Gregg MacPherson

I really love the old analogue Sekonic L-398(A). Rugged, reliable, a great backup meter and a great learning tool. And until recently, really cheap. The exp calculation from the reading is done with the dial on the body and is just routine. The sensitivity of modern digital cameras may marginalize it a bit now. At 800ASA shooting a tad down on T2 with only 8 fc, the scales on the meter are getting hard to meaningfully read at 8 and below. So Phil is right, I suppose. But "primative" is very unkind, and "very, very primitive" is....... Hendrikus, I bought one of these cheap for my son not long ago and he isn't using it. If you want to try it out for a sew days, PM me (upper right, envelope icon). Gregg.

I you can't find a proper made to fit one, then...these thoughts. I used to use what I thought was an Arri SR barney, draped over the rear of the camera and mag. It didn't fit properly around the front of the camera, around the lens like most of the "made for type" barneys do. And it worked very well. Trying to understand why, my thoughts were...The camera was very well maintained and ran very quiet to begin with. A properly maintained ACL camera I think sheds most of its noise to the rear. Anyway, maybe worth trying with what's available. If you are on the tripod you can even use a heavy woolen blanket folded a few times to create thickness. Whatever you use, vacume all really well so you don't introduce dust. Edit...Adding more ideas. Soft fabrics, carpets absorb sound and help reduce the reflections off walls etc. So the configuration of the environment and the shot(s), the surface qualities, the background sound, lots of things affect how loud a camera will seem.

Would crows be similar to seagulls with this problem. I thought there was some written about shooting Johnathan Livingston Seagull. Videos, can't remember. If that's a S8 camera then the light weight is making it harder. You could make an ineria rig that placed masses 300 or 500mm from the centre of mass (CoM). The critical axis, I think, is the pitch axis (nose up/down) and the masses for that will also steady the yaw axis (nose left/right). The rotational inertial contribution of each mass is proportional to the square of the distance from the CoM. Masses would be in pairs so that each pair is balanced at the CoM. You could have a shoulder pad and shift the CoM back to that. I would try that.

That thread path with the dotted line is correct for B wind film, emulsion in. Someone can check me, it's been a while. The solid line path would have to be an emulsion out roll, which I never remember seeing, or ever spooling off. So not sure how to explain that. Maybe this can arise when experimenting with some lab stocks. A wild guess. To my fingers the feed spindle is happy spinning either way, so that aspect is no problem. Re the problems generally...Agreeing what others have said. My feeling is that too much is put at risk... teaching yourself about film (there's a lot to learn), with an unfamiliar camera, of uncertain condition. My positive advice is that for your next project you invite a sympathetic operator or AC who has some gear and learn from them. Also, you can immediately find any 16mm shoots that are happening, talk to the people, offer to help, find a way to be near the camera, learn to load.

Probably, those that knew Bernie or had him fixing their cameras have already offered a kind thought directly to his wife. Now's the time. Gregg.

Hey Aapo, Do you know what the image stability is like for the Konvas and Cameflex? Arri II is pretty good by reputation. An enormous amount of material went to the big screen from Arri IIs, commonly intercut with material from pin registered cameras. Long time ago I did registration tests for a couple of 16mm cameras (16BL and CPA). Shot a grid of lines (byro pen on paper), rewound the film, rotated the paper about 3deg, shot the grid again. I don't know if the CP had a problem, but is showed what I had heard was the likely mode of instability for a non pin registered camera. The lines from the two exposures converge/diverge in a roughly sinusoidal rythm. The 16BL also matched the anticipated mode of behaviour, with tiny, almost imperceptible jitter. Don't know where that 16BL was in it's maintenance cycle. You can get a good qualitative sense of the image stability this way. But I think it's probably easy to actually quantify for non pin registered cameras also, though I never did it. The lines need intervals or hash marks like a ruler, or you could maybe just use pieces of a tape measure etc. Marks show decimal increments of the frame or something easily scaleable later. Note the varying position of the line intersection. These distances, expressed as a fraction of the frame height or width (of the object) should be a legitimate expression of the image steadiness. In 16mm the steadiness test can be shot on B&W, processed in a Lomo or bucket, looped and projected, but not many people have 35mm projectors. Maybe there is another way. Viewing the neg with an enlarger or improvising with a slide projector, or using a loupe. All one is doing is noting the extremes of the position shift of the line intersections

