Dom Jaeger

Bell and Howell only exist as a brand name these days, used by various companies to dress themselves in long faded glory. The film division I believe was bought by Alan Gordon Enterprises decades back, but when I asked them about Filmo parts they told me they didn't have any. The company now calling themselves Bell and Howell sells alarm clocks and razor blades, for vintage repairs their website directs you to an obscure phone number in California and an email address that I've never heard back from. As far as I know the only people even vaguely interested in repairing an old 16mm Filmo are odd little enthusiasts like myself, tinkering under rocks, scattered around the globe. You haven't mentioned what camera it is, Bell and Howell made a few different 16mm models. Most common are the various Filmo 70 series cameras, first made shortly after Kodak introduced 16mm in the early 20s and continuing production until the 70s. They were one of the best built cameras ever made. If you're not put off by non-reflex, spring-powered regular 16 obsolescence, they're fabulous! Bodies without a lens go for as little as $20 on ebay, a turret model fitted with 3 Taylor Hobson primes might get several hundred. http://www.tfgtransfer.com/filmo.htm

You can pester me anytime Richard, especially about old cameras. Besides, I'm about to pester you regarding 8 rolls of double-8 that need processing. :D Here's the Filmo instructions for removing the front plate. As I mentioned before, since the spring is not run down, be careful of the shutter starting to spin as you take off the plate. Set the speed to 8 fps first. You should only need to follow instructions 5 a to d.

Hi Richard, First impulse would be to ask for a refund from the seller.. But if you want to persist, I've had a couple of Filmos stop running like that, and both times the jam was freed by opening up the front. One had a bent shutter, the other a jammed release. Watch your fingers near the shutter though, in case it suddenly starts spinning. Good idea to set the speed to minimum. I wouldn't advise undoing anything other than the front, especially with a fully wound spring. I've got the 70 series repair manual - even when you can fully run down the spring (which is past where it normally stops), you still need a clamping jig to hold it if you want to go much further than removing the front. The spring is not cased, and holds a tremendous amount of energy. I can check the repair manual on monday if you want more detailed instructions about removing the front. It's been a few years since I did it.

How's it sound when you run it? :ph34r:

Well you said yourself it's a rare lens made for still photography.. and this is a cinematography forum. If no-one responds to your question then that's probably your answer. Angenieux must have made hundreds of different zooms over the years, including plenty for cine use in every gauge available. You seem to have a fair idea of this one's pros and cons already, why not give it a go and let us know how it goes. :)

Yes an adapter will just make a C mount lens focus at the D mount FFD of 12.29mm, so if you're correct about that camera I'm afraid you're stuck with the lens the camera came with. FWIW, all of the 9.5mm cameras I have are either standard C mount or have a fixed lens.

The Zeiss 11-110 is a good lens but some people don't like how much it breathes, or that close focus is around 5 ft. Like Adrian, I think the Canon S16 zooms (particularly 7-63, 8-64, 11.5-138) are all excellent. Cooke also made some lovely zooms for S16, 10.4-52 and my personal favourite, the T1.6 10-30. For primes I just can't go past Cooke S4s supplemented with SK4s. "Best" is certainly subjective (and often quite subtle). For clinical perfection and speed you probably can't beat modern Zeiss, but then I've just finished PL mounting a set of 60's (35mm) Super Baltars - not terribly sharp, not flare resistant, not very fast, but man are they sweet and creamy!

Yeah that one's not much chop, especially if it's a magazine camera - can't get 8mm magazines anymore - you need a spool camera. Something like this is perfect: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Paillard-Bolex-D8LA-Movie-Camera-NEW-Original-Box-/190771830224?pt=US_Vintage_Cameras&hash=item2c6ae31dd0 :)

If it's an auto-exposure only camera (pretty rare in regular 8) there's not much you can do, but in most reg 8 cameras the meter is just a guide, or you can set the camera to a manual aperture setting, so you don't need to go off the internal meter. Chances are it's a bit off anyway. If you can get hold of a reliable hand-held meter you'll get better exposures. But if you're not familiar with meters or just want to go off the in-built meter for simplicity, you could set the ASA to 25, adjust the lens aperture until the needles line up, see what stop it reads on the iris scale and then close it down by 2 stops (thus compensating for the ASA change - 25 to 50, 50 to 100). I'd check the camera meter first though. If you don't have a hand-held meter to check it against you could compare the camera reading against maybe a digital SLR set to the same ASA/ISO and a shutter speed of 1/30 sec. Or you could even just use the good old sunny 16 rule: on a sunny day, with the ASA set to the inverse of your shutter speed (so at the normal frame rate of 16 or 18 fps where the shutter speed is a little under 1/40 sec, set the ASA to 40), the camera meter should read f/16. If the meter is a bit off, you'll need to adapt the iris compensation method. You might find for example that setting the ASA to 40 and stopping the lens down one stop works best.

