Dom Jaeger

Exactly right, Matthew. A video split will also take light from the viewfinder. In film-land even focus is preferably achieved by measurement and the lens scale, rather than the viewfinder. Cine lenses have very accurate distance markings for this reason.

Visual language is a complex interaction. Our response to colour and tone is dependent on their context - in other words, how they interact with what's around them. So our eye is usually drawn to strong tonal contrasts, like the horizon line when there is a dark landscape and a bright sky. We're not always drawn just to brightness, for example a small dark figure surrounded by snow will draw us to the figure. Colours are the same - the strongest pull is exerted by the interaction of two complimentary colours, which are colours on opposite sides of the colour wheel. Blue and orange, yellow and purple, green and red. Have a look at some paintings to see how artists have used this to good effect. Warm colours tend to give the impression of coming forward, while cooler ones recede. But again, it depends on their context. You might find art books on colour theory of interest. John Berger's Ways of Seeing is a great book about visual language in general.

It's probably out of your price range but for about $7000 you can pick up a well serviced Zeiss Vario-Sonar 11-110, pretty much designed for the S16 SR, which is a lovely zoom. At T2.2 it's fast, and while the focus marks only go down to 5', it will actually focus to 3'6'' without vignetting if you stay above 25mm. It also matches the S16 Zeiss Super Speeds, which may be the prime set you rent from a rental house.

According to people I've talked to who are much more familiar with these cameras than I am, gates were often swapped over for different aspect formats, so within a model they should have identical specs. (A variation of just a few hundredths of a mm in gate thickness would throw the film plane out though, so I assume they did a flange depth check each time.) In theory 2B and 2C gates should be interchangeable, just the doorside cutout for the viewfinder is larger on the 2C (the ground glass height was extended from Academy to accommodate Cinemascope), and there is a channel for the clapper light. However the 2A (really just the 2) went through a few incarnations including originally a different movement and a bakelite gate, the specs were probably less rigid, some bodies would have been hand machined with gates made to match, so there could be some variation there. As I said, this is mainly second hand information, so I'm happy to stand corrected if if anyone knows different. The two Arri 2B gates I have both measure 44 mm (plus or minus 0.1) in width. A quick way to shed some light on your problem would be to get hold of another 2B and fit its gate to your camera: if the problem remains you know it is the camera body not the gate that is out of tolerance.

Good grief! Well at least that would get audiences shrieking, as objects lunged out of the TV screen towards them..

The gate should be a reasonably snug fit in the gap created by the machined surfaces of the camera body. But even with a bit of play, when the gate is up hard against the movement side of this gap the cutout should still allow the cam to clear. I'm only guessing, but if I had to explain it I'd say either the gate is from a different camera model with slightly different tolerances, or the movement has been assembled such that the cam sits out too far. As John said, don't take to it with a Dremmel. You could probably get away with just glueing some small shims on the movement side of the gap to push the gate towards the door. Just be careful not to get anything on the machined seats perpendicularly adjacent, which control the flange depth and flatness. Or best bet take it to an Arri tech.

Sorry Miguel, I should have concentrated and read your post title - with 2 perf of course you'll want spherical.. I haven't come across spherical Lomos, so I can't comment. Apologies.

Lomos aren't great wide open, I always recommend stopping down at least one, preferably two stops to get clean contrast. The round fronts are generally better than the square fronts, and if you have a selection to choose from it might pay to do some comparison checks. I've come across vastly different quality in the same focal lengths, usually due to how the lens has been callibrated. A tiny misalignment of the anamorphic elements and the image quality plummets. That said, a well aligned and collimated Lomo can make quite a beautiful image.

