Dom Jaeger

16BLs are not my specialty, but assuming that's a 16BLEQ with the power socket being a standard wiring 4 pin XLR (pin 1 neg, pin 4 pos), you just need any 12V battery with a decent capacity (maybe 5Ah and over) and 4 pin XLR output and then a standard 4 pin to 4 pin XLR power cable. You can find this sort of thing at lots of places, ie: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/135334-REG/Bescor_MM7XLRNC_MM_7XLRNC_Starved_Electrolyte_Battery.html You'll also need a compatible charger.

Well yes, obviously if a repair costs a lot more than another camera and lens it makes more sense to just replace it. I'm not sure a good lens and camera would be that cheap normally, but I'm not really familiar with medium format gear. I do like the idea of repairing things rather than replacing them, especially in this age where companies are always coming up with new reasons to replace even perfectly functioning things like mobile phones, and hindering efforts by third parties to allow their products to be repaired (I face this issue with certain lens manufacturers, but see also the Right to Repair Movement). But I guess get a repair quote and see how it compares to replacement. At least with a serviced camera and lens (or one you've already tested) you know it works, as opposed to the eBay gamble.

A lot of people get their foot in the industry door by getting a job at a rental house, where you'll learn all about the kit that is currently being used and make connections with working crews. If you're good at your job and personable, after a while you'll get on a set, even if you start at the bottom rung.

That lens doesn't protrude back much at all behind the PL mount adapter, so it would be OK on an SR. (Whether it actually focusses to infinity is another question.) It's an adapted full frame stills lens for Contax/Contarax, though not sure what the original mount is in this case. Normally those can't be adapted to PL. The Zeiss cine range is different, they are either T2.1 (Standard Speeds for 35mm) or T1.3/1.4 (Super Speeds for 16mm and 35mm). Note the aperture for cine lenses is usually marked in T stops, not f stops. An aperture of f/2.8 is pretty slow compared to many 16mm format lenses. Be careful of these sellers, there is an identical listing for a different amount: https://www.ebay.com/itm/165241256518?hash=item2679257a46:g:xuAAAOSwoNVhvwxx Why would it be an issue? The field of view will be the same as any 25mm lens on S16. It's a "normal" focal length, neither wide nor long, pretty common for S16. The image circle of that particular lens will be a lot larger than needed for S16, that's all.

If it's something you value I would probably send it to a technician to be disassembled and dried out properly, and any water stains on optics cleaned. But if it was only brief perhaps water didn't get in very far? The problem can be that water trapped in small spaces may be hard to completely evaporate away and can eventually corrode or stain. If the camera had any electrical power when you dunked it (even just a battery fitted) there could be some component damage, but you don't want to turn anything on to check until it's quite dried out. It wasn't salt water was it? That would definitely require an immediate overhaul. Usually the advice there is to immediately dunk the equipment in fresh water, and then send it straight to a technician. I'm not familiar with that camera though, so only giving generic advice.

Lol so now you’re a professional Eclair/Aaton/Arriflex camera technician? “Constantly” working on ACLs and XTRs and SRs? I thought you were a filmmaker/editor/cinematographer/colorist/educator? Used to be that a camera tech for pro gear like that trained for years under master technicians, would have all the factory tools and lubricants and was usually pretty humble in the knowledge of how much he still didn’t know. Paul Scaglione from Visual Products is a camera tech who knows Eclairs.

They were owned by DoPs, not rentals. I looked into repairing one, the local agent couldn’t give me any drawings or parts information, and said they sent them back to Tokina for repair, with a turnaround that could take months. So not easily repairable, at least here in Australia.

A HD tap alone can be over 3k…

It doesn’t require an expert to clean a lens. Coatings don’t remove easily, certainly not just by cleaning if you’re careful. What you can do accidentally is scratch the coating if you try to clean without blowing debris off first, or if you use a dirty micro fibre cloth, or dry tissues. You can use a lens cleaner like Pancro, or just isopropyl alcohol. It’s best to clean in a spiral from the centre out, don’t keep using the same tissue, and don’t scrub. If something doesn’t come off easily with lens cleaner, leave it. You don’t need to be constantly cleaning a lens to keep it perfectly spotless. A bit of dust won’t affect the image. The things you should clean off promptly are fingerprints or salt spray or softdrink or things like that which might be acidic or alkaline or corrosive since they can etch into coatings if you leave them on there.

