Dom Jaeger

As well as the back in time scenes from Midnight in Paris old Cooke Speed Panchros were used on Woody Allen's more recent To Rome with Love for the local stories. I've read they were also used on Delicatessen, Virgin Suicides and 2007's Golden Door. S2 Panchros were apparently used for some of the close-ups in Mr and Mrs Smith. The Australian telemovie Underground: The Julian Assange Story (set in the 80s) used Speed Panchros that we supplied. Harris Savides used Bausch and Lomb Super Baltars to shoot Birth and Margot at the Wedding. They've also been used on the TV series Magic City and the 2013 feature Prince Avalanche. (I recently PL mounted and overhauled a full set of Super Baltars for the rental house I work for and completely fell in love with their painterly softness.. they've been out on jobs nearly constantly since, so far only music vids and TVCs though.) Lots of movies still use the older Panavision anamorphics or spherical primes like their Super Speeds and Ultra Speeds for at least some shots. From a recent AC article I recall reading that Lincoln was mostly filmed using Super Speed Z-series lenses (rehoused Zeiss glass) which must be around 30 years old. The original Let The Right One In (2008) used Zeiss Super Speeds wide open to interesting effect.

Yes that serial number dates it to 1953, you were probably confusing it with an 8,000 number rather than 80,000. Which is good, since a 1953 model will use single or double perf film. Earlier cameras could only take double perf film (which is harder to source these days) but in 1952 Bolex changed their sprocket rollers to only have a single row of teeth. Without an octameter you won't really be able to frame correctly while shooting, so it's kind of necessary. You could use the critical focusing viewer for a locked off shot (although since it views through the top lens port rather than the middle one you will have a parallax error at close distances). If the camera didn't come with an eyecup for the top critical focus viewer it might have an optic screwed in for an eye-level finder, which means you won't be able to properly view down through it. So if you attach a lens and find you can't view down through the top, you will either need an eyecup optic or an eye-level finder. Pentax lenses should work fine with a good adapter, but bear in mind you might struggle to find a wide angle - for 16mm format you need something like a 10 to 15mm lens. A 25mm is considered the standard focal length. So you might need to get a wide angle C-mount lens. The focal lengths on an octameter viewfinder will correspond to any lens including your Pentax ones, the octameter simply gives the view of a certain focal length on a 16mm frame (which will match what will be recorded on the film - the 16mm camera gate will crop a small rectangle out of the middle of the much larger Pentax lens image circle). The octameter works like a very simple sort of zoom, moving a magnifying element up and down a tube. The parallax correction is achieved by a mechanism that tilts the tube in towards the lens port at closer distances.

Hi Mike, the rental house I work for has an early Arri 35 in the foyer museum, serial number 700 (and 570 on the door). I posted some photos of it in this thread: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=53764 That new book looks interesting, thanks for the tip Glenn.

It was DW Griffiths back in the 20's (not Godard) who first said that all an audience wants is a girl and a gun. Nothing's changed much except the outfits: But in terms of hardware, you can keep your puny little 'real' guns. I want a Zorg ZF-1 for Christmas.

OK well that sounds like the spring has indeed broken or detatched from one of its anchors. Simply removing the motor from the camera wouldn't have caused that, it was probably already on its last legs and running it a few times has finished it off. Unusual for an 8mm Bolex motor (since the limit gear protects them from overwinding), but perhaps some corrosion got in there. It's odd that initially you couldn't wind it more than a quarter turn but now it keeps turning without actually winding up.. but maybe the broken mooring inside was jamming it and has now worked free.

Don't worry Joel, I doubt that your camera is ruined. You can check the spring motor when it's removed from the camera by holding it firmly and turning the square-ended shaft clockwise with a shifter or spanner. It will wind the spring inside and want to force the shifter back around (so be careful). One rotation should be enough to show you that the motor itself is not jamming. The limit gear stops the spring from completely unwinding, when it hits the stop the motor is a bit relaxed because it is nearly unwound. After winding about 11 rotations the other long tooth of the limit gear again hits the shallow valley and stops the motor being overwound. If the motor is able to be wound with a shifter, the problem is in the winding mechanism. It looks like the uni-clutch for the winding handle is OK but what about the clutch for the winder plate? That's the big spring that wraps around the round plate and has a hook that fits into a slot in the body. If that is in upside down it will bind when you try to wind up the motor. The round plate should rotate clockwise but bind anti-clockwise.

