Dom Jaeger

As more cinematographers look for imperfect optics and detuned lenses, some have been choosing low end cine or rehoused old stills lenses to try and find some character. There are so many varied lens choices now for cinematographers.

Someone on the Vintage Lens Buyers Group was selling one last week, auction starting at 25,000 Euros. https://www.facebook.com/groups/Vintage.Lens.Buyers.Club/permalink/6055549964494985/?sale_post_id=6055549964494985 We had one at the previous rental house I worked for, monster lens. Not very sharp outside the centre with agricultural build quality like many Russian lenses but it made nice enough images, and is extremely wide for an anamorphic. Not worth 25K Euros though. I had to service it a lot, so perhaps I'm jaded.

Yes, the blue camera in question has a butterfly mag and is a VistaVision camera made by Bruce McNaughton. This site won't let him log on for some reason, so he asked me to post his reply to Steve's question. "The blue camera was my first VistaVision model. I was asked to shoot a film for World Expo 88 in 70mm. As 70mm camera, film stock, processing and editing equipment were all difficulties associated with a 70mm production in Australia, I decided that VistaVision was a sensible alternative. It would be printed on to 70mm at the final stage. I had never built any film equipment in my career as DOP/Film Producer but I designed and built this quite basic camera for the task. No bells and whistles. 1000 ft load, pellicle reflex. I used Canon FD lenses. There were a truck load of special effects required and the compositing of all of the VV elements was carried out at Pacific Title. They had to build a special printer for the task and the interneg was also produced in the VistaVision format. The 70mm final 6 track magnetic striped prints were made at Technicolor (horrible closed mind management) and were stunning on the Expo screen. During my time spent whipping the Pacific Title team into action I spoke to a few locals and made the decision to make a REAL VistaVision camera, with all the features already mentioned in posts on this forum. The six red cameras were used on many US productions but the project fell foul due to lack of support in my Burbank office and I could not continue without proper representation. Bruce McNaughton The Aranda Group Melbourne"

I'm not sure, some kind of VistaVision rig I guess. Bruce used to post on here, I'll shoot him a message and see if he wants to chime in.

I can't think why that would be the case unless the camera is a bit dirty and debris normally lying on the bottom of the film chamber is allowed to fall onto the film as it transports through. Otherwise there's nothing gravity would do to an upside down 435 to cause scratches. So basically, clean the film compartment well, make sure the loop is right, and it should be fine? If it's important footage, shoot a test first, just in case the shock mounts aren't working as they should or something else like that is wrong, but if it's a well maintained camera I can't see an issue.

Some of us have definitely heard about this one. It was designed and built by Bruce McNaughton who was the force behind Aranda Film, a little company based here in Melbourne that did extraordinary work with motion picture cameras. Many of the 2 perf conversions floating around the world were done by him. Among many other achievements he converted “unconvertible” cameras like the Arri 16St to Super 16, and designed 65mm camera systems. He should be more famous than he is. There were only six Rotavision cameras made. One of them is now at the Sydney Powerhouse Museum. The museum website lists some of the films these cameras were used on, including Babe: Pig in the City and Queen of the Damned: https://collection.maas.museum/object/562249 I’d love to know where the other five ended up.

It's been a few years since I worked on an Arri 16S but my recollection is the turret has a set distance for the lock screw to seat on the stepped pivot shaft so that the turret can rotate but there should be no axial play - ie the turret should not be able to move away from the film plane even slightly. I don't think there is room to shim the turret without making it stiff to turn. Shims may have been added if there was some axial play in the turret, but they should not have been used there to adjust flange depth. That is done by shimming under the mechanism. See picture #32 in my Arri 16St Service blog, where you can see the silver shims that were used to set the flange depth on that particular camera. I actually mention them in the blog: http://cinetinker.blogspot.com/2019/02/arri-16st-service.html

Generally you shim under the gate assembly, but then you need to check and possibly adjust the ground glass depth too. I just found this site with repair manuals including one for the 2B/C and links to my own cinetinker service posts: https://learncamerarepair.com/productlist.php?category=2 You do need to have an Arri depth gauge kit (gauge, 52.00mm blank, and backing plate), and it certainly helps to have a collimator for the ground glass adjustment, otherwise a perfectly calibrated test lens is essential.

