Dom Jaeger

They're indestructible, those Standard 8 cameras. My favourite format. Congrats!

Bell and Howell 2709 modified to be reflex?

Typo? The first Angenieux 25-250 was f/3.2 T3.9. The HP was T3.7, and the HR T3.5. I've never heard of T4.1 version. Maybe they had it accurately tested and due to aged coatings it now measures T4.1? Or maybe they limited the aperture because it's really not useable wide open? You probably need to email them and ask.

Not just the camera, but the zoom can also become deformed at the mount. I’ve seen screws stripped out of lens mounts due to an impact. A long lever can exert an enormous amount of force at the pivot end, which is why long heavy zooms in particular should never be left on a camera during transport. To play Devil’s Advocate however, I recall someone arguing years ago that operators of broadcast cameras often left the zoom on, throwing the camera into the back of a car to quickly change locations. So I suppose like all prescriptions you can take it or leave it. Personally I wouldn’t risk it when it’s a fairly simple precaution to remove the lens and put it in a case for transport.

It would have had plenty of use in the 90s through to the 00s, most rental houses would have had one, but the Cooke 20-100 and 18-100 were probably more popular for that sort of range. A quick google shows it was used on films like Tsotsi and Black Dahlia, but there would have been more, as well as TV shows.

No, that’s Super 8. This is Regular 8: The projector is also Super 8, so I can’t explain why it doesn’t work. Perhaps the projector is faulty and the frame adjustment is stuck at one extreme. I have encountered Double 8 that was poorly slit, not exactly down the centre so one half was wider than it should be, which caused problems going through a projector, but that shouldn’t offset the frame. I can only suggest trying the film on a viewer/editor.

I think there may be some misunderstanding here about the actual format of your film and projector. Bolex made 18-5 projectors for both Super 8 and Standard 8. You need to make sure your film and the projector are both Super 8. If you post pictures it may help.

It sounds like Pro8mm think the film is unslit. Otherwise their advice doesn’t make sense. When slit, double Super 8 should be exactly like normal Super 8. That’s the whole point, otherwise how do people view their film? There are no Double Super 8 projectors, as it is (was?) only a camera format. You describe the frame being offset, with the bottom half on top and the top half on the bottom. That just means the projector (or editor/viewer) needs the frame position adjusted. All projectors have this facility. In a Bolex 18-5 it’s here:

I’m a bit confused, is the film 8mm wide or 16mm wide? If it’s 8mm wide how do you know it was Double Super 8? Just from the owner’s description? As Frank described, Double Super 8 is a camera format, basically the same idea as Double 8, using 16mm film with double the perforations (though different size perfs for Super 8). You expose it twice in the camera, once on each half. Then after processing the film gets slit lengthways to produce normal Super 8 film (half as wide). It should then be exactly the same as normal Super 8 film, and can be used in a projector. If the frame alignment is off, you should be able to adjust that within the projector. My 18-5 projector allows for considerable re-positioning of the frame. If the film is precious however, I would suggest viewing it on a good quality viewer/editor rather than a projector. They are less likely to damage the film (even though Bolex 18-5 projectors are usually very gentle on film).

Having rebuilt dozens of iris assemblies over the years I find it fascinating how many different iris designs there are. I believe the choice of blade number and shape often has to do with trends in cinematography or photography, but sometimes it’s just economics or form/function. Many older lenses have a large number of simple curved blades. These create very round apertures all the way through their range, and the large number of blades also means they can be narrower and thus take up less space in the area outside the aperture. This is important for large apertures in small barrelled lenses, but the downside of these designs is that the aperture closes at a logarithmic rate, so that the smallest f stops end up all squashed together. When the blade shape is altered to more of an L shape, the aperture marks can be better spaced, so modern lenses generally have evenly spaced aperture marks with more complicated blade shapes. These tend to take up more space, and so fewer blades are actually required to cover the aperture. There have always been lenses with fewer aperture blades, often cheaper brands did this to cut costs, but during the 60s and 70s when lens flares and starbursts came into fashion a lot of expensive lenses were made with 5-7 blades, or even triangular apertures like the early Zeiss Super Speeds. A more polygonal aperture tends to produce better starbursts than a round one, so there were a lot of pentagons, hexagons and heptagons. I suspect auto-aperture stills lenses also benefitted from fewer blades in the iris. Even into the 90s and 00s, cine lens makers like Zeiss, Cooke and Angenieux were still producing lenses with a fairly small number of iris blades and polygonal apertures. Over the many years of their production Cooke lenses have gone from many blades, to few blades and now back to many, but they almost always used an iris blade shape that created apertures that went from circle to star to polygon. I don’t know how much that affects the “Cooke look”, or whether it helps to create starbursts, but it’s an interesting continuity. Since bokeh has become such a talked about aspect of the photographic image in the last 20 years, lens makers have proceeded to add more blades to their irises, to the point where 11 to 19 blades are becoming the norm. These create very round apertures, but depending on the blade shape they can also morph the aperture into star shapes or pointed polygons as they are stopped down, allowing for rounded bokeh at wider apertures and starbursts at smaller ones. I’d love to talk to a lens designer to ask if there are any other design reasons for their choice in iris blade number and shape. There are so many varieties.