Hi Joel, the limit gears on the winder side of the motor in your photo look OK, you don't need to worry about any gear alignment when the motor is fitted. When winding the motor up the motor body stays stationary, only the inner shaft connected to that central gear turns (and the limit gear next to it). They look OK, nothing blocking the teeth, so the only other cause I can think of is that one of the uni-clutches in the winding mechanism might have been put in backwards (upside down). There is one under the winding handle which allows the handle to slip when turned counterclockwise, but grips and turns the motor shaft when turned clockwise. The other is a large diameter but very short spring fitted under the circular winder plate which allows the plate to turn clockwise but not counter-clockwise. If the winder handle turns freely counter-clockwise then that clutch (under the little plate with 3 screws on the winder side) is OK. I'd then check the spring under the winder plate, which has to be accessed from under the motor. I wrote a guide to servicing pocket Bolexes, which has photos that might assist you: http://cinetinker.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/servicing-bolex-d8l.html

For a proper service the camera would be dismantled, parts and roller bearings checked for damage or wear, and everything thoroughly cleaned and relubricated. While some of that procedure can be done without specific tools or knowledge, some of it also can't. Even though it's quite a simple camera mechanically, certain tolerances are pretty fine. But for simple preventative maintenance which can be done by an owner rather than a technician, the manual recommends greasing all moving parts of the claw movement and placing a small drop of oil in the hole above the cam (marked with a white arrow), and also a drop in each of the holes just behind the cam which are revealed when the claw is in a fully forward position. On later cameras (like yours from your pictures) the hole marked with a white arrow (accessing the mag drive gear bearing) is lubricated with grease instead of oil. The manual recommends doing this procedure every 25,000 feet or twice a year. I would apply the grease lightly with a good quality brush that doesn't shed bristles. You can try and clean off some of the old grease, but it's difficult to do so properly without actually dismantling the movement first. Sometimes you just end up pushing dirt and contamination further in. With the mags the important part is generally the take-up clutch, which often needs to be serviced and the slipping tension measured and set with a specific Arri tool. Also important is the throat which should allow 2 film thicknesses through both channels. Film chips can get caught in there. The gears are not lubricated, but you can clean the teeth if they are getting grotty. Could be a few reasons why a mag isn't running smoothly. The motor uses roller bearings which are lubricated with grease, I wouldn't oil them.

That article is surely satire but even if it were true I'd find it no worse than James Bond extolling the virtues of Omega watches in Casino Royale or Pearl Harbour rewriting the history of WWII. The history of film is littered with whoring to a market. In some ways I worry more about the subtle pandering to a target audience's preconceptions. It's easy to see the blatant stuff.

Actually what would be difficult would be to mass produce cheap plastic pressure plates with a smooth enough surface and precise enough pressure to press against the film and still allow the tiny spring-loaded claw to properly perform a pulldown without slipping or tearing perfs. Try pushing down a S8 pressure pad and sliding the film over it with your finger, it's horribly sticky. The pressure of a Standard 8 pressure plate that does actually press on the film (with a highly polished metal surface and twice the width) is only about 50 grams. The reason S8 film isn't constantly pulled through by the take-up and blurring every frame is in the cartridge design and the take-up clutch. Within the cartridge the film bends sharply around a pin before being taken up, which provides enough resistance to make the take-up spindle slip until the claw feeds another frame of film through and relieves the friction going around the pin. The outer rails in the gate guide the film but at certain points also rest upon the plastic tabs in the cartridge pressure pad that extend out either side of the film at the gate aperture and also (looking at the cartridge) at top right and bottom left. You will find cutouts at these positions in the taller, sloping side-rail guides of the gate where the surface has been machined down to something like 0.17 or 0.18 mm (0.15 mm film thickness plus room to move) higher than the inner rails upon which the film rests. The precision is in the camera gate, not the cartridge, which just needs the pressure pad area under the film and its extending tabs to be flat.

