Dom Jaeger

Some of the dates in that article, as well as on Cooke’s website, are not correct. After a lot of research I dated the first 18mm Cooke Speed Panchro to 1954, a few years after Angenieux released their 18.5mm in 1951.

Great work, conceptually cohesive, with lots of interesting techniques in there! I can only imagine how much work this took. Standard 8 rocks!

Do they make noise when run with film? SR3 mags are noisier without film, they need the tension to run properly. You could put a drop of oil in the rollers that press against the film if that’s what is squeaking. Otherwise leave it to a tech. There are no service manuals really, just exploded diagrams and basic instructions for simple maintenance procedures. Most of the knowledge was passed from tech to tech, or from training sessions at Arri back in the day. If you still think they need a service, try Cine Facilities in Amsterdam. Or any rental house near you that rents film movie cameras should have either a service department or a company that they use, ask them.

I hope you took lots of photos and noted each element orientation etc. Without a collimator getting the focus marks lined up could be tricky, but I assume this is a mostly a learning exercise? These are quite amazing little zooms for Standard 8mm. The back-focus would need to be accurate to within 0.01mm to keep the zoom parfocal. I imagine the zoom and focus halves of the lens need to be separated in order to release the focus ring towards the back, though this is just a guess. Often lenses are puzzles you need to unlock. There could be hidden set screws under the ring, accessible only through a hole, or maybe a lock ring somewhere. You probably need to remove the zoom cam ring.

Your fitted gate is very odd, it has one older rail on the right and one newer one on the left, and the locating slot is not where it normally is in my experience. Definitely a weird modded gate. The gate you show on the left is not an SR3 gate, but a S16 SR2 gate. The position of the locating slot is where it normally is for SR3s and later SR2s. I suspect your camera is an older camera that has been a bit Frankensteined. An SR3 gate looks like this:

All cine zooms are designed to be parfocal. If yours is not holding focus, chances are the back-focus needs adjustment. Take it to a lens tech for assessment.

Any regular C mount lens will work on a reflex Bolex, the issue is just that wider focal lengths (50 mm and under) can be optically affected by the reflex prism and the image will have some aberrations, making things a bit soft and bloomy. Generally, the aberrations are reduced if you stop down to f/3.5 and beyond. The only other thing to watch out for is if the C mount thread is too long. If the threaded part (or the optics) protrude back more than about 4 mm it won’t screw in all the way on a reflex Bolex and might even damage the prism if you force it. If a lens doesn’t seat properly it will act like a macro lens and only focus very close. There is no real solution to this, you just need to avoid lenses with a long C mount thread.

This is bad advice, there are definitely cine lenses that are not compatible with an SR3. The main culprits are certain older Arri Standard mount lenses that were made for the Arriflex 16S, like Cooke Kinetals and some Schneiders. The 16S had more mirror clearance than later cameras, so be careful with any wide angle lens in Arri Standard mount. Any lens in Arri Bayonet mount should be OK on an SR3 with a PL adapter. There are also a handful of more modern lenses that were made to be digital only, like the Angenieux DP zooms, which protrude too far back past the PL mount to fit a film camera, but from what I’ve seen most PL lenses nowadays seem to be made with film camera clearance specs in mind. Some lenses may have barrels that are too large which can foul on the SR3 viewfinder. There is a lens clearance diagram Arri provided for their 35mm spinning mirror cameras which you can use. 16mm cameras like the SR series actually have a little more clearance than the 35mm ones. The diagram is in this thread:

Every show we rent gear to has at least one O’Connor head per camera, they are pretty much indispensable. Geared heads have also been getting some use over the last few years, after a long time of being out of fashion, which is a welcome trend. An experienced operator on a geared head can produce lovely camera movement.

Fixed focus lenses are normally set to around the Hyperfocal distance or closer, so maybe 2.5 or 3 m. This allows the maximum depth of field. At f/1.9 your lens has a close focus minimum of 50cm, but you can test it yourself to see just how sharp things are that close. Stopping down will increase your depth of field and allow you to get closer to your subjects. A 5.5mm lens has a lot of depth of field even wide open.

DoP Robbie Müller deliberately avoided mentioning the technical aspects because they didn’t interest him, as the AC article describes. But the BTS photos show a 35BLIII and I’m pretty sure that’s a Zeiss Super Speed on the Director’s Finder. The B&W shot has an older lens, maybe a Cooke Speed Panchro.

I agree that it’s very unlikely for this to be a cause, certainly not 1/2 fps variation. But if there is enough play in a system as well as tightness at a particular point it could in theory create very small vibration fluctuations. Whether that would be enough to create visible flicker is another question.

Hi Gregg, From working on a few ACLs over the last years I think the flickering could be caused by a few different factors. One is situations where the mirror covers the gate aperture just before the shutter closes, or lingers just after the shutter opens. Because the mirror oscillates to one side and then the other, you have two seperate cycles where this can occur, and often it will only happen during one of these, causing slight exposure variances. Both the timing of the shutter to the mirror, and the mirror arm oscillation being centred relative to the gate need to be accurately set to make sure that no part of the mirror ever crosses in front of the gate aperture while the shutter is still open. S16 conversions both widen the gate aperture (meaning there is more aperture width to cover) and offset it relative to the mirror oscillation. The solution is to use a larger shutter (ie one with a smaller angle). I have seen Bosher conversions where he does not replace the shutter, but only adjusts the timing so that the mirror clears during one direction of its oscillation but not the other. I think there is also the possibility for light to bounce off the mirror or mirror arm edge when there is strong frontal light, and the edges are not fully blacked. If there is movement stiffness causing intermittent tight spots it could also cause tiny differences in exposure. Because the mirror essentially oscillates once for every two shutter rotations there is the possibility of a tight spot happening every second shutter rotation.