I'm proudly claiming responsibility for one of the red arrows to Tyler's post above. At the risk of quoting myself...this, the red arrow, "might be a legitimate sign of what's (really f...ing) disagreeable". Edit: spelling

I'm on another forum where one can leave a note below a post...choices being.. - thanks for post - likes post, - pics please - thanks for pics And there are no negative options. But I think each online society is different, so...

Hey Phil, I gave you a red arrow just so you could experience the feeling, and to test your declaration. No offence brother.. I think getting a downvote feels pretty horrid. Reasonable people don't tend to do it. They will disagree and even violently argue if the ideas are worthy and they have some acuity of mind and social skills. Unfortunately, there is at least one (maybe just one) member on the forum who repeatedly misrepresents technical facts, misrepresents himself, misleads others, is given to grandiose delusions and occasional perversity. Many tried engaging in reasonable argument with him without any useful result and most have given up. In that case a red arrow might be a legitimate sign of what's disagreeable. Showing the names might help, but it might be more useful to force people to write a few words qualifying the vote (arrow). Same for the green arrow and the lovey icon. Since this is suggestion time on forum functionality...I believe that sustaining members should have a very limited window for editing their posts. Editing should not be a means to manipulate the opinions of others or to remove embarrassing errors or deficiencies in our knowledge.

R16 has an oscillating mirror. I think oscillating mirror vs rotating mirror won't change the method of checking the ground glass focus.

I've had three different PL mounts that screwed direct to the TS mount on the ACL Les Bosher's one is beautifully designed and made. It's the best one but fairly expensive. Another one I had I was fairly sure it flipped the lens axis back and forth between standard and super 16, but when it went to Les Bosher for service after I sold it he denied that and didn't like it. I didn't believe it. The third one was lighter and cheaper...I do have photos. I would avoid the C mount option if you can, just because it's more fragile

@Uli...I had to sign up to see what it was. I thought it (Linkedin) would be less aggressive than facebook, but I was surprised at the volume of unwanted information from them. It was difficult to shut it off... So... cautious about having their privacy invaded

Linkdin is almost as bad as faecesbook (I trademarked that and they're gonna pay a few mill for it). Aggressively trying to connect you to their platform. That's the reason why people appear inactive, they are cautious. Let us know what comes up. Cheers.

Heikki, can you find Gerard, or the parts? I don't know what was happening to him...going out of business...something...he seemed a bit anxious when I last had email with him. The parts may have been bought at a cheap price by people that are not effectively onselling them. One guy in Europe who was always seemingly in the know was Boriss Belay. He's been on this forum. I may still have an old email address.

He said (not me said) that he bought the entire parts stock when Eclair went out of bussiness. This could be the motherload. And it may languish on the shelf somewhere if it's not distributed.

Really good effort Heikki. Parallel to this effort, do we need a separate thread to help keep track of where all the ACL parts are. A few years ago I sold a lens to Gerard, art-media.com who had a huge inventory of Eclair parts. He told me he was selling up, and then he disappeared. He had not yet told me who he sold to, but I remember, it was one or two guys in Europe I think.

That camera looks very cool. But I have to wonder about a reported noise level of 10-20dB..Is there any film camera on planet earth claiming 10dB...?

