Dennis Toeppen

Alexandre Favre, who has been working on a documentary about Bolex for a couple years, recently shot a test roll of Regular 8mm Vision 3 50D at the old Bolex plant in Switzerland. The film had some problems during slitting if I understood correctly, which necessitated some post work. Here's a clean scan of a roll which still needs to be scanned as 8mm. I'm selling Regular 8mm film at www.toeppenfilm.com - Tri-X - Plus-X - E100D - Vision 3 50D - Possibly Vision 3 250D Dust off your old Bolex and give it a little exercise! I also have a large quantity of Super 8 E100D with same emulsion number, if anyone is contemplating a large project.

I'm sure everyone can recall the incredible zoom shot from Harold and Maude... We start on the two chatting, and back out to reveal a gigantic cemetery with tens of thousands of headstones. Does anyone know anything about that lens? From time to time, I google around about it. But I always come up empty-handed. Just curious if anyone knows anything.

I've moved the Double 8mm film off of Ebay. It can now be ordered at http://www.toeppenfilm.com -> order. Double 8mm Vision 3 50D is arriving here Friday 4/1/16 (ugh...and this is not a joke).

Double 8mm Tri-X is now available for purchase on Ebay. International shipping is available. http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Rolls-Kodak-Tri-X-7266-Double-8mm-Regular-8mm-/301903804908? Vision 3 50D will be available in about a week.

Oh, that is very useful information. I hadn't thought of that. It sounds like I need multiple shots to get color checker squares the correct size on the film. Thanks!

Thanks for the great suggestions. I'm just a fumbling amatuer at this point, as you can tell. My goals were: - Provide colorist with something to calibrate with - Test three Switar lenses - Check two cameras for registration and gate weave - Finish two rolls of film quickly What you should have seen at the beginning of each roll is a progression of lenses: 5.5mm, 13mm, 26mm. That is not apparent because I left the lens cap on the middle lens in one test. So for that test, you see too wide and too narrow. That stuff is at the beginning of the film, but the telecine operator put the film in backwards, so the beginning is at the end. That makes it even more baffling. Also, I couldn't find my big Color Checker that day. I looked in all my Pelicans, my A-Minima backpack, and my big A-Minima shoulder bag. Can't figure out where it went. So I had to use that silly little pocket thing. Anyhow, that's my recipe for shooting a mediocre test film, but one which tells me if the camera has gate weave or registration problems. :-)

Packaging has begun...

(tried to upload picture)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssaFEWVQ9EI This is an HD Spirit scan by Spectra Film & Video. Wittner is finishing three emulsions for me: V3 50D, V3 250D and TXR. I have some 3383 that I'm thinking of having them finish as Double 8mm, but the workflow isn't quite ready for making 8mm prints yet.

Please buy an A-Minima and not an Ikonoskop. You will be much happier with an A-Minima.

This url starts at the correct point: https://youtu.be/JhMHvcCpFHQ?t=58

Here's a great oldie! (Film starts at about 1:00) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhMHvcCpFHQ&feature=youtu.be I gave this to Roger Ebert in 2000 at an Ebertfest event (on DVD). I don't know if he gave it an up or down thumb... It gets two thumbs up from me for campy-ness.

Not a pro... I shoot film because I know my images will likely be around in 50+ years even if they are subject to benign neglect - like this stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUsphXqvbYQ A-Minima on its way up the Grand Teton in July: http://www.suburbs.com/images/teton_aminima.jpg (Backpack is a LowePro from B&H)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/filmferrania/100-more-years-of-analog-film I hope these guys are successful.

http://www.motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFiles/PCN070114_Q.pdf As of Friday, there is no stock available to purchase. In the past, backorders for discontinued products have gone unfulfilled. This creates a huge problem for A-Minima owners. The custom 200' spools have a finite life. Once they lose their flex, they are no longer light tight. Kodak does not sell empty A-Minima spools, although they must have at some point because an Ebay seller of an A-Minima a year or two ago included a case of new empty spools. A-Minima film is delivered in 200' 35mm cans. Kodak recently discontinued 200' loads of 35mm film and empty 200' cans are no longer listed. This creates another, though admittedly trivial, problem for A-Minima users. Does anyone know how to communicate with Kodak in the context of getting them to produce a one-time large batch of spools? Or selling injection molding dies for a product which they have discontinued? Regards, Dennis Toeppen

(clarification added) Also, I'm wondering if 6 hours is a reasonable amount of time to bill for moving 400' of 4k scans as dpx frames (with dustmap embedded) to a hard drive (glyph 4 tb with fw800 interface). They had quoted 4 hours for 2000' as tiff, so it seems to me as if 400' dpx should have taken no more than 1/5 x 4 hours, since (according to Ali at Cinelicious) dpx frames are smaller than tiffs. Could it really take that long?

Also, I'm wondering if 6 hours is a reasonable amount of time to bill for moving 400' of 4k scans as dpx frames (with dustmap embedded) to a hard drive (glyph 4 tb with fw800 interface). They had quoted 4 hours for 2000', so it seems to me as if 400' should have taken about 1/5 x 4 hours, not 6 hours. Could it really take that long?

Howdy! I've had experience with several scanning firms: Cinepost, Fotokem, Spectra, Yale, Alpha Cine, Lightpress, and now Cinelicious. Until Cinelicious, I've not been charged by any vendor for standard prep (putting a leader on), just for repairs and unusual prep. Also, I'm not used to being charged for dumping a job to a hard drive. I assume that is an unattended task. What is the norm in LA? Is it acceptable for a firm to charge $150/hr to put leader on, and charge separate minimums (1 hour) for 8mm and 16mm in the same job? Is it acceptable for a firm to charge $300/hr to dump to a hard drive? Just curious.

