Heikki Repo

The best points of this camera are: 1) It's small and lightweight 2) It allows the use of nearly every lens that was made before m4/3 and mirrorless cameras. There is both c-mount and "TS-mount" that is only an intermediary mount for different adapters. So, one can start by buying Nikon to C-mount or get one of those TS-mount adapters. The TS-mount can take weightier lenses, PL and Arri B-mount. 3) 12V motor. Easy and relatively cheap to build a small battery pack for that. 4) Multispeed motor (8/12/50/75 and crystal 24/25). One can get motor modification at AZ Spectrum for more crystal speeds. 5) Some models include built-in simple lightmeter which can be great for documentary work. 6) The last Kinoptik viewfinder is bright and nice. 7) Both 200ft and 400ft mags available. 8) Relatively quiet, Aaton predecessor. 9) AZ Spectrum sells HD color video tap for it. 10) The movement is relatively simple, so a tech with knowhow can service it. Electronics can still be repaired. The cons: 1) There aren't much spare parts going around. 2) There are people who know how to service these, but finding them is not as easy as before if you are outside of US. 3) No way to change the ground glass. Unless you happen to find one with Shurco made markings, it's going to be either 1.33 or very crudely made one. 4) And speaking of viewfinder, don't look for luminiscent ground glass framing here either. 5) Because the mirror is oscillating, if you have light coming from an extreme angle, you can have the flares flickering. 6) Some models really require you to keep a clothespin half under the mag release button to keep it safely locked when raising the camera from top handle (with 400ft mags). Small inconvenience, until you forget about it... ?

Thanks! Must like stitching then. ...btw, much faster scanner than mine ?

Alas, it seems there are no bulbs. Sorry :( It seems my treasure trove pretty much lacks all electric parts...

Yes, somehow that lead me to think of the non-BMD Cintel originally. Could they have some kind DIY modified Cintel?

I guess Silbersalz does stitching then for everything they scan? They do also xpan and panorama.

Do you happen to have a reference photo? I could check all paper wrapped parts to verify. Otherwise it's only what I have there in the photos...

Just to get back to this: back in 2016 I received my ACL back from Bernie. He had laser brightened my ground glass and did some general servicing on the camera. When I got it back, I realized the viewfinder was blurry. Bernie had forgotten to calibrate the ground glass, so he then instructed me how to do it and told to use the infinity. I did that, and was happy. Fast forward to 2022, and I happen to do some lens tests and find out that in fact, my viewfinder has been showing wrong image all along. Whoops! Suddenly all those mis-focused wide open shot shots got their explanation. Suddenly I also found out why the Arriflex Standard mount lenses I bought in 2020 didn't seem to focus correctly (they just would seem to get more in focus the closer I focused them to infinity). Well, using the knowledge that those lenses were working correctly, I set my camera one meter away from wall. I put Siemens star there, opened the lens wide open (t2.2, so not that wide but...) and then adjusted the ground glass. I had to take it to the extreme in order to show sharp image when those lenses were focused at one meter. But ta-da! Now my Arri-S lenses work as intended. The setting might not be 100% accurate, but it is definitely much more accurate than it was before. Lesson to be learned? If your camera tech lives thousands of kilometers away from you and has just returned the camera to you and you have to set the ground glass, do not use infinity of a SLR lens in a C-mount adapter. You'll end up wondering how you could have missed the focus every time you used t1.3 and focused by eye....

Ah, right. I hadn't realized it was the Blackmagic scanner. Well, should be even more interesting to compare the scans. The LS-2000 isn't a drum scanner either, but definitely better than flatbeds and has higher resolution than the Pakon.

Hi Alex, I'll get back to you as soon as I have checked the parts you listed :) Thanks!

I have both a Nikon Coolscan LS-2000 and 35mm Vision3 200T & 500T scanned with a cine scanner (Silbersalz35). I could scan some frames with my own scanner and compare them. I'd just have to get film strip containers and get scissoring, since currently that film is on a core!