I assume you mean shot on reversal and processed as reversal, rather than cross-processed, since there have been a number of films at least partially shot on 35mm Ektachrome in the last 30 years. Wasn't Tony Scott's Domino nearly all Ektachrome?

I think you’d probably need to replace the whole gate, which is a relatively straightforward procedure for an Arri technician (not something a user can do though since you need the tools to set it correctly and check flange depth and ground glass focus). I don’t know where you’d find one though.

No, I mean the turning shaft inside that holds the footage counter disk. The plunger doesn’t need anything. I’ve never seen one not work. Honestly, the whole footage counter system doesn’t really need lubrication. Again, the most likely cause for a sticky footage counter is a bent disk. It’s easy to bend when you have the mechanism out of the body if you’re not careful. Or someone greased the mechanism which is incorrect as it just adds drag that the return spring has to overcome.

I’ve serviced a lot of Bolexes and never come across one where the footage counter was stiff because of dried lubricant. I tend to just put a drop of oil on the counter shaft but if that has dried out it doesn’t matter much - there is virtually no resistance to turning a small aluminium disk and the amount of movement is very small so wear is really not an issue. It does only one rotation forward and back for each roll of film. The problems I’ve come across were all caused by poor servicing - the footage disk got a bit bent (the most likely culprit),or the return spring was incorrectly fitted, or the spacer washer was missing or someone used thick grease to lubricate it which only adds resistance. It may be affected by corrosion, but you would see that in other areas too. The only way to fix it is to remove the mechanism and see what’s going on.

You would need to remove the mechanism from the casing to access the footage counter, then it’s probably a quick job to reset the spring return or fix whatever else the issue is. Removing the mechanism requires removing the top viewfinder and the front, and most of the control knobs and levers, and on reassembly you need to reset the shutter timing and make a new light seal. Probably 1-2hr job for an experienced technician.

Yes, I mean the plain bearing for the shutter spindle that is lubricated by removing the plug in the middle of the turret and putting in some oil. A dry shutter bearing is the most common issue I've come across with Filmos. I mean how does it feel when you use the hand crank to manually advance the film (or just the mechanism). If you turn slowly you can sometimes feel if there is a tight spot in the mechanism caused by something perhaps clogging a gear tooth or otherwise obstructing the mechanism. A spring only has so much power, if the mechanism has extra drag (either because of an obstruction or a lack of lubrication) it will slow down prematurely. The most likely explanation is a lack of lubrication somewhere.

They’re normally very sturdy cameras, but dried lubrication will cause them to slow. Did you oil the shutter bearing in the front as well? Does it manually turn over without noticeable tight spots? The front can be removed fairly easily (if the spring is wound down) so you can check the shutter and pulldown, but I wouldn’t go any further. The oiling ports don’t reach every bearing and sliding surface in the camera, so it may just need an overhaul, but I don’t know who might do that these days. I wrote this 10 years ago about the Eyemo, which is similar, to give you a sense of what’s inside: http://cinetinker.blogspot.com/2013/06/inside-bell-howell-eyemo.html

Not at all. This is a Standard 16mm zoom, the image circle is between 13 and 14mm diameter for a large part of the zoom range, it won't even cover Alexa S16 HD mode which needs a minimum 15.1mm diameter image circle. Arri OG needs an image circle of 33.6mm.

