Zac Fettig

If you can find one, Leica made a PL mount adapter for that camera. Rare at the time and really rare today. It won't help you with c-mount, but will let you put on cine lenses.

In general, the meter is pretty good. It won't meter quite as well as the Sekonic will, but it's generally accurate enough. If you want it to meter at 40 ASA, I'd notch another cartridge for 40 ASA. http://peaceman.de.www127.your-server.de/schmalfilm/super8/S8_Notch_Tools_v1.0.pdf They don't develop Kodachrome any more. Velvia 50D will meter fairly closely though. Ektachrome 64 should be automatically set and color balanced. Although, I usually bypass the built in color filter and use my own, since the filter is gelatin and is now ~40 years old.

I have a problem with the content. I have a problem with Michael Bay. He's raping my childhood for a quick buck. The first two Ninja Turtles movies were brilliant. New Line brought in the experts. Golden Harvest did the martial arts work (they're actually doing those moves in 80 lbs suits), and Henson did the puppetry. The story was darker than the cartoon was, but was based on the comics. I watched them a few days ago. They're better now that I'm an adult. It was probably the second great comic book movie series (After Superman). I have little hope for the new one. I love the old Transformers movie. It's light on the writing but it was fun. Bah weep grah-ha weep ninibahn! It had Orson Welles! I didn't even know who Orson Welles was the first time I saw it, but he was awesome. The new one...even John Turturro couldn't save it from being lousy. I understand why Hollywood makes these movies. They are low risk/high reward. Guaranteed to make money. You know who's to blame? The audience. Take it from the man himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtLr-UUUVI8

I found this kind of odd. The BBC was the organization which built up 16mm as a production format to begin with. And as it became more useful, they dropped it.

I'd second this. The CP-16R has a lot of downsides. The loops need to be formed perfectly, or the film pulls. It doesn't have a registration pin. They take special mount lenses (which hurts if you want to rent). The electronics tend to pack up on them. For a sync sound camera, they're kind of on the loud side. Depending on which one you get, the shutter can cause light smearing (I think they made 3 different shutters with different angles over the years. Not sure; definitely more than one.). Look for a super 16 adapted Arri SR2, or an SR3 (if you have the money for one). Much quieter, especially an SR3 (it's amazing how quiet they are). Servicing is still easily available, from the factory. Look for one with a PL mount for lenses. Parts are easier to get. Smaller package. Easier to manage. Registration. Extremely accurate movement. Prices for top end SR3s are about the same as a CP16R was 5 years ago. Also, do your homework, and don't jump on a camera unless you KNOW it's a bargain. Prices are only going down. Everyone seems to be moving towards digital.

Nice! I love it! If you get the chance to add other lenses (such as zooms), or other focal lengths, please do! Personally, I'd love to see a 16mm lens set comparison like this (especially in Arri std/bayo). Zeiss, Zeiss Jena, Cooke Kinetal, Schneider, Kilfitt. Plus Zeiss and Angenieux zooms. Not meant in any way to take away from what you've done. It's awesome!

If it's wide open, the focus has to be perfect for it to work. You'll probably have a lot better luck with a lot more light and closing the aperture as much as you can get away with (say an f8.0 or f11.0), to minimize depth of field problems. Without reflex viewing, your best bet is to go off focusing marks. That said, it's anybody's guess how well it'll work in a 60 year old lens. If the work is critical, you'll need to have the lens checked over and the back focus adjusted. If you have a digital camera that can be adapted to a d-mount lens (like a Pentax Q) you could test it with a tripod and a tape measure. Off hand I don't know what the minimum focus is on that lens (My C8 has a SOM Berthoit zoom on it). It's probably printed on the barrel of the lens (it looks that way in the photos). Again, lenses never perform best at the extremes. You'll have better results focusing somewhere in between the minimum focusing distance and infinity.

Both would work. It really depends on how the prop is lit. If the top is going to be dark, I'd go with dark thread. If it's going to be lit, use fishing line, or light colored thread. If you can shoot wide open, it'll help hide the thread; if it's thin enough and out of focus, it should disappear.

To reduce grain, throw as much light as you can and stop the lens down. Latitude is really a function of the film you're using. Sadly, the only film available these days, in R8, tends to be B&W reversal. It's B&W, and tends to have very little latitude. Then again, neither did Kodachrome. Most of the quality issues were related to people winging it. The C8 doesn't have a built in light meter. It did have a chart on the side to help guestimate the exposure. A good light meter will solve most of those problems, but was not commonly available back then. For what you want, it sounds like you'd be a lot better off with a Super 8 camera. More choices of film stock and it's a lot easier to pull single frames with S8 than R8 cameras in general. A fair number of them were designed for animation work.