Never seen one myself, but I imagine it's similar to an 8-64 or 7-63 only a bit better.. 🙂 I mean, do you want MTF specs, or how would you actually find out about the contrast or the bokeh? I find the endless "lens tests" you see on the net pretty uninformative mostly. You could watch the S16 parts of "First Man" which were shot with this zoom. Or track down a Sundance entry from last year, "Superior", shot on this zoom plus Cooke S4s. Or google search more than I just did to find some more examples. Or rent one if you really want to know how it looks.

Only the take-up (bottom) spindle needs to be driven, the feed (top) spindle is passive, the film is pulled from it by the sprocket rollers. Good luck with your first roll!

Most PL lenses, even modern ones designed with digital cameras in mind, stick to the conventions of the film era and don't protrude so far back that they would hit a film camera mirror. Angenieux released a pair of zooms back in the early 2010s that were designed only for digital cameras (they labelled them "Rouge" to appeal to owners of a certain camera brand) but within a few years they discontinued them and went back to making lenses with enough clearance to work with both film and digital. So it's unlikely you'll come across a modern PL mount lens that will protrude too far back. Some early 16mm lenses in Arri S mount might though, a few Schneiders and Kinetals for example. Usually the wide angles. A 35mm lens shouldn't be a problem in terms of the oversize image circle unless there are shiny areas in the mirror cavity of your camera. I have had to black out the odd spot occasionally in SR2s and 3s. Just look carefully around the back of the gate area with the mirror out of the way. A recent feature film we supported used a Tokina Cinema 11-20. They can be quite sharp and contrasty for such a wide angle zoom, but I have come across examples already that had wear issues that caused them to lose focus depending on the direction you turned the zoom barrel. The cinema version is definitely better than a cine-modded stills version though. Modern lens design has certainly come a fair way since the 80s and 90s, but I think a Canon 8-64 is still a pretty decent lens. It's worth noting that 8mm is actually quite a bit wider than 11mm on a S16 frame, and at T2.4 the Canon zoom is more than half a stop faster than the T2.9 Tokina. Plus it's an 8x zoom rather than a 2x one. I have worked on a few and they were very sturdy designs, I often find minimal wear in them, which I doubt will be the case with a Tokina 11-20 in 30+ years. But then when new these Canon zooms would have cost more than twenty times what a Tokina costs.

https://cinematography.com/index.php?/forums/topic/59808-prime-lens-options-for-s16-arriflex-sr2-pl/ https://cinematography.com/index.php?/forums/topic/73843-arri-sr1-super-16mm-lens-options/ This topic comes up pretty often, there are probably more threads if you search. I assume by asking for the most basic lens you mean cheap? The best (not cheapest) options for S16 that you might find on eBay or sellers like Visual Products would be things like Zeiss Super Speeds for S16 (9.5mm, 12mm, 16mm, 25mm) or Optar Illuminas which were Russian versions, or zooms like a Zeiss 11-110 or Canon 7-63 or 8-64 or 11.5 -138 or 6-66, or a Cooke 10.4-52 or 10-30 or Angenieux 7-81 or 11.5-138 though some of these are rare and/or expensive. If you rented you could get really nice lenses like Cooke SK4s or Zeiss Ultra 16s, or the older Zeiss Super Speeds or some of the zooms mentioned. You can also use pretty much any 35mm PL lenses for longer focal lengths, like Zeiss Standard Speeds (T2.1) that start from 16mm. Cheaper options probably entail buying vintage or Soviet lenses that might be adapted to PL. But watch out for some Schneiders or Cooke Kinetals which can interfere with the SR mirror. There are also cheap modern 35mm PL options that will work, as long as the barrel diameter isn’t too large (it may foul on the viewfinder elbow). You can’t adapt lenses made for a shorter flange depth than PL (which is 52mm). So no Canon or Nikon stills lenses or most stills lenses really, or C mounts or M42 or lenses made for modern mirrorless cameras. You can adapt from earlier Arri mounts like Arri S(tandard) or Arri B(ayonet), (except for the Cooke Kinetals and some Schneiders as mentioned). Old Angenieux zooms in Arri S or B mount are viable, but most will vignette at the wide end, except something like a 15-150. A Zeiss 10-100 will also vignette at the wide end, but should be cheaper than a 11-110 or Optex converted 12-120.

