Friedemann Wachsmuth

Hey Ignacio, grain is hard to judge on a vimeo clip due to compression -- would you say that pull-1 really had a visible impact on the grain? My expereince with pulling Agfa reversal stock is that it does almost nothing to the grain, but I haven't tried yet pulling with the 200D...

Indeed. I find the aperture ring way too friction-less though when used on another camera... is there any trick to make its movement a bit more smooth?

8 or 12mm are still pretty long for the wide angle part on Super 8. The Schneider Optivaron 6-66/1.8 can often be found for <100$ and is really good. Also, with the UWL-III attached, you get down to 3.9mm (the UWL was actually made for this lens!) I prefer primes though, but that is just me. :)

Try to find out the Circle of Confusion Diameter. Most CCTV lenses are made for PAL or NTSC output, so theirs is much bigger than what a good cine prime provides. Might be that Erkan's lens is the exception, I don't know that one.

Very good write-up, Carl. It is this space and time that people too often ignore. Pointing to the Phi-Phenomenon often helps explaining. I too wrote an article about this interesting topic a while ago, unfortunately I have it in German only...

It's too dark vor 50 ASA most of these days... Anyway, I plan to shoot some cartridges on the weekend (all three kinds of Vision), then send them to Andec and afterwards to Scanning. Stay tuned. (I so wish I had José Luis' Indi&Cold Models here...)

I would not recommend to use CCTV C-Mount lenses. They are rather bad if compared to real cine lenses -- much bigger Circle of Confusion, more Distortion, weaker glass, 3-blade triangular aperture or even just "scissor aperture", worse coating... they are made for surveillance, not for filming. I am currently trying my Kern Primes and the Optivaron 6-66, which has an image circle big enough (not sure yet about sharpness in the edges, subject to be tested). The H8RX-Primes don't fit -- image circle is too small (good enough for DS8, but not for this Max-8 widened gate) plus their Flange focal distance is too short.

I think by now I'd prefer to own 3-4 Logmar Bodies loaded with different film stock. :)

Read carefully, Tom, once again. Read carefully! There are two people behind this camera. One of them is an enthusiastic filmer. He does the mechanics. The other one is into electronics -- he makes the mechanics work together well. What you call "critical thinking" I would call major ignorance and total, pathetic reluctance to accept simple facts from reality. So can you please once do a little research yourself to find out how often the most enthusiastic filmers have been begging for a S8 camera with pressure plate, sprocket feeding and pin in the past 30 years, since th Super 8 system has so many drawbacks? Yes, the filmer's magazines of the 70, 80s and 90s are full of that. Easy to find. Go for it! Boy, it again smells so incredibly troll-ish here.

Florian has finished translation of my Logmar Article now. You can now read 50% more contents than yesterday: http://www.filmkorn.org/sensational-a-new-super-8-camera-from-denmark/ Have fun!

Tom, what was that with reading more thoroughly? Did you also read page 2? "However, I would certainly not recommend any general modification of camera gates. It happens to work on the Elmo because this camera has a fairly powerful motor and a claw drive that is robust enough to take the increased load, but I cannot imagine that the drive in a lightweight silent camera (such as the Mini 3, which has a very small compact motor) would stand it. So please be cautious, and don't start wrecking good cameras!" In addition to that, and you should know most of that by now, - film is thicker today than Kodachrome was (by about 15%), so has more friction - modern reversal film no longer has remjet and thus does not glide as well - reversal films cut from slide film widerolls is often more sturdy, doesnt like U-Turns an has thus more friction in the cartridge - Most camera motors today haven't been lubricated for 20-40 years, so they don't like extra load very much Furthermore, the author has exposed sound film. This film came in special cartridges and the corresponding cameras had a capstan drive to eliminate the intermittent film movement. The capstan drive also helped with film transport -- similar to a sprocket gear. Sound Cartridges no longer exist. But Hey, file down your gates and/or use the framemaster plate and get lucky. Some people gotta make their own experiences. :)

The complicated coaxial design plus the insane filmpath with all its u-turns and snubbers and rollers and gliding discs causes so much friction already that a pressure plate would have killed the camera motor. Or would have teared the film apart. My guess. ;) (I tried it on a Nizo 801: Motor current goes up 60% when using the GK Framemaster plate. Not good for the driver.)

Wittner just confirmed purchase of "bigger amounts" of Velvia 100. Good news indeed. I love the grain of 200D though. Both in 16 as well as in 8mm. I think projected (not transferred) it looks beautiful.

Just screened the registration test roll: Results are perfect. I don't see the lines moving apart at all. The speed changes are all entirely invisible. While projecting it I just realized how weak the registration of my projector is. :) Really, the projected test film looks like a slide. I'll tape it of the wall later today when its dark.

Hey David, sure, but indeed I don't have a scanning facility. The crosshairs I could tape right of the wall though, hotspot and high contrast should not matter here. :) And: The 8mm Bolexes are simply fantastic. E100D is still available in Double-8 (and relatively cheap), so is Plus-X (at Wittner). Aviphot Chrome 200 D is coming soon, though that will be a very grainy, but charming experience...

