Charles MacDonald

OF COURSE! Why did'ent I think of that. Microfilm runs through the camera a bit slower also, unless your a bank with a rotary cheque camera. The Metal spool would bleed off any static rapidly, Even if the plastic has anti-static treatment it might hold a charge. AS I said, when I got my first 16mm Movie Camera I did use the mirofilm spools, and SAVED the spool the film came on. I generally ask for the spools back, so a have a few set aside.

The last Kodak Catalong I downloaded was over a year ago, But it shows both the TXR and E100 as short pictch. 16 mm with 8 mm Perforations KODAK EKTACHROME 100D Color Reversal Film / 7285 / SP467 / 16 mm x 400 ft roll / On Core, (Type R) / 2R-1497 CAT 8679318 ! 16 mm with 8 mm Perforations KODAK TRI-X Reversal Film 7266 / SP467 / 16 mm x 400 ft roll / On Core / 2R-1497 The "normal" 16mm is KODAK TRI-X Reversal Film 7266 / SP457 / 16 mm x 400 ft roll / On Core / Winding B / 1R-2994 8602377 The Regular 8 is "finish to order", so it Would be made from Yet to be Perforated stock, when the order was made up.

They are 16mm Microfilm spools, I have used hundreds of them back in teh days I worked in the Microfilm department at work. They are not quite as rigid as the Aluminium Movie spools, but otherwise will fit and work. (at least in my Filmo which is where I have used them when I was short of the metal ones) Suggest taking slightly more care to remove the film from the camera in very subdued light. The flange may be a touch thinker than the movie flange, if you get the fuji or Agfa version. The kodaks are OK. I am actually surprised that they don't use these for Movie film, that have to be less expensive to make than the metal spools.

Here is where it gets tricky. Way back when there was only 35mm film, and it ws on Nutrate Base. (Scarry Times) the first motion picture printer was made. (stay with me here). The machine worked by running the negative and the positive over a cylinder. and shining a light. The negative had shrunk at this point because Nitrate Film will do that when you process it, and so the Pitch was just a hair shorter than the fresh print film. This allowed for the cylinder and all was well. As the base was changed to various "safety" film formulas, the base would no longer shrunk in processing, (as much anyway) and so they started to make the negative film with a "short Pitch" .1866 rather then .1870. 4 thousands of an inch shorter. 16mm came along after this so it also has Positive and Negative pitch. Positive is .3000. Some reversal film is made with the positive pitch, some with negative pitch, the slight difference is not noticed in many situations. Negative film is of course made with negative pitch so it can run an the traditional printer. Regular 8 has the same size holes, but half as far apart. allowing 4 images in the space of one 16mm Image. {WHEW} Now the film still does shrink a bit over time, and so the ACTUAL spacing you will find on a given strip of film is a combination of the original pitch - plus how much it has shrunk. When the film is made, the perfs are all made at once, and so it can be made with regular 8, super 8 or 16mm perfs. It is just a mater of what dies Kodak(or whoever) sticks in their Bell and Howell Perforater. If you want to perforate it yourself, it would be best to work from unperforated stock. George Eastman made it difficult to slit 16mm stock from 35mm stock on purpose , as he wanted the "home use" 16mm film to be 100% Safety Film. I dont know what size order Kodak would want to perf some Negative film as Regular 8. They still sell Ektachrome and Tri-X reversal as regular 8 as long as you order several thousand feet of teh stuff, and accept it on 400 ft rolls. The german film dealers seem to slit some fuji stocks and perf them as regualr 8, but I don't know if they get the stock as 16mm or unperfed 35mm or if they have to get one strip of 16 out of a strip of 35. {WHEW AGAIN} Have I come close to answering you?

Yes, I was thinking of the 1500 perf spec for regualr 8. I don't know anyone who does projector conversions. A military contractor would no doubt have many engineers on staff who could plan such a conversion. The You Tube clip is not mine, I just did a search for an example of the basic machine. You can find almost anything on the web if you hold your mouth right!

A modified, semi special. By the looks of the srokets and the lamp house it started off as a Kodak 16mm. Kodak made a spot/still/slow 16mm projector as an ANALYST 16. They also OEMed them out to someone who made a "lafayette" 16. for militray use, a contractor could just start with teh commercial unit and modify away. Major market was sports team - To watch game film, Testing labs, and of course the military. Dropping to a 1500 Pull down, would be only a couple of dozen parts to change at the factory level. I wonder if the associated Camera was a high speed unit where using 8mm pulldown would half the film speed. (sort of like 2 perf 35mm) shows an analyist in use. (note that it has the same lens as your, but with the Special add on lens to make the picture wider, (or narrower if reversed) that fits most of the Analyist and Pagents.