Matthew, it's an industry, not a religion. Dividing the world into "film shooters" and "digital shooters" is completely out of touch with reality. Is forum member Richard Boddington a "digital shooter" now that he shot a movie on an Alexa? What would you call OP Adrian, or David Mullen, who regularly use digital cameras? The question is whether film can survive as a niche medium, maybe by exposing a new generation to its charms via a mainstream clothing chain. It's got nothing to do with whether "film shooters" (whoever the hell they are) go out and "shoot film now". Personally I think this marketing strategy will be about as successful as the the LomoKino thing, which caused a great buzz and then faded away. Particularly given the prices they're charging.

Sounds like a fault that needs proper investigating by a trained camera technician. It could be a number of possibilities, including electronic component failure, pretty hard to diagnose over the internet. There isn't a "repair manual" for this kind of problem, just exploded drawings, circuit diagrams and a knowledge of how the mechanical and electrical parts work together.

Ah, different question. You can't really see the mirror surface through the viewfinder, you're focussed on the ground glass. A very dirty, scratched up or tarnished mirror will reduce the brightness and clarity of your viewing image, but any mirror surface damage will be very out of focus, or invisible when it's spinning. Specks, marks or discolouration seen through the viewfinder are almost always in the viewfinder optics or something on the ground glass. I have no idea how easy it is to access those parts for cleaning in a K3. You can inspect the mirror by simply removing the lens and looking through the lens port, but I wouldn't bother cleaning it unless it really needs it - you're just as likely to make it worse (especially with cotton buds). On professional cameras yes, but I'm pretty sure the K3 just uses a highly polished aluminium surface. I actually found it scratched easier than a silvered mirror!

Hey Will, I was under the impression Bernie's "laser brighten" process involved treating the ground glass rather than the mirror? Ric, from the admittedly little experience I have with K3s, one thing I have noticed is that the mirror scratches very easily, I'd be very careful trying to clean it. Even non-abrasive lens tissue can pick up surface crap, drag it over the surface and leave marks. Best bet (if you have to clean it) might be something like sensor cleaning swabs with isopropyl alcohol, maybe mixed with a little window cleaner, and only do small areas at a time. Use a fresh swab each time. I'd also advise against removing the mirror yourself to get it re-polished without having the ground glass focus checked/reset afterwards. A tiny difference in the mirror height or a slight wobble as it spins and reflex focussing will go out the window.

There's no definitive answer, mostly it's credited to Edison who, while designing his Kinetoscope in 1891, apocryphally made a rectangle with his fingers and told his assistant to make the frame "this big". Presumably, having chosen a 1" wide image area within the 35mm film width, Edison (or his assistant Dickson) chose a height ratio that would divide evenly into 600 to maximise the number of frames that would fit in a 50' (or 600") roll. The Lumieres probably based their aspect ratio on Edison's. Early photography used a variety of aspect ratios, though full-plate daguerreotypes and tintypes were generally 6.5" by 8.5" which is close to 4:3. If you look at the work of a pioneer like Muybridge, he used everything from 4:3 to 3:1.

Hi Gregg, well that's good news, well done. My previous 'schadenfreude' was definitely of the empathetic kind, but unwarranted it seems. I was probably just projecting my own woes, having spent 3 days working on someone's RED zoom - more or less a rehoused Tamron - which was a complete pain in the arse.. Yeah the huge zoom on my little Beaulieu was a bit of a Christmas lark, it gets pretty quiet at the rental house around now. I wanted to try the Optimo 24-290 but it was out on a job. :)

Very nice! I had something similar happen, only with a Standard 8mm Beaulieu. Thought I'd farewell Ektachrome with a bit of style. B)