Update: Cell packs received from vendor in Germany and installed in OBB-2's and everything is working great! If anyone out there wants to re-cell an OBB-2, here's what I did. Please don't try this unless you're really comfortable tinkering with electrical things that can explode in your face and burn down your whole town. Please don't blame me if it doesn't work out -- I'm just telling you what I did, not what you should do. - carefully take the lid off the OBB-2, just using your hands and fingernails. a screwdriver may damage the case. - cut off the shrink wrap around the cell pack as best you can without damaging anything else. - using a flat-head screwdriver, pry under the second row of cells on the end away from the power connector. be very gentle, so as not to damage the battery pack casing. rock the cell pack a little. use a great deal of patience. eventually, the cell pack will rotate out of the casing. - next comes the awful part. using a small flat-head screwdriver, carefully dig the urethane caulk out of the bottom of the cell casing. the bottom of the casing has a web of ridges that form little triangles. if you get under an edge, you can sort of flick out a whole triangle at once. it took me about 2 hours to get all the caulk out on my first pack, and about 1/2 hour to do the second one. - wire the new cell pack up as close to exactly the same as the original as possible. if you use desoldering wick on the old one, you won't use any wire length. be sure to protect things with heat-shrink tubing, just as arri did. for extra safety, i added some electrical tape anywhere a wire was in contact with the nickel strips connecting the individual cells. - glue the new cell pack into the obb-2 casing. i used a lot less than arri did, so that i can get it out much more easily next time. i hope i don't regret this decision. - after it dries thoroughly, put the lid back on. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do next. I charged each pack for about 24 hours, then I used a light bulb (8 watts) to drain them down to about 10% full. Then I charged them again. I got this idea from a fellow at Clairmont, or at least that's what I think he told me. Googling around yielded conflicting information, so I went with the Clairmont guy's recommendation. There you have it...

Thanks, Phil. I wasn't very precise above. The configuration is 8 parallel pairs in series. I think the issue is the balancing of each pair, but again, this is just an assumption based on my instincts. It turns out that the V3 cell (the newer version) is also free from drift. The fellow in Germany emailed me today and blamed the misunderstanding on google translate :-) So I'm getting one V pack and one V3 pack from him. I'm anxious to see if they work well. I'm anxious to get my Arri up and running again.

Hey Gregg, I'm not sure. The Sony replacement US18650V3 is apparently not drift free, according to a cell dealer in Germany that I've been in contact with. I'm not sure how to determine whether a cell is drift-free or not, which is exactly why I'm nervous about this :-)

Hello Greg, It's sort of complicated. I did disassemble one. It took me something like 3-4 hours. Most of that time was spent scraping sikaflex/urethane caulk out of the enclosure. The cells are Sony US18650V, which is a discontinued cell. One feature of that cell is that it is free of drift. I can't use cells which are not free of drift, because they are wired 8S2P, meaning there are 8 sets of 2 cells in parallel. I have inferred that free of drift means that the pairs of cells in parallel won't do something undesirable? So the first problem is obtaining discontinued cells, or finding something similar sans drift. A second problem is that new DOT regs apparently prohibit common carrier shipping of lithium cell packs which are not connected to a protection board. This means that I can't get anyone to spot weld strips onto cells to make them into a 5-6-5 pack, as is needed for the battery pack. I can have them assembled, but would have to pick up in person. That leaves me with buying 8 higher-capacity cells and a protection board, and putting those in the battery pack. That doesn't seem like a horrible idea, but I'd certainly prefer to put it back together exactly as it was when manufactured by Arri. Also, the only protection board that I can find to fit the Arri OBB-2 has a 5 week lead time. What I'd really like is to send packs to someone and have them do it, in exchange for payment. :-) That way, I can focus on doing what I do best -- whatever that is.

Howdy All, Newbie here. Just made the switch to Super16...bought a new H16 RX5 S16 from Chambless Cine, an Arri 416 from a fellow in Dueseldorf, Germany, and an A-Minima from someone in the UK. The results from the Arri/Zeiss combo blew me away. The A-minima seems kind of finicky as far as film stock - E100D won't run without jamming. And, of course, the Bolex is as solid and reliable as it could be. Rather than scannning everything I shoot, I thought I'd get a Super 16 projector. Since the optics on all my cameras are centered, it seemed to make sense to want a projector with centered optics. So I contacted Bernie at Super 16, who I've used before with mostly frustrating results. Since projector conversions seem to be one of his main lines of business, I figured he might be able to give me what I need. I asked Bernie which Eiki projectors can be converted with optics centered, and he told me, "Any Eiki". So I bought a nice Eiki and had it shipped to him. After the work was complete, in his mind, he called me to tell me that he could not center the optics *on that model*. I reminded him of our initial conversation and asked why he called me *after* he'd milled the gate out, rather than before -- because my options for solving the problem were quite constrained once the projector had been messed with. Things went down hill from there. He's now holding the projector hostage and demanding payment for the botched/incomplete/impossible job, and he's changed his story to "No Eiki" can be converted with centered optics. So here I am, a month later, with no Super 16 projector, wondering what to do. I'd like to spend between up to about $1200, or maybe slightly more, for a high quality, ideally self-threading Super 16 projector with optics (and hopefully, illumination) on the same axis as the frame. Xenon would be ok, but I think I'd prefer halogen. I'm not a big fan of projectors which require assembly, as opposed to unfolding, like some of the old Bell & Howells. Also, I'm sort of curious what people do when their 24v Arri on-board cell packs go belly-up. The only options seem to be: - buy a new cell pack from arri for $850ish with 2-3 mo lead time - buy an aftermarket cell pack from cinepower.com - use a power supply which is not on-board Thanks in advance for any tips on projector conversion! (ps I'm not really a student...wasn't sure which category to select...)