Nathan Milford

I believe hearing that those prisms were so valuable that they were kept in valuts / safes after each day's shooting... I can't imagine how much light you'd lose with that prism, not to mention slow lenses and stocks. *cringe*

I hope, soon, all of the 2709's will be up for grabs cheap. I'd love to pick up one that hasn't been modified too much (yeah right!). I lust after the ones on Sam Dodge's site *shrugs* Call it a fetish... - nate

Welcome to the city, give me a call or e-mail if you need anything, introductions etc... Duggal is the premier lab, I suppose, in the city. I use Spectra as they're closer to where I work. They will do all the odd processing things I ask for and take whatever format I send them. But thats for color negative. I process all my B+W at home. For color neg I use a lot of Kodak Ultra Color 400, but I also shoot quite a bit of Elite chrome and have it E6/C41 cross processed. For B+W I shoot a lot of Tri-X and Neopan 1600. I'm getting ready to experiement with stand processing in Agfa Rodinal with Fuji Acros... it should be interesting... high dillutions and long developing times with little agitation.... I have a 20D, but I only have the 50/1.8 which is only 70 bucks and has a nice flare... it's plastic and throwawa but it's fast and reasonably nice, otherwise I have an EF-mount lensbaby.. but once you get up into L-series lenses you're out of my ken. - nathan

I'd love to own a GSMO, they're odd birds... but he's asking for too much.

They're avaliable. We've sold a couple and have one in rental (3-perf body). Call a sales person, they're more likely to give you a realistic price....

Verical hold? I can't imagine it's the camera... if there is a frameline then the film was registered and exposed properly in the gate... so the information is on the negative... Sounds like a misconfigured telecine. You should definetly confer with the lab. - nathan

Read his volumes of inane postings. Then you'll understand that it's not just the optimistic dreamers who grow tired of his antics. - nathan

*cringe* My 20 minute short on the ARRISCANNER at 2K (from 3K) is between 400 and 500 gigs... which I keep on a WiebeTech raid, mirroring and have backed up in several copies to LTO. A feature, at 4K... you need a storage infrastructure... not a consumer RAID.

He just wants to sound/feel important. It's cute when he refers to himself as an industry expert as if the masses are awaiting his verdit on things... erm.. I mean his 'following'. He won't. Just ignore him, like the rest of us. >8)

The answer to every question you have asked is avaliable using the search function or by spending some time browsing older topics. Enjoy... there is a wealth of information and advice. - nathan

It's an APEC exposure meter. I wouldn't pay extra for it... but I think having the APEC door makes it easier to convert the camera to S16 down the road... or something along those lines, don't quote me though...

Congratulations. You would do well to contact Cartoni S.P.A. in Rome as they are the Aaton Agent in Italy and find out where to get the camera overhauled as I find most cameras of that vintage have not been serviced in quite some time (well beyond the factory four year service paradigm). Yup, it's one of the weird ones. You're lucky, you have a new-style factory Super16 gate and not some old gate hack-job some machinist worked out. Probably the latter as most of them speak fantastic english. They don't stock old viewfinders, you would only be able to get an OGT10 viewfinder which ships on brand new XTRprods which go for around $9000. You can get different aftermarket video assists ranging from $2000 to $8000 depending on options, format and orientation. Timecode is not an option for your camera. Given an overhaul, I think it's be a fine little camera. If it weren't already converted to S16 I would say it was mostly useless for a commercial cinematographer, so you lucked out. The Aaton face plate probably fell off at some point, the recess for it is there. If the magazines are of the type that allows the take-up door to be removed, stock lots of camera tape. You can tell they're old magazines because they lack cylindrical guides above and below the claw and picture plates. There is a odd wear mark on the picture plate of the second mag which might indicate the that the plate tensions are too high. - Nathan

You're not going to get a camera body quiet enough to get audio of even a marginal quality if your budget is $1500. Accesories such as batteries, a tripod and lenses. If you find an Eclair (or anything capable of, and quiet enough for sync sound) for that much, assume thet you'll need to invest heavily for service and accessories. Or as Mitch just said over my shoulder... if it costs $1500... you don't want it. - nathan

I'll be there tommorow with a bunch of guys from Abel.

We have Panavision mounts for our rental Aaton 35-III's. You can also purchase one from Aaton (read: Us if you're in the States). - nathan

A properly shaped, polished and set claw on an Aaton will create a registration test that is indistinguishable from another camera with a registration pin. That is to say, a properly tuned movement can obviate the need for a pin. It just depends on the designers priorities. Different strokes for different.. uhh manufacturers...

I second that! Rick and Dom are fantastic and all the staff there really care about your project, student short or polished feature, but it's now The Lab @ Postworks.

You might want to give David Reynaga in our service department a call. He knows that stuff up and down and should be able to get you started in the right direction. Our NYC office offers pretty indepth monitor callibration with an array of probes, gadgets and wizardy, but our LA office doesn't yet. Me? I can't even get my two monitors are home to match, let alone be accurate!

I've had clients who shoot B+W almost exclusivly. For those clients I typically set the claw and other tolerances for B+W film. When I overhaul a camera or perform a claw adjustment I will, in addition to color stock, run B+W film through just to make sure they both sound good. B+W and color both sound different in a camera, but then again Kodak and Fuji both sound a bit different.

Yeah, the camera sounds like a blender. Swing by Abel, we have one in rental, you can listen for yourself. - Nathan

On-board battery adaptor. Those things are super hard to come by, aftermarket.

Are you going to donate some of the advertising revenue your site generates to this site for using it for your advertising?

I've always thought the Bell & Howell 2709B was an attractive camera (from an engineering and clasic design standpoint). Sam Dodge has a beautiful one on his site.

It wouldn't be cost effective to develop the format. Since the frame to sprocket ratio is 1:1 it'd be very difficult to create a movement that'd pull down half a frame at a time, or a third of a frame etc... let alone the probable registration issues with such a scheme. Mechanically it would be... complex... and expensive to implement. No telecine would accept it, and it would cause all sorts of problems with edgecode, keykode or AatonCode. No one would invest in such a format.

I've got some painful memories of modifying that A-Minima's groundglass for 2.40.... *cringe* And when that camera was stolen... modifying the second A-Minima... *double cringe*