Firstly, it has been quite a while since Ilford made Motion Picture film, so from a practical standpoint, you might have more luck using a negative/positive flow so you have more wiggle room to make up for material degradation of the film. I would run a small test to see how much fog you have picked up and how much speed you have lost. In General, B&W film can be processed either way. Some films marked reversal cannot make a good negative as they have a silver Anti-Halo layer which will not be cleared in a negative process. Getting good reversal results for film not intended to be reversed may take some adjustment to the process however so you would have to have a heart to Heart Talk with the lab that is processing your film to see if they are comfortable attempting the process on your film. E6 film can be processed as a negative, with strange colours - which seems to be a current fad much like Fisheye lenses were in the 1970's. Movie negative has the REM-Jet backing so to try and reversal process it would require some custom modifications ot the processing line. (unless the reversal line was previously used for older films which had rem-jet and the lab is willing to re-engage them.

The little camera seems to be unused surplus. It came with the "Factory test roll" of film wound on a return reel as shown, and with one core. It also came with a 3 or 4 page instruction sheet. made in 1958 so it has not be run in 50 years.

Only slightly related, I bought a surplus 16mm Strike camera which I have not been able to try as it also uses a small core. I took some digital pictures and placed them on Flicker. or http://flic.kr/s/aHsjw5736n One shot shows the core that came with my camera, I wonder if it is like the cores on your film. This camera takes 33 ft loads. The Military also bought 50 ft loads to refill standard 16mm metal magazines, those use a different core as far as I know.

Yes.

if it is double x, and you had a still film darkroom, you could do a dip test , but 4 years at room temperature is likely to not be a good thing. There is a bit of curiosity of course over the exposed film, maybe it is a long lost missing link, or maybe it is someones idea of porn.

Camera wear, or perhaps design. Maintenance or lack there of. Amateur cameras tend to have a simple pull down claw, pro camera often have registartion pins, or a claw that stays in the pref for the exposure. also sturdier construction. IF they camera is steady (enough) it does not have a major effect, if the camera is unsteady, it will be the first thing you notice, But even inexpensive camera like the filmos of the world can produce steady looking shots as long as the are not having to be used along with give away things like superimposed titles.

Spectra is advertising it, and I belive that there are some suppliers in europe. http://www.spectrafilmandvideo.com/Film.html

I have a small gun camera which uses a very small core. It came with a factory test roll on 16mm Double perf film. (not regular 8 which has twice as many perfs per foot) I have not tried the camera as I would need at least one more core to load film in it. If anyone is interested, I could probably get out my digital snapshot camera and post a few pics. (if I can find where I stashed it)

If the camera is working well, it is just a box to hold the film, Lens choice can have some effect. The film stocks do have a slight effect, but all the modern films are quite good. Unless you are doing "experimental" looking work with things like cross processing, you hope the processing is so tightly controlled that It will not change the look. Sometimes folks do Push or Pull process to get a specific effect (or get arround a limitation or error) Lighting Set and costume design, makeup, now those can set a mood.

Yes, the camera determines what is put on the negative. Ultra and Super 16 formats both assume that the negative will be used as a video or computer source and not be printed to be shown on a projector. The film stock is made originally on rolls from 40 to 60 inches wide, and cut down for use, so the entire surface is same (other then the factory edge printing. 16mm Sound prints generally require the sound track negative to be recorded separately, and the sound is printed from the sound negative on the sound track area. The picture negative is masked in the printer so it leaves the soundtrack area free of information. yes. Some older cameras REQUIRE double perf stock unless modified. Most cameras will just ignore the extra holes, and as stated above the second row area will not be printed if making a conventional print, with that area reserved for the sound track negative. Until super 16 came out, the default format for camera stock, was often double perf. Kodak saw that super 16 would be a good format for digital origination, and so changed the default to single perf, making double perf stock a special order in many cases. Unless you are using a camera that demands double perf, or one of the high speed cameras that also has special perf requirements, you can shoot regular 16 with either stock. Even mixing the two and still get it printed or transferred as one final roll. I don't know where the concept of Super16 film came from, other than perhaps folks having to order single perf when double perf was the norm.

Interesting bit of history. File downloaded fine, the file name did not have an extension on it, but Linux identified it as an MP4. Presumably Windows users may have to re-name the file with that extension. (years since I used wondows so I am not sure if it has gotten better with identifying file types.) The production itself is a nice example of a "sponsored " film of the era. One wonders why they felt the need to explain the process twice, but who are we of the midia generation to judge. Possibly the need was based on trouble spots they had had with their customers. Thank you very much Brian.