Being a tinker in mechanics and optics I'm very far from an expert on steppers, but my understanding is that you can increase the speed of a stepper motor by upping the voltage, as long as the current is regulated to within the winding current rating. A higher voltage gets the coils to their current limit sooner, which allows the motor to run faster. Modern stepper drivers tend to be current limited, and the input voltage can sometimes be many times the 'rated' voltage of the motor. Depending on the winding inductance the torque will drop off at higher speeds/voltages. From conversations with Glenn Anderson (who knows waay more about this stuff than I do) using a H-Bridge to reverse the voltage in the preceding coil (rather than simply switching the voltage off) can overcome residual current that slows the motor down (something which may also be incorporated in certain drivers). Glenn doesn't visit these forums much, but if you wanted to ask him a question you could contact him through his website synccine.com. He's a pretty helpful guy.

Hi Gregg, sorry, can't help but feel a little bit of schadenfreude at your struggle. :rolleyes: Sometimes what looks like the simplest of jobs ends up being a nightmare.. and you can't really charge people for the ten hours it took to replace a $40 part! More and more stuff these days seems made with little regard for future servicing. Maybe it's a deliberate strategy to make repairing old things more expensive than buying new ones. Sometimes inserts are held in place by pins/splines at the outer edge running down across the threads, or by grub screws, but I'd say your insert is probably glued in. I'd try acetone (nail polish remover from any chemist) and a bit of heat applied with a heat gun or hair dryer. If it's anything like the other legs I've worked on the lock handle should undo until the cone thingy inside backs up against the insert, if you keep trying to undo the handle it should act to unscrew the insert. It's probably glued in solid to stop that happening normally. Or check that the insert doesn't have slots or holes for a tool to undo it with. Maybe it has a back shoulder and needs to be screwed in to remove it. If all else fails, yeah, hacksaw the bastard.. You'll have to drill out the back of the blind pin hole and punch out the roll pin if you need to remove the lock handle.

Well like I said I haven't pulled one of these down, but with spring cameras of this era it's a safe bet the spring is cased, so it can't do you too much damage (as opposed to B&H Filmos). Worst case it's fully wound and when you undo enough screws the thing will suddenly make a big whir noise and vibrate as it escapes the gearing. If you're worried you could inch the camera by hand for half an hour and relieve any potential spring tension. Isn't there an indicator window on that camera showing how wound up the spring is?
 With these sort of cameras you can often remove the mechanism intact from the housing by undoing the winding lever, removing the front, and undoing the big screws in the film chamber. There are probably screws hidden under the front label plates. Sometimes a bit of oil in the bearing pivots is enough to free things up, sometimes the speed governor is gummed up and won't let the mechanism turn freely.
 You can probably get another one of these cameras (or something like it) for a hundred bucks or less, so it's only worth pulling it apart if you're curious.

I'm not sure what you're asking by "is it ok"... You need 64 GB SxS cards and the camera has to have a high speed licence from Arri. You can record up to Pro Res 422 HQ (so no 4444 or RAW) and only 16:9 The 16:9 sensor recording area stays the same in high speed mode so field of view doesn't change with the same lens. I think Arri admit there is some sort of subtle change in image quality as processing time gets shorter, not sure of the particulars (it's not something I can see). I haven't heard people complaining about it.

Hi Gregg, I don't know what particular plastic it is, could possibly be welded but I've never tried.. I'd just replace the part. I think Panavision are the Sachtler agents in NZ, have you asked them for a price? Might not be overwhelming. I used to work on the Sachtler carbon fibre ones, on those the legs were glued in. Sometimes hard work getting them out, I had to use a lot of heat, but the glue is probably different for the aluminium ones.

Yes, you're right Mike. I misunderstood something someone was explaining to me the other day, sorry!

I really enjoyed watching The Dark Knight at Imax switching from wide-screen 'normal' to full-screen 65mm for the action sequences.. Why can't we all just live together in harmony B) I'd love to see a movie shot in "Vertiscope" portrait framing (anamorphic sideways)

Are you talking about Downton Abbey, Freya?

I'm glad you had a good time with the D-21 Adrian, I've been championing that baby for ages! Also like your "foot-held" technique, people often underestimate the sensitivity of their lower prehensibilities. Should be more foot-held going on. On a technical note, the Alexa Studio is really only a stop faster than the D-21, since its mechanical shutter halves the native 800 ISO down to 400.. not that Arri like to admit it.