To get back to the topic: I did a double exposure crosshair test with the Logmar Prototype today. I used the most stubborn film stock I had, a very early Velvia 50, and exposed 20ft of it from a sturdy tripod with 8, 12, 16, 25 and 32 fps, pointig to the crosshair. I then rewound the film in the darkroom and transplanted it into an identical Kodak cartridge to expose it again with a slight offset, this time going down from 32 to 8 fps. The film is currently on the drying rack, I'll check the results tomorrow. Very curious yet! The crosshair will be a bit dim since I forgot to crank up my monitor before exposure, but that should be irrelevant for judging on registration.

Tom, my last comment on this: I do not have any hard feelings, but please read carefully if you get thorough responses here. Ignoring them and repeating false claims is a bit tiring. Again, my explanations re this were all correct and still are (except one wrong number and the Leicina as a wrong example). The M4 and others still intentionally bend the film concave, not all film has the curling tendency (e.g. Estar/PE is much more flat), some film tends to get concave or convex depending on humidity. The 0.2mm channel width are still not "tolerance" but are made by design. The "curling friction" can not provide sufficient registration ever, as you can see in 60 if not 80% of all S8 films. Also, what my little video for you shows happens with ANY gate and it has nothing to do with it being a Canon gate. IT IS BY DESIGN. Is this so hard to believe? If your Beaulieu has a 0.14mm channel, your gate is broken or you are measuring wrong. Also, modern film stock is 0.15 or 0.16 and has no remjet. Last but not least, the Beaulieu cameras are not at all the "sharpest cameras" per se. Not even if you own one! Most important: There is no way to improve the cartridge in a way that overcomes all the conceptual flaws of its concept. Even with titanium ball gearings and 0.1µm precision parts there would be no sprocket gear, no loops, and due to a changing pull-torque over the runtime of the film no guarantee ever for a good registration. That is why pros love DS8 and even R8 is often looking superior. Deal with it! The cartridge design is way too complicated and full of flaws. It is easy to use and CAN bring good results, but the only way to circumvent these nasty design flaws is and was to introduce what all other pro cameras have: Loops, a pressure plate, sprocket gears and here even a true pin registering. This has been suggested and asked for by hundreds if not thousands of experts in the past 40 years. Only now it becomes a reality. Please accept this finally as a fact. If you don't believe it, do some actual research, use the search function of this forum, read patents and (better) SMTPE-specs, also books. Super 8 and it's erratic cartridge have been discussed a lot yet. It does not help to just negate all facts and the experience of others and just claim that they are made up and neither the presence nor the material of pressure plates (wood? rly?) would matter. That is just foolish. Thanks you for understanding – and again, I sincerely apologize for considering you briefly as a troll.

I'd suggest to let this thread return to the Logmar Camera s topic. Posting specs (and wild assumptions about specs) should get its own thread.

Excellent article. Thanks for sharing this!

That link "requires permission", Jean-Louis...

Tom, sorry for the troll comment, but it feels just unreal if so many tangible and verifyable facts are simply ignored.I just made a little video for you. You can reproduce this test yourself easily. Here is the pressure plate of a Kodak Cartridge, freshly extracted for you: Here I am extracting a film gate from a Frankenstein Canon 310xl just for you: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/b1g4hzucy8dkq2u/2013-11-25%20at%2017.13.png This shows the two parts before forming a film channel: Note you can actually SEE the film channel when pressing them together: And finally here you can see that the film runs "free" through it. Note the swiss spring scale in the second scene and see how free "free" is. It needs less than 5 cN to pull the film through even though my finger's pressure was much higher than that from the cartridge spring: I hope we can finally close this discussion down now once and forever. The pressure pad is NOT a pressure plate and does not work the same way a pressure plate does. Period. (Imagine Queen's "Under Pressure" as Soundtrack underneath the video, please)

I sincerely apologize, but it feels more and more like having a 3-dimensional troll in front of me.

Aah, that makes sense. :) Thanks for clarifying.

Tom, please read this as a refresher: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=59680&hl= Please note what two of the best camera technicians we have (Dom & Jean-Louis) are writing there regarding "pressure plate" and "channel forming". If you still don't believe, try it out yourself. In fact the channel seems to be even wider than I remembered from top of my head (~0,2 mm instead of the 0,15 mm I called) -- I'll measure it again later tonight. I think Erkan's numbers look very familiar to the adjustment defaults mentioned in the R10 service manual -- will also check tonight, I got an original version of this. Not sure what "4-year obsessive study with the highly skilled engineers" he is referring to..? Anyway: The "Fluctuation of the focused plane: within 0,025mm" he quotes is quite telling, no? If there would be a pressing pressure plate, there would be no fluctuation of the focal plane.

Yes, mea culpa -- I was wrong here. I am pretty sure that Leicinas also have a slightly narrower film path than the spec suggests, though. That's probably how I mixed it up.