Just from measuring the pressure on a cartridge it appears to be about 150 grams. But the pressure plate in a S8 cartridge doesn't actually press on the film, it presses against outer rails on the camera gate that are raised slightly above the inner film transport rails, creating a film channel that is a few hundredths of a mm thicker than the film. So thinner polyester-based film could be susceptible to a little 'focus breathing' perhaps. Just how much thinner is it exactly?

If you're not reaching infinity the lenses are sitting too far out from the film plane, and it sounds like in your case they are a fair way out, more than the little variation that you might expect from adapters. I've never tried that combination, but my guess would be that the C-mount to FD adapter is hitting something somewhere on the Bolex bayonet adapter before screwing all the way in. The C-mount seat is well inside the bayonet mount, so the FD adapter needs to clear the sloping sides of the Bolex adapter and the bayonet lock ring. You could check the adapter surfaces for signs of scraping where they join together, maybe a bit of filing will remove the obstruction. Mr Alden may have used a differently shaped adapter that worked for him.

The Arricam ground glass is very similar but unfortunately not compatible, you'll have to find a proper Moviecam one.

Not sure you'll get a response from Greg since the original thread is over 7 years old. Camera technicians who could replace a Pathe pellicle must be few and far between these days. A now-retired technician who mentored me years ago told me he refused to work on Pathes because they were such horrible, fiddly things. I have a Pathe Webo Super but have yet to pull it apart to confirm his description. I know another old camera tech who told me he replaced pellicles with cut-down microscope slide cover plates, the thinner the better. I've also heard of people using cellophane stretched over a wire frame, probably not optically great, but it's one solution I guess. Alternatively, some stills cameras use(d) pellicle mirrors, but they would still need cutting down to size, if you could source spares.

Hi Simon, since you're interested in accuracy.. I've been delving into this history, according to the best evidence to date the actual order was the Cine-Kodak first, followed very shortly by Victor in August 1923. The first known advertisements for Bell and Howell's 16mm "Cine Automatic Camera" appeared in the Jan 1924 edition of American Cinematographer (an interesting read, which you can actually find online at http://archive.org/stream/amento04asch#page/n23/mode/2up). Bell and Howell didn't call it a Filmo until their next advertisement in the April 1924 edition. Both Victor and Kodak showed their new 16mm devices to the SMPT in May of 1923, but having invented the format Kodak had more time in advance to get their machines on the market (and properly test them). Of the three 16mm pioneers, Victor's cameras were the worst, while the more patient Bell and Howell under McNabb created a camera that is still among the best ever made. Victor spent considerable energy pushing the myth of his primacy, he also claimed credit for the first triple lens turret camera, despite Bell and Howell releasing theirs at the same time or even earlier. In Europe after the Cine-Nizo, came the Cine Geyer and Zeiss Ikon's little 16mm Kinamo among others before the Bolex. I have a Cine-Nizo model B which is quite delightful, but a tin can next to a Filmo!

If the back-focus is out it throws both ends out the same direction but at 120mm it's much less than at 20mm. If the back-focus is too short you'll go past infinity (and lose close focus at the wide end), if it's too long you won't reach infinity (and only have close focus at the wide end). For a zoom to properly hold focus it needs to be collimated to within one or two hundredths of a mm, several times less than the thickness of a human hair. It sounds like whoever fitted the OCT19 mount to your lens may not have done a proper job, or possibly your adapter is badly out of tolerance. The OCT19 flange depth is 9mm longer than a PL mount.

You have an Angenieux zoom with an OCT19 mount? The symptoms you're describing sound like a back-focus problem. If the lens isn't seated at the correct distance from the sensor it won't hold focus through the zoom range, getting worse as you go wider.

A number of early 16mm cameras had double claw pulldown movements as well as double perf sprocket rollers, including some Cine-Kodaks and Filmos. It's pretty simple to turn down the top teeth of a double perf sprocket roller in a lathe. If you polish the turned surface afterwards you'll minimise any risk of scratching and creating film dust. Removing the rollers from the camera is usually not too difficult. I hold the roller in the lathe with a mandril to avoid damaging the other row of teeth, keeps it nice and centred also. Likewise you can easily remove a second claw by filing it down so it no longer enters the film. If the movement is easy to access (like on Filmos or Cine-Kodaks) it would be a good idea to remove the claw assembly before filing it, just to prevent metal filings from contaminating the clockwork. Be a bit careful taking Filmos apart, as the spring isn't cased, but you can safely remove the front behind the turret (with the spring run down) to access the movement.