Generally the back-focus on zooms like this doesn’t just go out, so if you’re finding the zoom no longer holds focus after a job, when it did before, chances are something has happened that needs a lens tech to diagnose. Cine zooms like this are among the most complex lenses you can find, definitely not in the realm of DIY repair. The only thing I would suggest before sending it to a pro, is to check whether the Intermediate mount at the back is properly seated and secured with the lock ring. And make sure that the camera you’re checking it on is OK in terms of flange depth (ie do other zooms hold focus?)

Unfortunately the old pathways to learning the trade of motion picture camera technician are no longer available. I learned by working in the service departments of several rental houses, under the guidance of experienced older master technicians, with occasional visits to manufacturers for factory training. I spent over fifteen years learning how to work on these machines before considering myself competent. I have no idea how a young person could get that experience nowadays, it’s such a niche skillset and basically deals with obsolete machines that nobody can afford to properly maintain, so there isn’t really a career to be had anymore. There are people who pull them apart and attempt to learn that way, or seek guidance from the few techs still around, but I think essentially it’s not something the average person can just learn, especially with the need for certain specialised tools. The best route would be to try and get a job in one of the few remaining rental houses that still rent out film cameras and spend as much time in the service department as possible. Of course it depends on the camera, some are easier to work on than others, with less adjustments that can be misaligned, but Arriflexes tend to be among the most complex to work on. At least the 16St doesn’t require considerations of noise levels.

This describes the basic process: http://cinetinker.blogspot.com/2019/02/arri-16st-service.html It’s very easy to do more harm than good unless you have access to the proper tools, including at the very least a 52.00mm depth gauge and blank plus a 16mm backing plate for the gate in order to check flange depth, and a micrometer to measure shims. A trained Arri tech would also have a collimator to check and set the ground glass depth, a tension gauge for the take-up clutch, a steel 16mm gauge to check claw and registration pin alignment, the factory greases and oil, and a variety of other tools depending on what might need alignment. It also helps to have some experience in fine mechanics and knowledge of how a motion picture film camera works. The oil holes in the film chamber are easy enough to add oil to, but they only lubricate the sprocket drive and footage counter gear bearings. To access the movement gears, cams and bearings or mirror/shutter bearings etc for cleaning and lubrication requires full camera disassembly.

Probably Procam: http://www.bolexusa.com/contact.html You could also try Visual Products, TCSfilm or Du-All.

Would you be willing to pay AUD $10,000 for the opportunity to shoot 4 minutes of film?

I would first check that the images on the film itself are soft on one side, to rule out a possible issue with the transfer. If it is indeed on the film, then it looks like the film was not seating flat in the gate. Check that the pressure plate latches closed properly. I don’t think it’s an issue with the lens mount or turret - it would need to be quite noticeably warped to produce this much flange depth variation from one side of the gate to the other. A Super 16 gate actually needs either an enlarged pressure plate to properly span from one support rail to the other, or the pressure plate needs to be shimmed to sit a little further to the left. I’m not sure how Arthur (Dr Bolex) solves that issue with his conversions, but if it’s just the original pressure plate unmodified it could cause some issues with film flatness.

Yes, an index mark for either T stops (measuring actual light transmission for accurate exposure) or f stops (the geometric aperture which determines depth of field) could be selected. Later lenses for professional cinematography were all just marked in T stops.

You’ll need to know the width of the stage, then calculate what angle of view you need to cover that width from 50m. Basic trigonometry. Then use any of the online angle of view calculators to determine what focal length has the required angle of view on a S35 sensor.

The take-up spool should spin faster than the film going through the gate, but it should slip to keep taking up film without pulling on it too hard. If you run the camera and hold the take up spindle you should be able to stop it turning fairly easily. If it is hard to make it slip, the clutch assembly inside needs to be serviced. Often this assembly is just friction between two plates, so it may just need fresh grease.

Did you shoot anything before converting it? Could be the jumping and light leak were already issues. Have you removed the loopformers? The film records upside down, so a leak on the right is left side in-camera, so probably the door.

Up until the 30s, the widest focal length generally available for 35mm movies was 32mm. The more common focal lengths were 35mm, 40mm, 50mm, 75mm and 100mm. In the early 30s Zeiss broke that barrier with a 27mm Tessar, then in the mid 30s a number of companies released 24 and 25mm cinema lenses, the most popular being the Cooke 24mm Speed Panchro. So when Toland filmed Citizen Kane in 1940 it was a relatively new thing to have such a wide angle in movies. Even though its influence was phenomenal, for a number of years after Citizen Kane most films still stuck to longer lenses, only using something as wide as a 24mm for occasional establishing shots. In 1951 Angenieux released an 18.5mm which ushered in a period of more wide angle use, followed soon after by the 18mm Speed Panchro released in 1954. Around this time there was also the very wide bug-eye lens made for Cinerama which was the widest angle of view ever seen in movies at that time. The Series III 18mm Speed Panchro released in the early 60s was an improvement on the earlier version, using an aspheric element and finally providing filmmakers with a wide angle lens that had virtually no compromises compared to longer focal lengths. In the late 60s, the French firm Kinoptik released their 9.8mm Tegea, expanding the view of cinema cameras even further, a lens famously used by Kubrick in films like A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. See this post for more details about the history of wide angle lenses in cinema:

Short answer, no not really possible. It would cost more than buying an S/B model. If you find a junker S/B you could have a tech swap the turret over but flange depth would need to be checked and possibly adjusted.