Of course the Wikipedia articles on teh subject have some illustrations of what the film looks like. the 16mm article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16mm_film has a shoto f both sound and silent 16mm frames, the sound one shows the end leader of an old US navy training film, selected to avoid copyright limitations, and the silent one shows some of my Dogs in the back yard. The 35mm article has a picture of a clip of a 35mm print with various soundtracks and an anamorphic (stretched) image. (not my photos) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35mm Both articles show other references to look up.

These days when so much is done using computers, it is not surprising that folks never have actually SEEN real honest to goodness Motion picture film in any format. A crew really has only one person (The loader) who gets near the film stock. The dailies are projected from a digital scan. even the editor is probably working on a computer screen. There are still some theatres who have film projectors. But unlike my experience in high school, no one sees a projector in the classroom. (My avitar for this forum is a Very old picture of me changing the Bulb in a RCA 16mm School projector back when I was in High School in the 1970's) perhaps that makes the process seem more complicated than it really is. Deepak, can you talk your way into talking to someone who works in a local theatre that uses film for projection? They may be able to show you some film. Sometimes "trailers" (advertisement for coming films) are discarded after they have served their purpose here in North America, If the same system is in place where you are, you may be able to obtain one and see the frames, the analog and the digital soundtracks, The distorted frames on a "scope" Picture, and yes the 4 perforations on a 35mm frame.

But we are hear to exchange information to further our work, not to be a quick reference for folks who have not made the effort to look things up. Use you Browser to go to http://www.kodak.com/go/motion and look under technical information, and products. There you will find the pitch of all the Motion Picture Film Kodak makes as well as some of the reasons why. the pitch is stated right on the can of any roll of film you can buy, read the "anatomy of a motion picture film can on the Kodak site. Then if you still have questions, we will be happy to help. but we are not here to write essay answers for folks who have been asked to do assignments.

One of the clasic ways arround that sort of situation is to shoot each stock at a different logical location in your plot (city vs Cottage, home vs Work, etc)

It is much trickier than that! At even 5Khz, one cycle of sound is recorded on about one thousands of an inch of 16mm film. The galvo has to project as sharp an image of the recording slit as it can to record that fine a detail. too close or too far and you are out of focus. lack of focus starts at distorted sound and ends at unreadable sound. From the factory, they were set right on, if the galvo has been tampered , it would be a long road to get it in the right place. Beside the auricon there are very few cameras that attempted single system optical sound. There is a very rare clockwork unit built by RCA.

Typically, the sound and picture would be eddited separatly, and then the final sound track would be printed in the final release prints. I belive that placing teh Galvanometer was one of the jobs that required a jig in the factory. Since the factory was torn down, if that jig was not saved, attempting to install a galvonometer might be an enginering project. One fellow in the Auricon group did manage to get the jig for putting base rings on the light bulbs for the Auricons. to give you an idea, this photo - - was taken with a macro seting on a digital camera, and shows how close the Business end of the galvo is to the main sprocket in a Cinevoice. The ovarall view is here:

I am playing with an old auricon now. The optical sound versions are still around, and the auricon sound group does have lots of information on them. TV news switched to magnetic sound as they could do tricks like re-recording the track in the editing suite, and also being able to use the camera without having to try and get optimum exposure for the sound track. Auricon made some cameras that can record both, and the later ones dropped the optical sound capability. Unfortunately, Kodak no longer has the capability to make mag-stripe stock, so a "Filmagntic" only Auricon is a silent camera these days. One problem you will quickly run into with single system is the sound is recorded many frames ahead of the picture on the film, so it would be difficult to edit the film without having "Jumps" in the sound. This was not a problem for the TV guys as the reporter would give their report at the studio while the film was playing. Some folks will use a Auricon, or it's magnetic sound descendent the CP16 equipped with a synchronous motor as a double system camera.

I impulsively bought an Auricon "chop top" camera recently on e-bay. Chop-tops were 100ft auricon cameras that were converted by third parties to use a 400ft or larger magazine so that they would be practical as TV News cameras. The unit I got is missing any nameplate so I am not sure who did the conversion, or what type of magazine I am dealing with.... The back of the mag is at The front, Loaded with some blue leader is at A photo of the bottom of the mag is at and the mounting area on the camera is at I am hoping that one of the old equipment hounds in teh group can tell me what I have gotten myself into.