Are you click-baiting again Daniel? There's nothing in there remotely like what you're suggesting, and these standards only relate to one Oscar category, the Best Picture. Nobody has to comply with any of this if they don't want to. This is a press release from 2020 by the way. I don't think that radio station sounds very reliable..

Aside from just using a multi-meter and putting the probes in the battery socket, there's this sort of thing: https://www.customcine.store/shop/p/battplug12 But as Phil said, reading the battery voltage when not under load can give you an optimistic reading. Usually if the voltage reads close to the nominal voltage (ie if it reads say 12.3V and it's a 12V battery) then it's close to depleted. A charged 12V battery should read over 13V. But different chemistries can behave differently. Still, a little voltage reader like this is better than nothing and will give you some idea. Ideally you want to wire a voltage meter in the battery pack itself (which isn't hard, just wire it in parallel) so that you can read the voltage under load. Or make up another power cable with a voltage meter wired in-line, or buy this sort of thing: https://rencherindustries.com/products/inline-voltmeter?variant=32508861055079

Yes you're unlikely to damage anything except perhaps bend the claw, although I think that's probably unlikely. Just check it still engages in the middle of a perf. The take-up itself is designed to slip continuously. At the beginning of a spool it will wind on about 4" of film per revolution, but by the end as the diameter has increased it will be winding on over 10" each revolution. So it needs to slip all the time anyway. Maybe mark that bent spool as a last resort spare, I don't trust them after they've been damaged.

This would be a perfect candidate for 3D printing.

Holy cow I had no idea Arri had made these! It has the same registration pin and claw configuration as a 16S, not to mention the spinning reflex mirror. That would have to be the absolute pinnacle of Super 8 camera technology, if you could find one. They also mention a Pentaflex DS8 camera, which isn't in your otherwise very comprehensive list. That would also be a very interesting camera, if it exists.

Yeah favourite aspect ratios is nearly as divisive a debate as film vs digital! I’ll keep my eye out for “Around the World in 80 Days”, it looks fun.

1.85 is a cinema aspect ratio that still get used a lot. It pre-dates 16:9 (1.78) by many decades, I think it was first used back in the 50s but became a dominant cinema standard (especially in the US) in the following decades. Here's a list of films just from the last few years that were released in 1.85: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls098546146/

You’ve already posted this question twice before and have some answers already. Please don’t keep asking the same question in different sub-forums, you only need to ask once. Most people can see all the new questions in the new activity window so there’s no advantage to triple posting, it just spreads answers over multiple threads.

https://www.televisual.com/news/behind-the-scenes-around-the-world-in-80-days/ Sony Venice and Sigma FF lenses. You can shoot all sorts of different aspect ratios on pretty much any camera, but the trend nowadays for this level of production is to use larger sensor cameras like the Venice or Arri LF Mini. These cameras have sensors that are 3:2 and the same size as a FF stills camera - 36mm x 24mm (well the Arri is a little larger). There are various modes you can record in, depending on what you want your final delivery aspect ratio to be, and what your lenses might cover if they are not FF lenses. Delivering something like 1.85 would crop quite a bit of height, but often recording less than the full sensor resolution allows for higher frame rates. 2:1 is a popular aspect ratio these days.

The Zeiss lenses came out in the late 60s/70s and are more modern and contrasty. Kinetals are about 20 years older from the same era as series 2 Speed Panchros. The Zeiss lenses you’re talking about are usually called “Standard Speeds”, and were very widely used all through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and even still now. The widest is a 16mm, which is not very wide for 16mm format. Zeiss made a series of high speed (“Super Speed”) lenses for the 16mm format which goes from 9.5mm to 50mm. There is also an 8mm Zeiss standard speed for 16mm, it doesn’t cover Super 16 though. Why don’t you see if you can rent a camera/lens package with Zeiss lenses and try them out? Kinetals will be harder to find for rent. If you buy them in Arri mount be aware they need a special adapter. Vintage lenses like these tend to also need cine modding if you want to use modern tools like a follow focus or focus motors, matte box etc.

AM Camera in LA and Cine Facilities in the Netherlands are Aaton repair centres.

Oh sure, ACLs can take C mounts so no problem with Arri Standard lenses, as long as you have the adapter.