Hi Lucas, sorry I don’t know anywhere here in Oz that services Super 8 cams. I’ve seen clean Canon 518 SV models on eBay for not much more than a hundred dollars, so it probably makes more sense to just buy another one. Or a different S8 camera. I’ve worked on a few Super 8 cams in the past, but the time they take to disassemble, the chance of breaking things while you work on them and the possibility that after all that they may not come good anyway has burned me too many times. I suspect that’s why it’s hard to find Super 8 repair facilities. If your camera works until the last few feet, it sounds like the take-up may be struggling. It’s designed to slip as the film winds on (since the diameter of the winding film will increase but the motor rotation stays the same) so by the end of the cartridge the resistance to turning is greatest. I don’t know how to access the take-up clutch in a 518, but if you try to work on it yourself that’s where I’d be looking. Or maybe reach out to our resident Super 8 guru Martin Baumgarten for some tips.

There was one selling on eBay recently I noticed, if no-one offers you a PDF. But honestly, for a non-technician just wanting to know how to lubricate their Bolex, it can be more frustrating than helpful. There are no disassembly instructions, or simple diagrams pointing where to put oil. There are just multiple exploded diagrams with symbols relating to four or five different factory lubricants and a few adjustment procedures described listing the Bolex factory tools and jigs required to perform them. To properly re-lubricate a Bolex, you unfortunately need to fully disassemble it to access most of the places that need lubrication, and to be able to clean off the old dried lubricants or any contaminants. Without disassembly there are very few lubrication points you can access. The main places that need it are the plain bearings at each end of the gear axles. If you can see the end of a shaft turning when the camera runs, that’s a plain bearing. There are a few you can see inside the film chamber, which you can put a drop of oil on, but it’s about 3 out of maybe 20 that need lubricating. You can access the claw mechanism from the film chamber, which is lubricated with grease. The viscosity is important, since the drag on the claw spindle creates the force holding the claw against the gate - too stiff and it might move the film during registration as the claw drags back across between perfs, too free and the claw might slip out of the perf during pulldown. If the take-up spindle is a bit sluggish you can try some oil around the base, but it really needs to be removed to properly clean and lubricate it. By removing the mechanism you can access more of the bearings, but without separating the plates you’re not able to clean any contamination or old lubricant away and you still can’t get to other important places like the take-up spindle shaft, or clean the drive belts etc. But it’s enough for a minor service. Gears are generally not lubricated unless they are helical, and don’t use oil on them, only grease. This guide I put together shows some of the steps involved in a complete service, including separating the mechanism plates to properly access all the gear shafts, belts and spindles that need cleaning and lubricating: http://cinetinker.blogspot.com/2013/02/bolex-h16-rx5-disassembly.html There are lots of things I didn’t go into: viewfinder cleaning, resetting the pull down timing after front removal, how to remake the light seal, checking the flange depth etc. If you’re handy you can probably work some of those things out as you go. It’s certainly a fun project for people who like to tinker with machines. For most people though, especially those wanting to use their cameras and rely on them to work properly, I think it’s easier and better to pay a Bolex technician to do the job.

I believe these Leitz Primes are currently the most expensive primes on the market, more than twice the cost of Signature Primes or Angenieux Primes or Zeiss Supremes. More than any anamorphic prime. New each lens is nearly $60K USD. I’d love to get my hands on one to see what no cost limit can do to lens design..

That’s one possibility, but not a logical conclusion. Could be a fault with the motor itself, or the drive circuit. All you’re checking by inching it over is that the mechanism itself isn’t jammed. I don’t think it’s helpful to diagnose something as being an easy repair when you don’t actually know that.

It's been a long time since I looked at a Schneider, from memory is that a locking screw to lock the focus? Have you tested what screwing it in does? At any rate I don't think it would be a problem to remove it, if you can. Might be captive though..

If you've definitely ruled out low battery voltage, then something seems to be wrong with the camera that a technician needs to look into. It could be a number of things.

