Dom Jaeger

Here's an old thread on wide angle Super 8, lots of options mentioned: Depending on your shooting stop fixed-focus wide angle lenses will have a depth of field range which can be shifted to cover closer distances by shimming the back-focus.

Does the rental house not have a service department you can ask? Often white speckling like this is due to degradation of element edge blacking, sometimes called “Schneideritis”, but it’s usually around the edge when looking in because it’s an optical reflection of the edge of the glass. This looks more like some form of contamination, but it’s hard to tell just from photos. I have encountered similar speckling on internal surfaces which cleaned off, not entirely sure of the cause.

Is the time of 0.75 sec for a revolution of the shutter or the actual exposure duration? Can you alter that value?

What intervalometer is this, the Tobin TTL?

LA-based NantStudios just built the largest Volume wall in the world at our Docklands Studios here in Melbourne: https://if.com.au/nantstudios-builds-worlds-largest-led-volume-at-docklands/

Oh yes, Russian seller. Too bad, sorry.

Your photo is too dark to see the seals around the gate, but after a service where the front has been removed the seams where it joins above and below the gate should be sealed with a light proof compound. Also the join where the compartment floor meets the body, at least around the front side. You could try putting a strong torch inside the compartment, closing the lid and sitting with the camera in a totally dark space for a while. Once your eyes adjust you might see a glow coming from somewhere.

K3 spring motors have limit gears on the motor housing to control the spring wind duration. Perhaps those gears are damaged and stopping the spring early, or perhaps the spring itself is damaged inside. Or perhaps a gear tooth on the motor is damaged. Or perhaps a piece of debris has simply clogged one of those gear teeth. But essentially someone needs to pull the camera apart to see. There is someone selling K3 motors if you need to replace it, and you can find a tech to do the replacement (or you feel confident to try yourself): https://www.ebay.com/itm/164200337220

Check the seals at the top and bottom of the gate, it’s as though there is a crack letting in light that is within the loop area. Got a photo of the camera gate area? Was the camera recently serviced or modified?

I have to say, you're pretty picky if this amount of breathing bothers you. The first example has a fast focus shift of considerable distance back and forth, and the frame barely changes in magnification, and in the second I can't even judge if there's breathing since the background is all quite out of focus and the shot includes a push-in straight after the focus pull. I think perhaps you're confusing expanding focus blur with breathing. From my testing I would actually say the Zeiss Supremes have pretty minimal breathing, comparable with Master Primes. In fact, you can check out some online tests of Supreme Primes yourself and watch the breathing tests, it's pretty minimal on all focal lengths: If you want to see breathing, watch a test of a Cooke anamorphic for instance:

I’m afraid so.

If you can’t reach infinity it’s because the lens is too far away from the film plane. So something is stopping the lens from seating all the way, possibly because the barrel is too wide for the adapter, or because the rear of the lens sticks out too much. Be very careful with C mounts like this that have deep rear protrusions (the rear optic protrudes well past the C mount thread), they can hit the prism.

Yes, so the roll has been flashed before exposure. If it was afterwards, the flashes would decrease in frequency (because the start of the footage would be at the core). Assuming it was a fresh roll that means it was either flashed during loading or in the feed chamber. I wouldn’t have thought a leak through the mag counter window would reach all the way across the roll, but I’m not familiar enough with 416 mags to say. Isn’t the counter window between the platines? Anyway, you’re having it checked so you’ll find out soon enough.

I would check inside the mirror cavity for any shiny metal surfaces that might be reflecting light onto the film, particularly around the gate area. Or a chipped edge of the mirror, or shiny hub etc.

