Gregg MacPherson

What did you find to be causing your loss of loops?

If you are unfamiliar with ACL and especially if this camera is untested yet, you need to test carefully like Saul says with some clean scrap stock. It may just be blind luck that you had the problem on the mag with the loop warning clicker. If the other mag was ok then the most likely thing is that you lost the top loop due to the top rollers not being properly engaged with the drive sprocket. Old eclair mags can get sticky there, just gummy lubricant I think, with the retainer not quite clicking properly into place. Then maybe bumped partly open as you close the mag. The mag lid is designed so you can't close it when the rollers are not engaged, but this isn't foolproof, you can do it. Did you get you test back from the other mag? If you talk nice to the lab they may process smaller than small amounts for camera tests cheap. These little mags are really cool. I used to wind off my own 200' loads onto cores and daylight spools. Cheers Gregg

What do people think of the Manfrotto 316 fluid head? I have a chance to buy one in good condition quite cheap. I never used one. This would be for my Eclair ACL for personal (low budget) projects. I like the weight for some of the things I might do, but I don't think it's got variable drag. Cheers Gregg

I got an email back from Alexander Du Prel. He said he is fine with a squeezed image in the finder. I think he prefers it somehow.

Has anyone shot anamorphic with their ACL? If so what did you do for the viewfinder. Can one put a simple single element somewhere in the viewfinder to unsqueeze the image. This guy has shot anamorphic with his ACL standard 16, using on one film a partly self made zoom. Hoping he will reply to my mail about the viewfinder. http://www.duprel.de/ Getting inspired I put a Proskar 16B projector lense and put it in front of a Schneider Xenon 25mm C mount prime and it looked quite sharp. Didn't do any tests though. If there's no correcion in the finder I think it would be realy hard to compose in the fame. Cheers Gregg.

Thanks for that. I had noticed them. Meanwhile I found a guy at Panavision in Auckland who may help (workshop at home). I thought the rental houses would be unhelpful but I found them good. Cheers Gregg.

The 1" format industrial Kowa primes were about USD 300 to 400 each new, so I could just try it. I have seen advertised some cheap Schneider Xenon Arri S mount primes, also a Kowa S16 (CP) cheap compared to Zeiss but still too much to spend right now. I wish I knew enough and had enough info to really know the relative quality/cost of the lenses. Cheers Gregg

I'm trying to get an idea of what the low cost lense options are for S16. I worked on a few of short films 20 years ago, mostly with my standard 16mm Eclair ACL with normally Angeniuex 12-120, sometimes a set of Arri Schneider primes or c mount primes. I may develop some new low budget projects and this would be S16, the main hurdle is the lense costs. Are any of the older zooms sharp enough for S16? Do the old Arri Scneider primes cover S16? I saw an Angenieux 9.5-57 advertised as a S16 lense, and, another case, as part of a S16 camera kit. No response yet from the vendors re my queery on whether the lense covers S16. Does anyone know that, whether the lense covers, or covers for a limited range the S16 frame? Also, how sharp are these lenses? I have seen some industrial c mount lenses (1" format) that may be useable. For example Kowa make a set that have F1.4 and max resolution given as (centre, edge) 120, 80 line pairs/mm. Is it meaningul to think of the maximum resolution of lenses when trying to assess the sharpness. If one had the max resolution (lp/mm) for various lenses could one make usefull comparisons? Cheers Gregg

I have an English ACL that hasn't been used for 10 years or so. Does anyone know of any camera techs in NZ who are familiar with ACL cameras, preferably in Auckland. My camera was serviced previously by Bruce Pierce, but I no longer have a contact for him. I can try talking to the camera techs at Panavision or Metro, but first I hope there may be one or two independent guys. Any ideas? What happened to Bruce? Cheers Gregg.