Dom Jaeger

I think the biggest issue was if you re-centred the mount certain wide angle lenses would hit the mirror, since the mirror is on the side where you need to shift the optical axis over to. Other things like the viewfinder optics not normally covering Super and the claw recess in the gate being too close to the frame edge were also problematic.

Hi Marco, there actually is a great deal of difference between adapters, especially if you're looking at cine applications, where you really need stability and accuracy. I'm not familiar with nex adapters (or cameras) but I've worked on plenty of others. Cheap adapters use cheap materials that easily scratch or deform. They have sloppy tolerances so that sometimes a lens won't even fit, or the adapter is loose on the camera, or a lens can turn a bit in the mount throwing follow focus marks off. You can also get image shift if the lens moves a bit as you focus. The all important flange depth is often out of tolerance (sometimes drastically), so a lens might not reach infinity and the focus scale won't line up, or with a zoom the focus will drop out through the focal range. If the mount isn't centred properly a zoom will veer off to one side as you zoom. I would say if the project is important get the best adapter you can afford. Sometimes a cheaper one will do the job, but it can be a gamble. I'd avoid the no-name or ebay stuff though. I actually just worked on a customer's PL to m4/3 adapter made by Solid Camera, one of the top brands, and even that had some issues. I was able to shim it for perfect FFD and optically centre it for zoom tracking, and it's solid and well machined, with a very good support, but the PL locating pin isn't hardened and a few impacts had mushroomed this one slightly oversize, so that a PL lens would no longer fit properly.

No Maam, just a concerned citizen. Incidently, the accusation was of being craven, childish and witless, not of breaking any laws. Freya, I understand Maxim has started some controversial topics, I've enjoyed those discussions too. The difference here is that he is not part of this discussion, just the butt of its jokes, and named in the thread title. It's a form of cyber bullying. Maybe I'm over-sensitive to it, but I know kids who have topped themselves over this stuff. It doesn't really matter who the target is, whether people think he deserves it or whether he has a sense of humour. A lot of young people come here looking for guidance and advice, and this thread is like coming across a circle of bullies guffawing and poking something with a stick. So I said something.

It's possible, but pretty unlikely. We used to ship SR3s all over the place and the flange depth never went out. Only ever really happened if a camera was dropped. It's possible Abel Cine made a mistake setting the camera up - unlikely given their reputation, but we're all only human. If you're concerned it wouldn't take long for a technician to double check the basic settings. Or shoot a simple focus test of a slanted piece of newspaper marked with distances so you can see exactly where focus is lining up compared to the lens focus scale. Does eye-focus line up with the lens marks? Are you getting consistent softness with all lenses? I would think the transfer house should be able to tell you if your footage is noticeably softer than other S16 material shot on the same stock.

Hi Bill, as mentioned, that's a flat base, basically a belt-driven gear box that allows the motor to be mounted next to the camera. It makes the configuration more compact and easier to mount on a tripod or steadicam. It was originally devised for fitting the camera in a blimp. Several manufacturers made them over the years. Here's a Cine 60 base with camera and motor removed: To attach the camera to a flatbase the handgrip motor is taken off (4 screws) and this gear on the bottom of the camera needs to be removed: It normally got stored in a compartment of the flatbase (see the little cylinder on the Cine 60), but sometimes it's missing. Without that gear you can't mount the motor back on the camera base (well you can but it won't run the camera), so make sure any flatbase model you buy has that gear if you want to use the camera handheld as well. Hard to find those gears. Without a flatbase, you sort of need stands like these to mount the camera on a support (on the right is one with a support for zooms):

Oh the wit, you guys must have killed them in the schoolyard. This is however a grown-up's forum. If you want to mock people on the internet, using their real names, because you disagree with their politics or their choice of footwear or whatever, do it somewhere else.

Bill, there are online IIC manuals available in several places. Try: http://www.kevinzanit.com/Arriflex_35IIC_manual.pdf or http://www.kinokamera.com/DROPBOX/35IIC_manual.pdf Most IICs will be 4-perf, a very few modified to 3-perf, and occasionally you'll find a Techniscope 2-perf model. Most will not be S35 capable either. PS I would disregard the manual when it suggests trimming the first 20 perfs off a leader for loading the mags, not necessary IMHO

Nice to know I was correct. B) That link is the best history of the Arriflex 35 (particularly pre-war) that I've ever come across, lots of fascinating info. Thanks Simon. It deserves a good translation, or at least a better one than online translators are capable of. I haven't read this new book yet, though from the title it seems more focussed on the post-war, American history: http://www.amazon.com/Chronicle-Camera-Arriflex-America-1945-1972/dp/1617037419

Yes you need to be careful with old Standard mount 16mm format lenses on SRs; some will fit, others won't. Because the whole lens moves forward as you focus down from infinity, a lens set to close focus may fit but will then foul as you focus further away. Worst case it hits the mirror. Don't bother with Cooke Kinetals on an SR, but certain Schneiders will fit. I have yet to work out what focal length/serial numbers work, except for the 10mm Cinegon which I believe needs to be above serial no 9861936. See: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=59808&hl=schneider&do=findComment&comment=388139

Wait, what? This was a competition? What does Keith win? I would've tried harder if I'd known there were prizes..

Thanks Mike, very nice. Yours is even older than ours, but curiously has the round matte box shaft.