The video link isn't working for me, but a few thoughts: The film in a mag spins at a constant rate, so a mag leak would be continuous, except for just before or after a cut (depending on which side of the mag has a leak) where you would have a more intense leak due to the film being stationary for a while. The nature of the leak would also change in response to the camera position and exterior light conditions. The only place where you have intermittent motion is the loop between the sprockets, so in the throat or gate area, but a leak here would result in a pulse every frame. Usually if there is one roll with a weird light leak but all the other rolls are fine, including ones from the same mag, then it's more likely you have a lab issue (or a loading issue) than a camera one. If this roll was used on two different cameras as well, I would definitely say it's not a camera problem. If the roll was exposed on one side by a narrow beam during loading or unloading or in the lab, you would get periodic flashing, but it would change in frequency because each layer of a roll is a different length.

You’ll probably find there is fungus deeper in too, but accessing the rear group on Super 8 cams can mean full camera disassembly. Zooms are not easy to work on, or at least not easy to correctly re-assemble so that they still work properly. Make sure to mark and measure everything, including start threads and distances at infinity etc. If you have a very tight lock ring, or two sections tightly screwed together, a bit of acetone or thinner dripped into the thread can help. Gentle heat from a hair dryer in combination with acetone, sometimes repeated, can work, but be very careful with heat as you can induce lens separation. Be careful of any plastic with acetone and heat, only do this to metal. Some element groups may be permanently swaged into a housing, making it impossible to open. You also might encounter fungus between a glued doublet, which can’t be accessed without having it split apart ($$).

Contact Andy Taylor at Arri Rental.

Just measure the outside and inside diameters and the thickness and do a google search for a local bearing supplier. Note if the bearings have a shoulder or not etc. Sometimes bearings just need an ultrasonic clean and new grease.

The large screw acts as an end stop, you don't need to undo it. The eye-level focuser ground glass should be at the same depth as the film plane, but that's something whoever serviced your Bolex should have checked. As Doug mentioned, you can try to check the focus at the gate with a prismatic focuser or a piece of tracing paper, and compare it to the viewfinder focus, or just shoot a test. One test method is to film a sheet of newspaper at an angle, focussed on a particular word that you circle, then check if the processed footage is also focussed on the same word, or at a distance closer or further away. Adjust your lighting to shoot with the lens set at maximum aperture (to get the shallowest depth of field) to pinpoint where the focus plane is.

No it will work on a reflex Bolex too, you will just get a little more softness and blooming at open apertures at the wider end. If you stop down a couple of stops it should be fine.

Happens to repair technicians all the time. ? I'd wait to hear what Andre says, since he just serviced it and will know better than the internet. It's very hard to diagnose faults like this without having the thing in front of you.

Schneideritis, as some call it, is usually speckled dots visible around the edge when you look into the front, caused by degradation of the edge blacking of elements. This looks more like paint lifted or flaked off the seating base of a highly concave element, so similar yes. It may have been caused by an element being vibrated during transport, if it wasn't there before. Or condensation forming due to temperature variations that loosens old paint, etc. Usually this sort of thing just increases internal light scattering, so you might get slightly reduced contrast. A large bare area might cause a flare of sorts under certain lighting, but usually it's not something to lose too much sleep over. A good lens repair shop can strip and repaint elements if you are concerned, but this is often just part and parcel of vintage optics. I'd test it and see if you notice anything, chances are you won't. It will reduce the resale value I guess.

Yeah the Pacific Rim Camera site has some great old literature in their reference section: https://www.pacificrimcamera.com/rl/rlrindex.htm Schneider used to have a lot of historical information about their lenses on their website but they removed it about ten years ago unfortunately.

I’m pretty sure it’s a 35mm format lens. There is a 28mm Schneider Cine Xenon listed in the Arriflex 16S/B sales brochures, but I believe it is the same lens as the 28mm also listed in Arriflex 2C brochures. You can easily check the image circle size by holding the lens up to a patterned light source like a slatted window and holding a piece of paper where the film plane would be (about 5cm behind the lens mount seat). You will see a circular image that is either big enough to cover a 35mm frame or only big enough for 16mm.

Thanks Uli, I didn’t know that.