Duncan Brown

This seemed like as good a place as any to post some pictures of my other, S16-modified-after-the-fact NPR. The cases and equipment came with Optical Electro House stickers all over the place so I'm going to assume they did this mod back in the day. But I was trading pictures with someone who has a freshly-Les-Bosher-S16-modified NPR and the c mount fix looked 100% identical, so that's what made me think to post these pictures here. It seems to be a standard way to do the mod. The C-mount is remade with the hole offset, then put back in the same hole in the turret plate, such that the offset is in the correct location for a S16 widened gate. The Cameflex mount was pulled out and remounted in an offset position - maybe by widening the hole in the turret, maybe by narrowing down the outside diameter of the mount, maybe both, hard to tell without disassembling it all. But it's definitely been moved the appropriate amount to the correct side. The gate aperture was widened, but the relieved portions that are scooped out of the gate plate were NOT made wider, so the image area of the single perf film will in fact ride on a bit more metal that in a proper S16 camera. But it's very smooth, polished metal, so... Finally, the focusing screen was painted with something on the outside in such a way as to create a wider-looking translucent area for framing. Does it really match the image area of the film? Looks too wide to me. Is the cross centered to the new center of the widened gate? I don't see how. It looks more like a helpful guide than a proper critical framing screen. But I did all those lens and framing tests with this camera too, so whenever I finish up that 400' roll of film and get it processed, maybe I'll be able to answer those questions better. Duncan

Yes, they definitely machined away the "pocket" between the rails, to make the entire left side rail narrower to match the wider gate, plus painted the new wider pocket all flat black. So bonus points for going to that trouble - I've seen some conversions where they don't even bother. But it looks like a really dreadful machine-shop job, at least in terms of the mirror-smooth film-friendly surfaces the camera started with. He may not know anything about the conversion, but he should be able to answer some questions about the camera sitting in front of him, if he could be convinced - lens recentering, mirror-widening, markings on the ground glass, etc. Duncan

Tell us more! (Pictures?) Lens recentered? Mirror bigger? Duncan

That Super 16 modification looks well-intentioned but suspicious, but other than that it looks like one heck of a collection of gear! Duncan

Yeah the handle itself seems a little thin/awkward (but who knows, not having used one myself) but I thought the filter storage was clever. Duncan

I figure this topic might encompass lots of things eventually but for now I have a picture of something that's part of an ACL auction on ebay. It's a handle that has little slots to hold extra filter holders! Is that a stock item or something aftermarket? I'd not seen it before, in any event. Duncan

Was talking to someone with an ACL and asked them how their pins were oriented when the mirror was in viewing position. Holes were horizontal. So there's another vote for that being correct, and my body and motor that match being the oddballs. Duncan

Figured I'd add this here for easy reference... Duncan

OK, but that is like my camera on which the self-parking motor parks in the wrong spot! My motor/camera combination that works has those vertical when the mirror is centered for the viewfinder operation! What serial number is your body. What kind of motor did it come with? (not that that means anything about what kind of motor it originally came with, at this point!) I wasn't seeing what you guys were talking about with the pin for the claw, but on putting on my 3D brain a little better, I see it now. I just checked AGAIN, and both these bodies pull the claw down (move the film ) when the shutter is closed, and pull it out of the sprockets and put it back up again (not moving the film) while the shutter is open. So there's that. Duncan

It's hard for me to tell just from the parts diagrams available online but it looks to me like the drive shaft with the hub with the coupler on it has a couple of worm gears on it that could be put in mesh with the rest of the assembly in such a way that the camera mechanism would be synced but the drive pins on the coupler end could be in a few different orientations depending on just how the gears got meshed upon assembly. Either by someone servicing it, or at a factory where the mirror parking concept didn't exist yet so nobody really was paying attention to that relationship because it didn't matter. Duncan

Camera number 1643 is in the viewing position when the empty holes in the coupler (so, the drive pins on the motor) are vertical. It came paired with motor number 1292 which is of the variety with the mirror parking symbol and the speed knob that starts at N and then goes 8 12 50 75 then whatever the position beyond that is. The motor self-parks with the pins vertically oriented so it works perfectly with that body. The base is what I believe is called the mid-sized base - wide black slide switch on front with the silver button in the middle. Has the exposure meter knob, the Jaeger connector, the bloop switch, the fuse, and says "Made in France" I'll add a picture just so we know which one I'm talking about. Camera number 641 is in the viewing position when the empty holes in the coupler (so, the drive pins on the motor) are horizontal. It originally came paired with a (broken) heavy duty motor but the earlier one without the mirror parking. It has the exact same base as number 1643. This is the one that when I put the above motor on it, doesn't park in the correct position, for what is now obvious reasons. Duncan

Sure, the motor must have a way to detect position, but the motor makes precisely one revolution per frame, so it would be as simple as saying "the motor always stops with the pins vertical" and then setting up the body accordingly. Both bodies have perfectly synced shutters and mirrors. It's the relationship between those parts of the mechanism, and the drive pins on the coupler, that are 90 degrees out between the two bodies. It would be easiest to believe the motor and the body that came with it are correct... and that the other body was put back together at some point by someone who didn't notice they'd done it wrong, because the motor that was on it didn't care. Duncan

For what it's worth, your interpretation of the instructions, that the holes he's talking about are the ones that are set to receive the pins from the motor, is how the motorless body is set up. So if that means the other body is "wrong" then someone has somehow convinced the parking motor attached to it to be "wrong" the same way. (Which is why I was wondering if there's some secret way to adjust the motors.) The Tobin motor is not direct drive like the factory motor - there's a belt drive and the way the parking position can be adjusted involves loosening a setscrew on a pulley to change the orientation. No such arrangement exists on the factory parking motor - any adjustment would have to be electronic I think? Duncan

All 4 holes go all the way through the coupler. So you're looking at 2 holes that are parallel to the base, and 2 holes that are perpendicular to the base. In two of the holes you can see the shiny ends of the drive pins on the camera drive hub. Now which two "drive holes" is he talking about? Duncan

Haha, no doubt. The camera I moved the motor to previously had no mirror parking so if it were assembled "wrong" nobody would know! The Tobin instructions for mounting their motor to the ACL include the line: "Look at the rubber coupling that is driven by the motor shaft; an imaginary line between the two drive holes should be parallel to the camera base." OK, sure, but are we talking the drive holes with the pins from the camera drive, or the drive holes that will be receiving the motor's pins? BE MORE SPECIFIC TOBIN!! And in any event, their motor does contain an internal way of tweaking that position to wherever it needs to be. Duncan