Those Eclair ACLs were produced in the thousands. Where are the spare parts now? I can tell you, even the people who have bought the last inventories say that there is a mixed set of spares available: lots of parts that almost never break but perhaps none of those that would be most useful. I know that you are probably going to say that this is an issue with an "enthusiast" camera like ACL, but pretty much the reverse is true - these cameras were workhorses of the industry, they were in heavy use and thus also needed more service and repair. Service departments in TV-stations owned spares and also put them into use. Arriflex and Aaton are similar in this sense, except perhaps a smaller number of the late models exist, since they weren't used for day to day news gathering and were expensive beasts. It's therefore actually less likely that a big stash of spares exists. I'm not convinced that the companies, even if not gone and forgotten like Eclair, ever assumed that their late model cameras would be used for several decades. With the advent of digital, I think the assumption of many was that soon everyone would move to digital counterparts. Why make big amounts of expensive parts nobody was ever going to buy? Surprise! Here we are now. But hey, Bolex seem to have spares. Then again, those cameras actually were for the consumers and produced in entirely different numbers...

At least the super-8 price was mentioned on Facebook by them and that they couldn't get it lower than that. If I recall correctly, they also described having left out text-on-video overlay electronics just to take out thousand Euros from the price. Also the decision to go for an oscillating mirror was told to be economical, as according to them the process for producing rotating mirror shutters is both expensive and very toxic.

Many thanks to Duncan! There are some things that don't show up in the photos above but I'd assume are not that commonplace: a couple of parts in paper wrappings, most likely never used and new -- for example, an aperture plate and two of those "pyramid" mirrors.

Thanks Duncan! I sent you a private message :)

A quite possible option as well ?

I have come into possession of a selection of Arriflex (16 S/ST?) spare parts. See here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ytykMiEUZ3u4RPg4StB3oGdXMoCQ1_59?usp=sharing If you have the time and enthusiasm, you may comment on the photos what those parts are. I myself have nearly nonexistent knowledge of Arriflex innards. Also, if someone has a need for some of these, please drop me a line - I'm certainly open to selling

Thanks! Quite interesting, I had read there were some factory built Super16 ACLs, but to think they were even in the pricelist back in 1974!

The concept has intrigued me, especially for super-8 and its very small frame. Nearly 14 years ago @Simon Wyss spoke highly of Gigabitfilm that was also available as a MP stock. In this old thread Simon tells they tested the stock without issues in motion picture film cameras. It seems that the Gigabitfilm website still exists and has been updated back in 2020. Simon could probably tell if 16mm stock is still available - while I might not be bold enough to run it in my ACL, I have a spring wound non-reflex camera that might be a great match for it...

My experience with BMPCC as the videotap was that it was quite possible to focus using the built-in focus assist feature. Now then, many of those board cameras I have mentioned have HD-SDI output. Get one of those (one with m12 lens mount), put it in a black box that you can easily setup in the place of viewfinder and make sure it is 90 degrees rotated. Take the signal out to a LCD panel with the focus assist feature. No need for 4K in the videotap, the ground glass is going to pull the resolution down in any case. Well, that's at least the plan I'm going to go forward with the other, viewfinderless ACL I have.

Yeah, I think that's why those board cameras tend to be the best option - even if cameras like BMPCC or Sigma FP are small, the bigger lenses and distances make the setup bulkier. Some people have been experimenting with Raspberry Pi 4 too: https://www.instagram.com/p/CXrV-XMOStA/?utm_medium=copy_link

No, the original BMPCC with S16 sized sensor. Here's the latest setup I had in 2020: https://www.instagram.com/p/CDE7S1ZluVf/?utm_medium=copy_link

I tried 50mm, 35mm and 25mm. If I remember correctly, the 35mm was the sweet spot, although 25mm worked as well.

That was the tricky part with BMPCC and ACL: finding the lens of correct focal length and then solving the close focus issue. I used c-mount lenses and spacers to get it working. My near future plan is to explore the board cameras (CCTV) again due to the smaller size and because new such CCTV cameras have wide dynamic range setting, which might solve some of the issues I previously faced.

And the second part of the quadrilogy, L'aria (Air), shot with my Eclair ACL on Fuji film (400T, 250D). It seems I haven't taken down the first part either, but at some point in the near future I'll have to do that when I finish the last two parts (Fire and Earth). Until then -- enjoy!

Here's how the flicker in my ACL was: