Duncan Brown

I still think the camera can't format a new Cineflash (well, a Cineflash with an unformatted replacement SSD module installed in it.) Oddly enough, once it IS formatted, and you decide to erase all the files on it in the camera menu, what it does is....format the drive! But you can't get to that menu choice with an unformatted Cineflash. That's some catch, that Catch-22. We were finally able to format the drive with the Cineflash Dock hooked to an old laptop with an external SATA port and the proper cable, running Linux. Previous attempts, with several differences, to just format the drive had not created a drive that worked in a camera. So we used Clonezilla to create a backup image of the working Cineflash, then restored that to the repaired Cineflash. That worked! Now we have a backup image we can use to do that whenever needed. At some point I'm going to solder on a second connector to the board inside the repaired Cineflash and see if we can make it a 240GB model by putting two SSD modules in it. There's an interesting quirk with the EF mount - it's spectacular that it includes electronic aperture control, but the way it works is, every time you change the aperture, it opens up fully, then stops back down to the selected aperture. It's like they don't trust it to know where it is and have to "re-home" it each time you adjust it. Weird, but not too annoying once you understand what it's doing. Duncan

Not many people wanting to chime in, eh? Well maybe a little camera-porn will, er, stimulate the discussion. Duncan

Now that these are getting old enough to be afforded by mere mortals (or companies whose main business is not high speed cinematography) I thought I'd start a thread where we could share tips and tricks on these. I realize for many of you, I'm probably asking you to dredge up knowledge from a long time ago! We have one camera with a PL mount and one with an EF mount. Anything anyone needs to know that they think I could answer, I'd be happy to. My previous high speed experience was with 16mm film but I think I've come up to speed (oof) on these pretty quickly, so I hope I could be a resource. Questions for existing/past users: -- The touch screen is flaky, to put it mildly. It generally seems to be a matter of calibration - the touch area and the screen image don't line up well. Sometimes turning the screen off and on again seems to help, so maybe it recalibrates when you do that? If you figure out the right offset to touch, to do what you want, then the next thing you want to do you'll find the offset is off-screen somewhere so that doesn't help. The most commonly frustrating thing is trying to change the capture rate. Many other things can be done remotely from the app on a PC, but seemingly not that. -- The PL mount seems to be thicker than spec. I haven't taken it outside to see if I can reach infinity, but other clues, like a zoom that changes focus massively when zooming, lead me to believe that's the case. I got several shim kits with the cameras, but adding shims seem to make the problem worse. It came with no shims installed. Thus my guess that the lens is too far away from the sensor, not too close. -- I'm still working on getting a computer set up to read the Cineflash cards so I may be able to answer my own question eventually but it would appear to me that there is no way for the camera to format a new blank card, is this correct? (It's new and blank because I replaced the dead micro-SSD inside it). Also, anyone know if you solder on a second connector on the circuit board inside and install another micro SSD in it (and reformat it), if it will magically become a 240GB Cineflash? Or is there more to it than that? Duncan

Just to keep things updated - I used the RAF setscrew adapter and it fit perfectly in my shallow PL mount. Not as convenient as the ones that spin/clip on and off of course, but no choice with this crazy PL mount. Duncan

Often the other two wires on motors of that era are for the Pilotone signal, used to sync up the separate tape recording where sound was captured. So the Power goes in and the Pilotone comes out. Duncan

Maybe I could pay £75/week for 100 weeks! (Any lucky new owner yet? Duncan

Anyone have one of the Fotodiox adapters and can measure the protrusion for me? Looks like it could be close to fitting my mount. Duncan

Dang. I picked a bad week to not have a spare £7500 laying around. (Come to think of it, most weeks are like that.) I hope whoever gets it puts it to good use like Uli has, not on a shelf! Duncan

Oof - my crazy PL conversion has 12mm, maybe 13mm of full diameter depth, then a little more with a taper. Looks like I may be limited to the setscrew adapters, and lenses with native PL mounts. Thanks! Duncan

Rafael, How far does the wide part of the adapter protrude behind the back of the PL mount face? I have a Super-16 converted Eclair NPR that has a somewhat shallow cavity inside the PL mount and some adapters stick back too far. Thanks, Duncan

It does show why converting an ACL to S16 is so fraught with potential problems though - they cut all that timing SOOooooo close. I'd have to remove the whole front of the camera to see whether we see any of the proposed bounce/bend/stretch at the end of the motion, to explain why an extended or repositioned mirror can slap the camera body even though statically it doesn't reach. Duncan

With access to a high speed camera now, I thought this might be a fun place to post this: Duncan

It sold for less than $2500 (ebay no longer shows the final selling price when Make Offer is used) I hope it was someone on here! Duncan