Dom Jaeger

The image in your viewfinder is a reflection off a spinning mirror behind the lens. If the image is going foggy then clear it's probably because the mirror surface has some damage. It's actually polished aluminium rather than a proper mirror, and attempts to clean it can easily cause damage that reduce its reflectance. If you unscrew the lens you can inspect the mirror surface. The other possibility is that the mirror isn't spinning flatly, so the image to the viewfinder will go in and out of focus (and seem to vibrate) as the mirror spins. The expense of fixing either of those problems really isn't worth it for a hundred dollar camera. The black specks will be in the viewfinder optics or on the groundglass, not the lens. They won't show up on the film itself. You can't really see how dirty the lens might be through the viewfinder. Excessive dust or fungus in the lens will just reduce the image clarity and contrast. If you unscrew the lens and hold it up to a light you can check how clean it is.

Hi Evan, do you have any electrical training? Are you working under the supervision of someone experienced with HMI heads and ballasts? They are not the sort of thing you just 'tear into'. When I worked for Panavision I used to assist an experienced electronics tech repair HMI gear - it is seriously dangerous stuff. If you're fishing around the innards of a ballast, even unplugged, and touch the wrong bit the discharge can throw you across the room. The striking voltage can be in the tens of thousands of volts, lamps can explode, not to mention the compromised safety of the crew who uses the gear after you've been 'repairing' it. Seriously, stay away from HMI equipment if you don't know what you're doing, or aren't under the close supervision of someone very experienced.

Yes, it should be fine, I've used that combination of adapters without a problem. As long as the adapters are properly made. If you want to rely on the focus distance scales of the lenses you'll want to get their back-focus checked when mounted to your camera, as each adapter will add a little more potential variation to that critical distance.

For me the Steampunk aesthetic really got defined by the early Caro and Jeunet films, particularly City of Lost Children. But if we're looking at progenitors, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has to get a mention. More recently a great example was The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, a short film by Anthony Lucas. There was another short film I saw years ago about a photo booth that was actually operated from within by a man, who had all his photographic equipment squished in there with him - cameras, developing trays etc all on brass pulleys and pinions - and he'd push the finished print out through the slot and watch the reaction of his subject through a peep hole. Things get complicated when someone gets murdered inside his booth.. Damned if I can remember the title, but that was a classic Steampunk tale.

Yes one of cinemas great highpoints, maybe my favourite Hitchcock film (along with Shadow of a Doubt and Vertigo). Regarding the lighting, I remember stumbling upon this little snippet: Lighting the various sets became a problem, particularly during a shot of Stewart in the foreground as the camera focused on action taking place in the apartments across the courtyard. For one scene, Paramount had to employ every light that wasn't being used on the lot--in addition to lights borrowed from Columbia and MGM. The proper amount of light was finally attained, but the heat on the set was intense. "Suddenly, in the middle of it, the lights set off the sprinkler system," Stewart recalled. "Not just a section of it, but on all the stages, and we're not talking about little streams of water but torrents." All activity stopped as the set was plunged into wet darkness. But Hitchcock was unfazed. According to Stewart, "He sat there and told his assistant to get the sprinklers shut off and then to tell him when the rain was going to stop, but in the meantime to bring him an umbrella." :lol:

The original battery was 4.5V TR-133 or Px-21, easy to google modern replacements and their suppliers.

I don't have a T stop tester in my lab, but my Zeiss MTF machine can read the difference in light transmission from stop to stop. The difference in transmission from wide open to T2.0 on Super Speeds is exactly the same as on Master Primes - 1 1/4 stops - except for the 50mm SS which actually opens a little more, and the 25mm SS which opens a little less (but it's still under T1.4). So by my testing they're all at least T1.3 except the 25mm which is somewhere between 1.3 and 1.4. Out of curiosity I did a comparison test between some Master Primes and Super Speeds shooting a grey wall at T1.3 on an Alexa. There were subtle differences in the screen shots, mainly in colour rendition I think, and the Super Speeds porthole a little more (the Master Primes started to porthole at T2, Super Speeds at 2.8). We're talking very subtle darkening in the corners. Otherwise nothing between them really. Pretty controlled test though, under stronger lighting I wouldn't be surprised if Super Speeds lost some speed to flare and stray light absorbed by the black walls inside of the lens.

Hi Evan, Zeiss lenses are always accurately marked, Super Speeds are most definitely f/1.2 lenses at their widest geometric aperture. In pristine condition that translates to T1.3, though i guess if the element coatings have deteriorated (multiple fine scratches on the front element for example) some of the light that would have passed through will be reflected back instead, fractionally altering the T stop. The main difference is that wide open, Master Primes retain much of their contrast and clarity, while with Super Speeds some of the light passing through gets scattered into flare, veiling glare and halo, resulting in less contrast and definition. But it's pretty much the same overall amount of light getting through. Some of the scattered light is absorbed by the black walls inside the lens, but it wouldn't be much.