It looks like the f1.9 is fixed focus and the f1.8 isn't.

In theory, no. The spring should never be pushed into the range of plastic deformation, if the engineers at Bolex did their jobs right. However, it is likely approaching 60 years old. The springs aren't what they once were. That said, C8s are fairly cheap (I picked one up for $20 a while back) and you might as well give it a shot.

No problem! That's what we're here for.

1) It's related to the circle of confusion. It's the same with still photography. Think of the difference between 35mm and medium format. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_confusion 2) You are creating a 35mm sized image, on the DOF adapter, and filming it with the camera. It's intentionally making the image blurrier, for the artistic effect. It doesn't have to be an achromatic lens. 3) So you don't pick up the static imperfections of the ground glass. 4) The good ones (ie P&S Technic) are fairly good. Expect to lose at least 2/3 stops of light. Definitely something where you get what you pay for, though.

Yup. That's the main reason people use them as movie cameras.

Which means you can find them on eBay for a song. Even the P&S technic ones go cheap these days; and the Letus ones are really cheap.

My guess is that it would have to be PWM over the autofocus connection. It pulses the connection to talk to the camera (just like IR remotes, but dropping the connection to ground, instead of light). There definitely aren't enough pins for a serial connection (it would have to have at least 2 more, a dedicated TX and RX signal pin). It's not too hard to have a connection do double duty. Kind of like how Apple manages to get a headphone jack do double as a charging jack on the iPod Shuffle, without releasing the magic smoke. Canon has used only 3 pin triggers for all of it's EOS cameras (film, digital). Either T3 (the old one), N3 (the new one) or E3 (2.5mm). I wouldn't be surprised if Canon added that functionality when they switched from T3 to N3. This ( http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/70561-REG/Canon_2469A002_RS_60E3_Remote_Switch.html ) is the only remote shutter Canon currently sells for 2.5mm jacks (all the others are for N3 jacks). It's just a simple switch.

There is a slight problem that a prefocus could cause 2 shots (two quick pictures in order making the time lapse non-linear), or one overly long exposure; depending on how it's set up. I'm pretty sure that the shutter in the 814 AZE stays open as long as it has a connection (or until the batteries die), so exposure could be an issue. It has a magnetic shutter, and I think they tried to get it to emulate a cable release.

Mark, you are correct. EOS cameras do not use a serial protocol. One pin is ground, one is for autofocus, and one is for trigger. Same is true for Pentax. Not sure about Nikon, but I think it's the same just focus and trigger are reversed, I think. All of them work by shorting the pin to ground. The 814AZE has a 2 pin connector. Just ground and trigger. I can't see any reason why a remote trigger wouldn't work. If you have a fancy remote trigger, that triggers focus first, it would cause the camera to trigger during focus.

That's a big reason I want one of those Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Cameras. So I can use my Arri bayo/std mount lenses, and not worry about it.

It replaces it. Plus, you'll probably need to lock up the mirror to make it work.

I thought the Eyemo was designed for 100' loads. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:35mm_sprockets.png Most 35mm motion-picture camera films are B&H perf, at least in Kodak's current lineup. I think that most bulk still camera films (and I might be wrong) lack remjet. Which is used for lubrication and to minimize light leaking through the film. I know most slide film does.

Would you buy a French car or a German one, given a choice? I'm biased. I love my Arri, even if it does sound like a sewing machine. I wish I could buy a SR3 right now.

You certainly will see the difference in your wallet. It really depends on what you're filming, but for a straightforward film, a 2k transfer is probably more than adequite. A 4k will be better, but is it better enough? For a small scale art house run, I wouldn't think it's worth the added expense.

For aliasing problems you can also use even multiples. So in theory, you could use 1/2 or 1/4 that shutter angle. So I think a shutter angle of 129.6 degrees might work also. This all assumes that the light is at 50Hz. Most modern fluorescents run much higher frequency than the mains do, especially cinema fluorescents.

theta=(360 degrees)*f/h where theta is the shutter angle, f is the frame rate (36 fps) and h is the light frequency (50 Hz). You should have an angle of 259.2 degrees. I think. If someone could check my math, I'd appreciate it.