First thing you should do is read the camera manual. You'll find a list of compatible lenses (from that era) on page 7: http://www.duallcamera.com/Arri 16BL.pdf The wides listed there are the Zeiss 8mm and later versions of the Schneider 10mm. You can use either Arri Standard or Arri Bayonet mount lenses in cameras with a Bayonet mount. Just be careful of certain wide angle Standard mount lenses that may hit the mirror (mainly Cooke Kinetals and certain Schneiders). If in doubt, carefully fit a lens set to infinity with the mirror out of the way, and then slowly inch the mirror around. If you feel any resistance (compared to inching without a lens fitted) stop and don't use that lens. Any 35mm format lens will be fine, or any lens in bayonet mount. Other wide angle primes that came in Arri S or B mount were Angenieux 5.9mm and Kinoptik 5.7mm, Zeiss 9.5mm Super Speed, and 9mm Cinema Products Ultra T. You could also use various standard 16 zooms if you can find them in Bayonet mount - Zeiss 10-100, Angenieux 9.5-95 or 10-150, Cooke 9-50, Canon 7-56 etc. They won't all be compatible with the 16BL blimp.

Cine facilities are in Amsterdam. https://www.cinefacilities.com/

First off, if you are not experienced in lens service I would not recommend trying to service or clean this yourself. The mount is for a Bell & Howell Eyemo, a little similar to Arri Standard but not quite the same. The inner part at the rear, with the cut out for a locating tab, rotates when you focus. Or more accurately, the inner part is held by a locating tab in the camera and the outer lens mount and focus barrel rotates as you focus (like some early Cooke lenses in Arri S mount). Here’s a thread on Eyemo lenses: https://cinematography.com/index.php?/forums/topic/11379-eyemo-lenses/#comments Unfortunately they are not easy to adapt, but this might make a good rehousing candidate. I would recommend selling it on for rehousing, where it can be professionally cleaned at the same time.

Seems about right.

Variable shutters on cameras like this were mainly for doing in-camera fade-ins and fade-outs. You can keep the same aperture setting (so depth of field remains the same), while reducing the amount of light hitting the film until it goes black. If you rewind the film a little, then do a fade-in you can get nice superimposed fades between shots. As others have mentioned, film cameras always need a period when the shutter covers the film while it gets moved to the next frame. A faster pulldown can allow for a larger shutter angle, but it requires a more sophisticated mechanism to avoid introducing instability, especially at higher frame rates. A lot of basic pulldown mechanisms just use a claw that pivots on a rotating cam, so the film is being pushed forward for around half the cycle. Add a little safety margin either side and you end up needing a shutter angle of around 150 degrees. You can use the variable shutter to change the look of the footage - a smaller shutter angle means a quicker exposure, more time between images and each image having less motion blur, so in playback motion appears more stuttery. You can also use the variable shutter as a way of controlling your aperture, to avoid being stopped all the way down on a sunny day, or to make your depth of field shallower. Reducing the shutter angle means you need to open up the aperture to compensate for less light hitting the film. But you only have 2 stops of adjustment and it does affect the look of motion, so ND filters are usually a better method for this.

It’s not entirely clear to me whether that is fungus or cleaning marks to be honest. Fungus tends to look like spindly tendrils, not linear. But it could be. Some examples I’ve cleaned recently: It can be slowed with sunlight or UV, or opened up and cleaned off. Sometimes after cleaning it might leave a mark where it has etched into the coating, but that usually has minimal effect on the image, unless a large portion of the surface has been etched. I’m not convinced it will automatically spread to other optics. I’ve had fungus lenses stored in the same room as other lenses and never had that problem come up. The spores exist naturally everywhere, but only start to really grow in dark, humid or moist environments. If you’re concerned, I would just leave it on a window sill in the sun for a while. And don’t store any gear where it’s dark and dank.

Here's a nice example of it being used:

You’re not getting any Arri SRs for $1500, let alone a S16 one. The only S16 option in that price range is a K3. Might work ok, might not: https://www.ebay.com/itm/155280694620

Someone was selling a P&S Technik Evolution SR here a few years ago and detailed the Evolution upgrades they had: Not every Evolution upgrade had all those things, I think the basic version was just a S16 conversion, but they were very good conversions. Some more details of P&S Techniks S16 conversion are covered here: http://cinematechnic.com/resources/arri_16sr/arri-16sr2/ http://cinematechnic.com/super-16mm/super_16_conversion_16sr/