Steve Switaj

Actually, it's not the first time a zoom did this. If I recall correctly (and admittedly, it's been a long, long time) some of the old Angeneiux's did this, particularly the wider zooms. I think I once owned one of their lenses that had something like an f1.6 wide open as long as you stayed in the widest half of the zoom range, but went down to a f2.5 if you used the whole range. It was all clearly marked, and I didn't have any problem with it (although I would note that the so long as you stayed within the limits, the stop did not change during a zoom). While it would have been nice to have a fast lens over the whole range, overall I was glad they gave me the fastest lens they could at the wide end. With the emulsions back in the day, that extra 2/3rds stop came in handy on more than one occasion.

No, they can't. An SR would have either a PL or a B mount, both of which have a 52mm backfocus. Most SLR's have lenses with backfocus in the 44-46mm range. To use an unmodified lens, the adapter would have to hold the lens flange about 8mm inside the front plane of the camera body for the lens to reach infinity. That's not to say it's not possible to use an SLR lens on a movie camera - this happens all the time. But the mount would have to be heavily modified, essentially, the mounting end of the lens comes off and new mount is fabricated. This is why when you see an obvious SLR lens on a film camera it's often a telephoto - there's plenty of room behind the glass where nothing much is happening and modifying the mount is easy.

I get involved in a lot of animation work, where Nikon-on-Canon is common. The quality of adapters varies greatly, and it doesn't help that Canon EF mounts have a bit of natural play to start with because the rear contact surface on the ears is actually a spring plate. I animation, we've ended up removing the Camera's EF mount entirely and replacing it with Nikon hardmount, but that has its obvious disadvantages if you ever want to use your still camera as a still camera. Short of that, the absolute best solution I've found are the Leitax adapters (leitax.com). They are actual replacements for the Nikon mount on the lens. You remove the 3 to 6 screws that hold on the Nikkors F-mount and put a new Canon EF mount adapter over it. You then use the supplied (longer) screws to solidly mount the new flange to the lens. The operation is reversible, just don't loose the original screws. Yeah, it's kind of a pain, but if you're doing a lot of this sort of thing to begin with, the odds are pretty good that you have a set of Nikkors that are semi-dedicated to this task anyway. As far as more conventional adapters go, we tend to find that most of the slop is on the Nikon side of the mount. Often times a little judicious adjustment of the ear springs works wonders. Typically, the "spring" is just a slit that you can spread a bit with a small screwdriver. Also, it helps to have several adapters and keep one on each lens. They're cheap, and once you get one on a lens solidly, you don't want to futz with it if you can help it. You can even put a tiny dab of hot-melt on the joint with a toothpick to minimize play.

By "Wollensak" and "Kodak" I'm going to assume we're talking c-mount 16mm lenses, and it's going to be almost impossible to use them on one of the mirror-box SLR's. Even if their image circles will cover the larger APS-C format - which is probably not the case for lenses wider than, say, 25mm - they can't be mounted close enough to the image plane. C-mount lenses are designed with (about) a 25mm backfocus, that is the mounting flange of the lens is designed to be 25mm from the film plane. Mount it any further out than this and you can't reach infinity focus. By comparison, Canon EOS and Nikon F mounts, IIRC, are about 44 and 46mm deep. That means a Canon mount would have to extend about 20mm deep into the throat of the camera. I don't know about the 550, but I have a 60D in front of me at the moment, and I can tell you there's no way that there's enough space in there. There is sufficient space on the newer mirrorless slr's, and c-mount lenses can be made to work on those, although coverage will still be an issue. If you do see a C-to-EOS adapter online, be aware that it will almost certainly not reach an infinity focus (on the other hand, of you want cheap macro.... )

Actually, Nikkor lenses on EOS cameras work quite well, we use this combination all the time in the animation world. You can use any lens with an iris ring (so not the current G series lenses). The older AiS lenses work especially well. They have the advantage of nice, solid metal-on-metal focusing helicoids so you can do things like touch the lens during a shot without having the image bounce around, something that is pretty difficult with a lot of the current Canon lenses, which tend to have somewhat looser mechanicals. Also, of course, you get a fully manual iris. The current Nikon D lenses are also pretty good on an EOS. Optically they aren't much different from their AiS predecessors, but since they were mechanically re-engineered to include a new focus drive, they are perhaps a little daintier around the focusing than the older lenses. The Achilles heel of Nikon-on-EOS is the mount adapters. Even the best ones tend to build up a fair amount of slop between all the mating surfaces, and it's quite difficult to get them really tight. One product you might want to look at are the mount adapters from Leitax (http://www.leitax.com) The Leitax mount is pretty much as solid as a factory Canon mount. Unlike typical adapter rings which use the bayonet mount, the Leitax mounts are attached with screws - you essentially replace the rear mounting flange on the Nikkor lens with a Canon mount (the operation is reversible - just put the original screws somewhere you won't loose them).

I've seen this exact problem before, and, as Dom points out, it is was caused by the mount on the lens being machined with a very slight radius at the point where the "ears" meet the "barrel" of the mount (for very legitimate reasons involving stress concentrations and machine tool bits). Most camera mounts have a slight chamfer on the edge between the throat and the flange, and this provides some space for the typical small radius on the mating part. On this particular combination of lens and mount the radius was bigger than the chamfer and things didn't play well. The lens ended up seating on the interference fit, and thus a fraction of a millimeter too far forward, but still felt OK and seemed to lock in solidly. Took a bit of head scratching, because everything individually tested OK, and there were no obvious problems mounting the lens.

It's upside down. There's a stainless knob fastened with safety wire. Under normal circumstances, that knob locks down the release plate, to which the camera is (eventually) mounted.. In all likelihood, the release plate is screwed to the wooden thing with hidden screws. Snip the safety wire, loosen the knob, and hopefully, the release plate will... well... release, freeing your head.

Hi Guys; A while ago there were some threads about availability, or lack thereof, of those Cinch/WPI connectors as found on old Aatons. I've been moving to a new facility and in the process of digging through 15 years worth of ... stuff, and I've been turning up all kinds of things. Including one of those connectors. I got a couple several years ago for porting sync signals to my LTR. It's apparently Cinch part number 0111, a tiny version of a D-sub 9 pin connector. It's a bit androgynous, but I'm gonna call it a female. I don't know if it's the same one used on the "newer" Aatons. It has 15" long, 28ga wires with what feels like teflon insulation attached. Condition is new and unused. If anybody wants it, it's yours for the original cost, which was, I believe, about $40, plus postage to wherever you are. Contact s t e v e (at) f l y w o m (dotcom)

Hi Guys; I just moved to a new facility and found a box of old camera connectors in my stuff, including a small handful of those hard-to find Amphenol 165 series as used on Arri BLs. Condition - used, but serviceable. I'm never going to do anything with them, so they're free to the first person who wants to give them a good home and pays the postage. contact s t e v e ( at ) f l y w o m ( dotcom )