Must be only those sustaining member member chaps that have edit privileges now. wanted to add...If you do it yourself... What I'm suggesting is just a box with a vac outlet, with drilled holes in the MDF top. Maybe try 5mm holes at 10 or 20mm centers. Lay a piece of low density cardboard on top, 1/16 to 1/8" thick. Not hard, dense card, not corrugated obviously. Use the minimum vac that will hold down your work. Just check that you aren't straining the vac unit. Use the most porous material you can that will still keep the print surface flat

Hi Daniel, my ears point up, I've been obsessing over vacuum systems for dust in the composites and woodwork shops for ages. But it may not help much... One thought. Bump heads with folk who have been developing systems for themselves recently. My guess is it is a high vacuum low volume (HPLV) application, so something like a shop vac may be in the right direction. Some of the CNC router guys used to have their work sucked onto an MDF wood surface...they sucked straight through it. I'm wondering, if the work area is small, the vacuum power is moderate, and the "easel" has an appropriate porosity...could work well. If you just have holes in the easel they may need to be very tiny, and a lot of them. So my thought was to use a porous medium for the "easel". Not sure what...Some medium density cardboard might work, sitting on a perforated steel or MDF sheet. With low flow (ie HPLV) you should be able to site the vac unit away from the dark room. Cheers,

I hope that Tim is following this.. I do not think that any of us should have the chance to make gross rewrites or deletes. The short time window that most of us have should be enough. Sustaining members are not special people, in fact some are complete a--holes. Tim, please change this... On the other hand, maybe deleting the posts of certain individuals is a legitimate thing to do. Heck, just delete them. But someone else should do that....Why am I talking in the plural...the singular case would do...

There are guys on the forum chasing rod sets for SRs now and again, so I thought to give an alert for this item. Looks well used, but may go very cheap. Short rods only, rod extensions not included, but if one is short of money and handy the extensions could be improvised. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Arri-SR-Camera-Mini-Rods/224381168080?hash=item343e28e9d0:g:iHEAAOSwtsRgSTCp

A couple of questions... - Which motor is this, the small 24/25 fps one, or the factory multispeed motor, or a converted multispeed motor? - Was 12V the measured V? Measured before test or during test? - What do you mean that the battery doesn't work. Some thoughts.... Conventional wisdom was to never run the motors with the orange out-of-sync light on. The small motors could easily get overloaded and burn out. An ACL I loaded with film should draw less than 1A at 24fps. The small motor should only be run with 200' mags or English 400" mags. Like Heikki said, the feel of the inching knob should be very low friction. I would ensure you had a good power supply first. A freshly charged NiCad original battery would have about 14V fully charged, but even down to 12V a healthy battery will spin the camera at 24fps, with the orange light coming on just for a fraction of a second. Don't do any more testing with the orange light staying on. You might damage your motor. If fiddling with batteries, be careful with polarity, ACL I doesn't have fuse protection if you reverse polarity. I would be very surprised if there are not still some ACL experts in Europe. I was always saying that to Heikki, but he could never find them...🙂

Can't you just slightly loosen the cap screws clamping the two halves of the casting together, rotate the sleeve to align the hole with a piece of rod, then debur if needed with a precision file..? Did I miss something. Good luck.

I was puzzled that the plastic guides ("rubber stoppers") had not been replaced with the service. Anything rubbing against something in that worn state would make noise. A fresh guide would be less noisy. Are they hard to find or hard to replace? I love the work of Aaton designer Beauvalia, but if those film guides are rubber I am perplexed. If you have to make some, just use something like acetal, easy to machine, hard wearing and will lubricate itself. Not to take anything away from the concerns about the spindle perhaps sending the roll off axis, or whatever else is the cause...

Could ask Paul Scaglione at Visual Products...Or JeanLouis Seguin on this forum. They may have the Jaeger connector. They are tricky to do, so maybe they can just make up a cable end for you. Good to have a spare cable also. When I bought a Jaeger 4 pin connector for the cable years ago it was from an electronics connector supply house here.. If not going through a camera tech, It will help if you have the specification for the connector. Good luck..