I haven’t seen any adapters, probably because if a lens protrudes past the mount (as some M mount lenses do at infinity) it wouldn’t fit through the C mount opening. Either that, or there just isn’t enough space between the bottom of the M mount and the flange of the C mount - there’s only 10mm difference in flange depth. Usually if it’s possible, someone has made an adapter, but in this case none of the usual manufacturers have.

Yes I would actually pinpoint 1949. The Bell &Howell camera I dated to 1951 is probably an earlier Sportster model. But at least 2 other cameras were only released in 1949.

All I can go off are the movie cameras in the cabinet of photo 2: Revere model 70 Magazine Cine 8: 1947 Revere Model 77 Magazine Cine 8: 1949 Cine-Kodak Reliant: 1949-1954 Magazine Cine-Kodak 8 model 90: 1940-1946 Bell & Howell 134?: 1951 So, I’d say early 1950s.

Is it a rental house camera? A technician familiar with SR3s needs to re-align the ground glass position. It’s possible the ground glass marks are a bit off if it’s a custom marked or second party one, not an Arri factory one. Worth locking off on a chart and swapping ground glasses to see if the framing changes at all. Usually this setting is pretty fixed, but if someone unqualified has been fiddling with the camera - removing the gate, undoing screws etc - it may have shifted.

Here’s a selections of some of the lenses available for a 16S in 1961: https://issuu.com/filmmaker8.com/docs/arriflex-16-catalog-1961/8 Another option I forgot to mention which I have seen in Arri Standard mount, if you can find them, are CP Ultra T lenses, which were high quality, high speed 16mm format lenses made by Kowa.

Because of the fairly deep flange depth (52mm) and smallish mount diameter of Arri Standard mount, you won’t find many lenses that can be adapted to fit your camera. The later 16S/B model has a single Bayonet mount as well as two Standard mounts, which opens up lens choice considerably, but unfortunately Arri Bayonet mount lenses won’t fit in a Standard mount camera. There are however plenty of lenses in Arri Standard mount. The common primes for 16mm format were Cooke Kinetals and Schneiders, but there was also Angenieux 5.9mm, Kinoptik 5.7mm and the 8mm Zeiss mentioned above. The Cooke Kinetals are excellent lenses for a 16ST. You can also use 35mm format lenses that came in Arri Standard mount, like Cooke Speed Panchros, Zeiss standard speeds (16, 25, 32, 50 and 85), and other primes by Angenieux, Schneider or Kinoptik. Harder to find are primes by Rodenstock, Kilfitt, Astro-Berlin, Meyer Gorlitz, and others. Angenieux made some 16mm format zooms in Standard mount, as did Som Berthiot, and there are also 35mm format zooms by Angenieux, Cooke, Som Berthiot and Kilfitt.

NC mount has a shorter flange depth than PL - 43.05mm. Combined with the body diameter as well as the larger flange with mounting screw holes I think it would be difficult to make an adapter that seats the lens nearly 9mm inside a PL mount. Someone made an adapter to use NC mount lenses on m4/3 cameras though: https://www.shapeways.com/product/EEST6RYW7/mitchell-nc-standard-35mm-to-52mm-rv-adapter It might be possible to remove the lens from the NC mount and customise a PL mount adaption, but it would be lens specific and not cheap.

Make sure you focus the eyepiece on the ground glass grain (essential for proper eye focusing) and the specks should fade somewhat. If you have released the eyepiece lock and jiggled the eyepiece while looking through it and the specks don’t move, then the most likely place for them to be is on the optics just above the ground glass, or the rhomboid prism above that, but these are harder to access. It won’t affect your film. If you give the camera to a Bolex specialist for a service (which I would recommend if you just bought it from eBay or something and it hasn’t been used in years) they should be able to clean the viewfinder properly for you.

Make sure the reflex prism is clean. You can clean the back of it by flipping it out and using a soft, dry brush or lens cleaning tissue with isopropyl alcohol/lens cleaner. On the top of the prism is the ground glass, blow off any dust with a bulb blower or a soft dry brush. Be very careful cleaning it with lens tissue, as the ground glass surface is easily damaged. If you don't have a manual download one from here: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1009962/Bolex-H16-Reflex.html Most of the dust or debris you see in the viewfinder will be either on the ground glass or on the optics just above it (which are hard to access). The other area that tends to make dust specks visible is the eyepiece diopter, but it sounds like you've ruled that out. No specks you see in the viewfinder should appear on the film. The back surface of the prism is not visible through the viewfinder, but large specks or smudges on that surface may degrade the film image, as it is fairly close to the film plane.