter and clearer at longer focal lengths and get dimmer as you go wide, that's normal. Under 10mm can be quite hard to see unless you have a good collimator and the right optical head.