I think you mean diffraction, not refraction. And yes, it changes depending on the format size, which is why larger format lenses often go to far smaller apertures than 35mm lenses. The focal length is irrelevant. Whether f/22 on 645 is clean enough for you is somewhat subjective, how big are you blowing up the image? Generally speaking, you'll notice some diffraction softening past f/16, but f/22 shouldn't be drastic. The only way to really know is shoot some tests. But you'd probably get a more educated response on a forum dedicated to medium format photography rather than cinematography!

It's not a good idea to blow compressed air onto any film camera gate, you end up blowing dust and debris through the openings into the mechanism. Better to use a lint-free cloth, lint-free cotton buds or orangewood sticks. It's not quite as critical with magazines, but it is possible to blow film chips and such into film channels or grit into sprocket/roller bearings, so for mags it's best to use a brush, a lint-free cloth or a small vaccuum cleaner with a brush nozzle.

I've fitted gear rings for plenty of people here in Australia, but since you mention Duclos I'm guessing you're US based. It's something you could do yourself - get a good machine shop to make up some 32 tpi gears out of Delrin with an ID very slightly under the focus ring diameter. Heat the Delrin up a little and slip it into place, when it cools it will shrink tightly onto the focus ring. Sometimes the lens needs partial dismantling to slip the ring over, in which case maybe a professional needs to fit it. There are also cheaper options like flexible lens gears (like toothed cable-ties) or ready made rings in various diameters. De-clicking can sometimes be a simple job, it depends on the lens. Often it's just a case of removing the mount to access the iris ring, but on some lenses it's not so straightforward. Once you have access to the iris ring it can be removed and the spring-loaded ball inside it just needs to be taken out.

I think you've pretty much covered the manufacturers of 16mm magazine cameras from that era, as far as I know Kodak only had a couple of Magazine Cine-Kodak models from before 1950 and then the Royal after that, Bell and Howell made magazine load Filmos (121, 141) and GSAP cameras before 1945 and the various 200 models post-war, Keystone also had a K-55 magazine camera from 1950, Revere made a few (models 19, 29, 38 maybe more). Fairchild I think also made some GSAP cameras during the war. I don't think DeVry ever entered the magazine camera market. If you're really keen you can trawl through this fairly comprehensive list of old movie cameras: http://wichm.home.xs4all.nl/cinelist.html Several German camera makers had their own 16mm cartridge-load designs, including Zeiss Ikon, Agfa, and Siemens, but all pre-war. If you're interested in the widescreen possibilities of magazine cameras (based on your earlier post), the 16mm Siemens models have the widest exposure footprint of any I've come across, extending almost the full width of the film. The 50' Siemens cartridges are also easier to reload than the Kodak ones, but not as easy to find.

At a guess it's a home-made tachometer, probably used to set the speed as accurately as possible. With each revolution of the disc (8 frames) the magnet will trigger a switch to create a pulse, so exactly 2 pulses per second is 16 fps, 3 pulses per second and you're at 24 fps. Presumably there was a readout box that the plug fitted into.

Any 35mm format lens will easily cover S16. In fact the image circle will be so much larger that you need to be careful of any shiny areas in the mirror cavity around the gate that may reflect light back onto the film. Schneider never made a 16 for 35mm format, only for 16mm and CCTV. The 1.4/16 Cinegon was the CCTV design for 1" tubes, so it will cover S16. But it was built to lower specifications than the 16mm format Cine-Xenons, 1.9/16 (for S16) and the earlier 2/16, which vignettes.

You got spammed by a Polish travel agent. The last 2 lines are accommodation Poznan accommodation Swinoujscie which are Polish towns. Not overly populated with werewolves as far as I know. :)

The fact that he can't even be bothered measuring one for you should set alarm bells ringing. No, sorry. A client sourced them himself, my only involvement was the hours of de-burring, re-machining and adjusting that were required to actually make them useable.

As long as it's under 5.50 mm you can shim it up to within half a hundredth. They're purposely under tolerance for that reason. If it's over you're in trouble. I take about an hour to collimate a set of primes, but it depends on how many need adjusting. I like to check them both at infinity on a bench collimator and at closer focus with a projector, in case there's a discrepancy with the scaling. Projecting also tells you if there are any issues with the lens - introduced aberrations, image shift, focus play etc. If you've got a friend with a CNC machine then making your own mounts is a good option. If you can get hold of a proper Zeiss PL mount to give them they should be able to replicate it fairly easily. You could even make a few more than you need, sell them on ebay and make your outlay back. The critical dimensions are the flange wing thickness and the rear diameter, and a consistent flatness of at least within a hundredth. And make sure they're undercut like the Zeiss ones. And all burrs should be removed. I've had to deal with mounts that look exactly like the ebay ones you linked to that were full of burrs, not properly undercut, and sometimes over tolerance. But those were made in India for $40 each, whereas these are from a US supplier, right?... Should be fine then. B)

Personally I'd avoid the ones that use grub screws to attach, they tend to be cheap and nasty, come loose over time and can damage the bayonet mount. Far better are the type that secure with a lock ring, such as Visual Products sell: http://visualproducts.com/storeProductDetail02.asp?productID=702&Cat=8&Cat2=23 Unfortunately they're not cheap either. Adapters also should be checked for collimation, as even the well-made ones rarely slip on without needing a slight adjustment to the back-focus. What I've sometimes done for people on a budget is have them buy one good PL adapter, then I fit it to each of their Bayonet lenses and check and adjust the back-focus of each accordingly. Then they can swap the one adapter between all of their lenses. But they need to use a good adapter, and if they use the lenses in Bayonet mount again they need to replace the original shimming. Feel free to ignore what I say though - in my job I have to be picky (and I've lost count of the number of times I've had to 'fix' someone's dodgy adapter from ebay), but plenty of people get by with the cheap stuff.