It sounds like a problem with the zoom mechanism if it pops into focus as you start zooming. If it gradually got sharper as you zoomed in you'd probably just need a simple back-focus adjustment. Back-focus is more critical at wide focal lengths, so a zoom that's out will be out of focus at the wide end but still sharp at the long end. Play in the zoom mechanism (which your lens seems to have) is harder to repair, and would require lens dismantling. Local rental houses should be able to help you or at least recommend someone, but you may not like the quote. You might find that the zoom stays sharp in one direction, so you could still use it as a variable prime by (for example) zooming out then zooming back in a little to get it sharp. By the way, the trick to adjusting the eyepiece diopter is to defocus the lens and focus the eyepiece on the ground glass texture.

I've always liked the Gordion knot. Terrific for tying your ox-cart. Bugger to undo though.

Most anamorphic zoom lenses are spherical zooms with an anamorphic rear, due to the difficulty of maintaining image quality and focus through various focal lengths with an anamorphic front. Anamorphic primes can have the anamorphic elements in front of a spherical rear. The difference is that an anamorphic rear will not produce quite the same "anamorphic look" ie flares and oval bokeh etc. It simply stretches up the spherical image to fill the scope frame. While the zoom focal lengths remain the same the angle of view is effectively half that of the equivalent anamorphic prime. I believe Hawk have produced a zoom with front anamorphics but don't quote me on it.

One of the least discussed aspects of the endless film vs digital conversation is what role, if any, will rental houses play in the bold new digital world we are entering. While post houses have been making a fortune "fixing up" all that RED footage, I suspect many rental houses have had to tighten their belts and lay off a few staff. With much of the bread and butter work like TVCs and short films going digital, it's only a matter of time before many rental houses will simply pack up shop. It won't happen yet of course, while film still holds an aesthetic advantage, and high-end HD cameras still cost a bomb, but the clock is ticking. It simply isn't a viable business model to buy this year's video camera to hire out until next year's comes along. And while high end lenses will always be required whatever the capture medium, lens hire alone isn't going to keep a business with high overheads alive (insurance on this kind of gear is astronomical). The problem is that rental houses have traditionally provided much more than equipment. Many assistants, operators, focus-pullers etc have cut their teeth working as prep techs in rental houses and met future contacts. Students in particular benefit from rental house expertise and many small festivals and cinematography societies are sponsored by rental houses. Most importantly, they require well resourced service departments for in-house maintenance and repairs to equipment, something owner-operators or small production houses can't afford. So when everyone owns the latest RED and a set of Cookes, what happens when a lens is dropped or the camera blows smoke? Who makes sure the lenses are collimated and the head doesn't have backlash? Maybe it'll all work out, but as a technician myself who feels a little like a blacksmith in the early days of the motor car, I can't help wondering if we're not rushing to a retrograde future. I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts.

I would imagine that a claw movement, with its eliptical travel designed to enter, pull down and exit the film perf at more or less the same angle, would be less damaging to the perf than a geneva movement, which would enter at one angle, swivel as it pulls down, and exit at a different angle.

In the 90's an Australian named Jim Frazier finished designing a lens he had been working on for 20 odd years that had virtually unlimited dof. An object 3 inches away and another 10 feet away were both in sharp focus. I believe Panavision bought the patent and manufactured several. The lens was a big hit in the late 90's early 00's and used on a lot of ads where the scale difference between two objects could be played with if they both were in focus. So for example an insect in foreground and person in background looked the same size. Frazier won a technical acadamy award for it, but some sort of patent lawsuit disaster in 2003 brought him into disrepute. I don't know if Panavision still rents the lens out.

Throw-away product? There's a reason Bolex is still the most popular amateur 16mm camera out there, and it's not because it looks cute. Unless it's been abused or exposed to damaging environments, even a 50's Bolex can still run like clockwork, with only minimal servicing. Of course they need some tlc, like anything mechanical, but leaving it in a cupboard for two years certainly won't harm it. And the comprehensive service manuals and hundreds of tools and jigs they produced make it one of the most service friendly products on the planet. As long as you know what you're doing.