A wall wart - visualise it! Jaycar website has these: http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=MP3490&form=CAT2&SUBCATID=1000#12 If 2.5A isn't enough for your applications they also have 5A desktop versions

True, for rotation you need to use something like a Dove prism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dove_prism But as Joerg mentioned, the nearly square S8 frame turned sideways is hardly portrait. A fairly simple method to get a more vertical projection aspect ratio is to shoot and then project with a 2X anamorphic lens turned 90 degrees (so that it compresses and later uncompresses vertically). This is what Tacita Dean did for her marvellous Tate installation. A 4:3 horizontal frame would become a 4:6 vertical one, some masking of the sides could make it more portrait still. Or simply mask a normal frame, but you'd lose a lot of image area. For an installation that may be running for a while I don't think turning a projector sideways would be a good idea.

It might help to mention where you are in the world, this is an international forum! :)

It was standard procedure back when we rented film cameras out regularly to do a scratch test before each job, also something I still do after every camera repair. Just run some fresh film through the camera, doesn't have to be much, then cut off the unused feed side and put it back in the can. Before removing the film that's been run through the camera, mark where the gate is with a sharpie. Remove the film and carefully study it for scratches on both sides. Depending on where a scratch begins relative to your gate mark you can determine where in the film path the scratch is occurring. Could be a burr in the gate or the pressure plate or something else. Make sure your loop size isn't the problem either.

I can tell the difference if I project 35mm Super Speeds with a S16 test reticle, which sometimes happens by accident if I've been checking 16mm lenses and forget to change reticles. The image looks very slightly softer than I'm expecting from a S16 Super Speed. But I'm not sure the difference would always be noticeable on a production by the time of the final viewing after variables like focus error, stock resolution, and path to final output resolution are factored in. It's a pretty subtle improvement at the level of very fine detail that gets even more subtle as you stop down. Plus these are old lenses so there can be some variation. But I know Zeiss made a dedicated 50mm for S16 when they had a perfectly good 50mm in 35mm format, so there was a difference. True, an astonishing thing. You can get down to 6mm with Ultra 16s or Cooke SK4s or a Century, roughly a 90 degree angle of view on S16, but at 114 rectilinear degrees the 8R is something else..

Simon, the original question wasn't about the Cinegon, which is a retrofocus design for wide angles that is indeed different to the Xenon, but rather what differences there might be within the various brandings of the same Schneider Xenon design. As for differences in iris design, the change from early iris mechanisms which cramped the smaller aperture stops together to ones where the stops were evenly spaced was actually very important in the history of lens evolution. Very few professional lenses these days have more than small fractions of a stop of play in the iris, but the same amount of play would be a much larger fraction if the stops were all squished together!

Yeah Schneider lenses can be confusing! Judging from a pair of Schneider 28mm lenses I've got here, the Arriflex-Cine-Xenon version seems newer than the plain Xenon. The Arri branded one has evenly spaced aperture marks compared to the Xenon which has the typically crowded as you get smaller aperture marks of older lenses. The Xenon also has the rotating mount of early Arri Standard lenses and fewer close focus marks. Optically they look like the same design though. Schneider used to have online pdfs of vintage lens brochures that were helpful for this kind of thing but I can't find them anymore unfortunately.

Try a rental house that's more oriented to cine lenses, look for lenses that are designed for Super 16. For example: http://www.radiantimages.com/lenses/s16/arri No idea about that company, just using it as an example. You can use PL mount lenses designed for 35mm on an SR2 but like Adrian said you'll struggle to find wides and some of the short, bigger barrelled designs will foul on the viewfinder. You might also potentially get some internal reflections that flash the film because the of the larger circle of light coming out the back of a lens designed for a bigger format. Basically it's overall just better to use lenses that are designed for the format you're using.

A set of S16 Super Speeds would normally be 9.5, 12, 16, 25 and 50. Can you only access 35mm Super Speeds or something?

I'm not familiar with the black version 8-64, but the later model 8-64 we have in our rental fleet is actually heavier than those two longer range zooms, and a little physically longer although the barrel is not as thick. From projection testing the quality is similar, 12x and 15x are maybe a little less snappy in contrast at the long end, which is a common price to pay for a bigger zoom range. The 8-64 has the best close focus at 2 ft, compared to 3 ft or more for the other two, and it also breathes less. The 8-64 and 11-165 were both used on Hurt Locker, as an example of how well they intercut. I suspect the T2.5 11.5-138 being only very slightly faster but neither wider nor longer than the T2.8 11-165 (and more or less the same size and weight) is not quite as useful.

The first Arri 35 had a shutter angle of 120 degrees, so the exposure time is 1/72 sec at 24 fps. The butterfly shutter spins at half the rate of the pulldown cycle, so each 60 degree gap exposes one frame every 180 degrees of shutter.

Usually just newer is better, esp zooms which only really arrived in the 60s, and went through a steep evolution in the 70s and 80s. Coatings also evolved during that time. The 15-150 is from the early 70s, quite different from say an 80s Canon zoom. From what I've been told the converted 12-120 wasn't as good as the factory built 11-110. Zeiss converted Mk2 10-100s but it was a complete rebuild, not just the Abacus rear extender like on 12-120s.

To attach a video assist camera you'd need a T-bar elbow (with a central partial prism or splitting mirror and arms going either side for video and eyepiece, sometimes the video arm bends up) rather than the J-bar you have (with only one arm on one side), which is just a normal viewfinder elbow. Unless the camera's been modified with a window and prism under the handle like on later SRs, in which case you'd need a video split handle. Never seen an SR blimp!

Some people shot a silent film on a 2709 not long ago, some info here: http://provideocoalition.com/awilt/story/photos_the_bell_amp_howell_2709_and_the_canyon/ Some of those who were involved are regular posters on CML where you might get more responses: http://www.cinematography.net/ I think you can forget about sound recording, even if you have a compatible sync speed motor it's a very noisy camera, blankets wouldn't be enough. They used to put cameras like this in a sound-proof booth back in the day!