I'm not familiar with NPRs but that's a bit of a design flaw if the guides leave your film looking like that! The scratches on the second film are curious - curved, wiggly, sometimes splitting into two - unlike what you usually get from camera scratching which is straight and vertical. It reminds me of cinch marks - when a loosely wound roll of dirty film is flattened and tightened on it's core. But those are randomly spaced, whereas here the curve and angle of the scratches is repeated in each frame. It suggests that wherever the scratching was occurring the film was weaving in a repetitive manner with each pulldown. Very odd.. The second film scratches also seem very deep, so there should have been quite a residue of emulsion dust or film "hair" wherever it occurred.

Hi Gregg, proper Zeiss mounts tend to be machined to pretty small tolerances, most PL mounts I've measured are one or two hundredths of a mm under 5.50mm from base to flange seat. Swapping between Bayonet and PL is pretty straight forward, but I almost always need to adjust the shimming a little, usually no more than 0.05 mm. Cheap PL mounts, on the other hand, can be way off sometimes. I've come across some where the flange wing thickness was so over-tolerance that the locking ring in the camera mount wouldn't go over them. They also often fail to have an undercut in the corner where flange meets rear, causing the lens to sit forward in certain camera mounts that don't have a sufficient chamfer.

Hi Bill, have you actually used the camera yet? Reloading the long-discontinued 50' magazines is a pain, and you need to use double-perf stock because the drive sprocket inside has its teeth on the opposite side to the claw. I think there might be a few sellers who supply re-loaded magazines, but you pay a lot extra and 50 feet won't even give you a minute and a half at 24 fps. I love using old gear, but cartridge magazine cameras for me are just one headache too many. Not that I want to dissuade you.. :) The one advantage to widening the aperture on magazine cameras I guess is that you don't need to worry about leaving burrs on the gate that will scratch the film, since the 'gate' is effectively inside the magazine, and as you've noticed the magazine opening is already wider, at about 11.5mm or 0.45" wide (though offset towards the claw edge). But I'd be surprised if the expanded image area didn't get some scratching during transport within the magazine from rollers and guides. The image would extend into the perfs, so you'd have to crop the full height and extract from between them. I have an old G.B. Bell & Howell "Autoload" 16mm camera which is similar to the 200 and also has an oversized camera aperture, with a protruding tab at the claw side. If you do try to remove the tab in situ be careful not to allow metal filings to fall into the camera, there's no quicker way to render a clockwork mechanism totally useless. I pulled mine apart without too much trouble. The flange depth is controlled by a stop pin that protrudes through the aperture plate to contact a brass knuckle on the magazine, so removing the aperture plate shouldn't affect the flange depth, but the camera does need to be pretty well disassembled to remove it.

C'mon guys let's not get into another calotype vs daguerreotype debate, we're all so over this issue. It's whatever suits the story, right? :P Callum - from what you're saying it sounds like you just want a cliche "vintage" look, soft and vignetted. Rather than delve into the world of vintage lenses (which can be surprisingly expensive and not necessarily what you're after), why don't you just use the 10mm RX Switar with some diffusion (like a stocking) and see how it looks? The RX lens on a non-reflex Bolex will give you some edge fall-off to assist with the illusion, particularly wide open, and you could experiment with a cardboard mask taped to the front of the lens to get some vignetting. Shoot a test! Experiment!

Yes that's currently correct. Future firmware upgrades might change things.

After a very quick google I found Ken Rockwell's review of this lens, where he mentions the distortion and even gives some parameters for correction using Photoshop CS2's lens distortion filter. http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/16-35mm-ii.htm#distortion

Sounds like barrel distortion, which is convex. Typically with a zoom the amount of distortion varies depending on the focal length, and can sometimes go from barrel to pincushion. It can also vary depending on the focus distance, close focus in particular. It's an aberration often found in large-range zooms or ones that go to a wide angle. With wide angles (especially at closer focus distances) the center of the subject actually is much closer than the edges, so when un-corrected and flattened onto an image plane the middle will seem magnified. Fisheye lenses are like this. Rectilinear lenses are corrected within the optical design to maintain straight lines, even though with very wide fields of view this causes another type of distortion where the objects at the edges can seem stretched out. A zoom needs to try to correct the natural distortion at the wide end without introducing distortion at the long end, as well as maintaining this through the focus distance range. Some are more successful than others. There are plenty of plug-ins/programs to correct this sort of radial distortion, but it's not something I'm familiar with. What Chris said makes sense. Shooting a grid would also identify whether the distortion is more complex, such as a flat field at the edges with barreling only in the centre.