You're comparing the latest lightweight sync-sound 35mm cameras from the two world leaders in cine camera design. In terms of what you can do with them (frame rates, shutter angles, accessories, 3 or 4-perf), they're pretty similar. Both are modular and can be stripped down or bulked up depending on the job required. The main difference is whether you want to deal with Panavision, or use Panavision lenses. From a technician's POV, Arri have the better build quality, with less variation in reliability from camera to camera, and Arri movements require less maintenance, but that's probably irrelevant to the end user.

The only 16mm cameras that run in reverse as far as I'm aware are the Bolex and the Arri ST. And possibly the old CP16, but you'd be lucky to find one of them these days. I'd follow Chris's first advice, either rewind manually in the mag or use a core to core rewinder.

Apologies if you took offense, I just didn't think your post was helpful. Saying 6 mags crapped out but it was definitely the mag gives the impression that there is a systemic problem with Arricams, when what really appears to be the case is that one mag was faulty. Also the original post was about possible problems with the 2-perf modification. As a rental house tech I get a bit tetchy when misinformation about equipment gets spread around. Recently on this site someone was advising a newbie that the footage counters on Arricam mags are dodgy, when obviously he had simply encountered one mag that needed a new memory battery. Film as a medium is under enough pressure without vague rumours casting doubt on the equipment reliability. I don't know about Arri flu but lots of people down here in Oz have caught the RED bug... hack...hack..

6 mags crapped out but it's "definitely the mag"? So 6 different magazines all had the same "angled gear" problem? Either the rental house is a sheltered workplace or your friend is the unluckiest guy ever. Arricam cameras and mags have been used on countless jobs by now, they don't have design flaws like angled connecting gears or catch Arri flu. When a recurring problem happens to multiple mags on different cameras, the fault is almost always either the stock or (most likely) loader error. Or you're dealing with a rental house run by Bernie Madoff. The first poster's issue may be a software glitch, but given that Arricam 2-perf has been around a while you would imagine the issue would have cropped up before. Perhaps a software update went wrong, but when it's every mag on multiple cameras sourced from different locations, the only constant is the film stock and the crew...

An old thread but worth discussing as it's a common fault with spring driven Bolex cameras. Andrew Alden's Bolex Bible estimates a spring motor can pull 19' of film through on a single wind, which is almost 32 seconds at 24fps. In my experience it's usually a bit less than that. Most spring drives lose 1 -2 fps towards the end of the unwind at 24, a good one will stay steady till the last few seconds. While the spring itself can age and lose strength, or the graphite powder inside the motor housing can leak out and cause spring friction, often the cause of a camera slowing down is excessive friction in the mechanism. This can be anything from damaged gears, worn bushings or corrosion to a simple lack of lubricant. Don't assume you need a new spring motor if your camera is slowing down.

I've manufactured a few of these for our 35mm Lomos. It requires modification of a normal Arri follow focus gear - basically adding an extension tube and machining a longer locking screw. If you have a standard Arri gear any machine shop should be able to modify it. Just make sure the extension is centred properly.. the longer the gear the more a small deviation will cause it to wobble. I also make sure the locking screw is captive, because in the rental world if anything isn't locked and secured you can guarantee a crew will lose it!

If you're getting this problem the mag memory battery needs replacing. Any reputable rental house would sort this out pronto.

I've serviced a couple of RED zooms and not enjoyed the experience. They seem to be rehoused stills lenses, so optically they're not too bad (good enough for RED at least). But you'd be very lucky if you found one that held focus through a zoom, and the amount of backlash in the focus mechanism means that the scale is virtually useless. Also the entire zoom range is achieved in less than half a turn of the ring, so you've got no finesse available. Even though they're dirt cheap for a Cine lens, you really get what you pay for. If you need a zoom I'd recommend hiring an older Angenieux every time.

Tim is correct, the charger has a timer. Unplugging the unit for 15 seconds or so resets it. By plugging one lead into the centre socket the unit switches to a fast charge cycle.