No, the internal meter is giving you a reading that is measured through the lens and calibrated for correct exposure at the film plane. An external meter will give you a pure reading that needs to be adjusted for light loss within the camera/lens. Typically I'd say you would need to open up the lens 1/3 to 1/2 stop more when using an external meter. That's pre-supposing the factors you mention, on top of the accuracy of both meters and how they might differ in response to different lighting conditions. On top of how accurate the manual aperture control of the camera is (ie whether setting the iris to f/4 actually opens the iris to f/4), which might be less consistent than auto-exposure. I've no idea if that's an issue with Nizos. So really, it's somewhat theoretical until you shoot a test.

I'm sure there are plenty of Australian filmmakers who want to shoot on film, but the reality is that very few do anymore. The occasional music video, student short or experimental film, but that's about it. I'd be curious to know the exact figures, but in the last couple of years I suspect you could count the number of film-originated Australian features on one hand and have fingers left over. I know several film schools that still teach with film cameras and one here in Melbourne that recently invested in 35mm equipment. No doubt the closure of Deluxe will impact on whether the students get to do anything more than just practice loading with them. What's really sad is that when a lab closes, it seems they have directives to trash the equipment. The rental house I work for (which has the largest locally-owned film camera inventory in the country) tried to rescue some of the processing equipment that was thrown out when Deluxe closed their Melbourne branch, only to find it destroyed in pieces in a skip bin and left to rust in the rain. Even vintage splicers and other old machinery that could have found a place in a museum. They didn't even try to sell it, just quietly trashed the lot. I'll be interested to see if Deluxe Sydney do the same.

Curious to know how that thread answered your question! For an 8x zoom the 8-64 breathes very little. A 10mm shift doesn't really make sense because the variation from 6-16 is huge while 54-64 is much smaller, but I don't think it should breathe even as much as 54-64. If you rack all the way from close focus to infinity you will of course notice a shift, but compared to other zooms it's pretty minimal. After 10 years of working on zooms I've never come across a mechanical fault that increases breathing, but then again I seem to come up against new and interesting lens faults all the time, so who knows!

Given that the internal meter would have been calibrated at the factory to match the light measured at the film plane, the f-stop displayed would be a compensated value, showing the geometric aperture required to properly expose the film. It could conceivably be up to 1/2 stop more open than an external meter reading, since with big S8 zooms there would be 1/4 to 1/3 stop light lost through the lens itself, on top of the loss to the viewfinder prism. Zac's figure of 8-20% sounds about right for a S8 prism, the light lost through the lens depends on the coatings and number of elements. The only S8 zoom I'm aware of that had T stop markings is the Angenieux 6-80 which lost about 1/3 stop (f/1.2 to T1.4 at 6mm).

That would be my guess too.

If you bought a 50 year old car you would have a mechanic check it over before expecting it to work properly. It never ceases to amaze me that people buy old cameras (by their nature precision instruments) and then spend money on film and processing before wondering why the images aren't quite right. Here in Australia I charge about $130 to completely check a Bolex including the lens collimation, so that a filmmaker can be confident in the equipment and focus on the job at hand - making a film. Sometimes it's a simple thing like a bent side-rail spring or gummed-up gate that can ruin the footage, while the rest of the camera is fine. Sometimes a $30 part needs replacing, or a lens needs a 15 minute adjustment. Other times the camera is a wreck and needs a complete overhaul. But at least you know. Ideally a cine camera should be serviced every few years, even if it seems to keep chugging along. Much like a car. For a complete Bolex service (CLA) I charge about $400. If you've already spent money on an old camera and want to use it I would urge anyone to first have it checked by a qualified technician. For a few extra dollars you can be confident that the camera will actually function properly.

The SD icon will flash for about 40 seconds until the grab is taken, then it stops flashing and goes red. Good idea to format and prepare the SD card in the camera first.