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Duncan Brown

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Everything posted by Duncan Brown

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. With access to a high speed camera now, I thought this might be a fun place to post this: Duncan
  7. 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
  8. Some more GSMO scans! http://backglass.org/duncan/cinema_products/cp_gsmo_flyer_79.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/cinema_products/cp_gsmo_flyer_82.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/cinema_products/cp_gsmo_pricelist_19801201.pdf ...and the crummy 100dpi versions: http://backglass.org/duncan/cinema_products/cp_gsmo_flyer_79_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/cinema_products/cp_gsmo_flyer_82_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/cinema_products/cp_gsmo_pricelist_19801201_100.pdf Enjoy! Duncan
  9. Just showed up on ebay - a decent little ACL 1.5 kit, other than the crazy weird short viewfinder. $2500 https://www.ebay.com/itm/226038623169 Duncan
  10. Very interesting info! As Steven said, PL mount is a no-brainer. I'm a Canon FD fan myself, but you'd probably only sell one of them (to me.) Any of the other common mounts - Nikon F, Canon EF, Arri-B/S, etc - would be sought after if you can beat the price and turnaround time of Les Bosher. (The latter might not be so hard...) Duncan
  11. Now we're talking! Pictures galore! Near as I can tell from Chrosziel's website, their collimators now just come with a PL mount or something that looks a lot like it, then they have adapters from that to all sort of mounts. Guess it makes sense given the lens market these days. More ebay searches to set up... 🙂 Duncan
  12. That certainly looks like something Eclair would make, except they didn't paint it black in the throat like they usually do? I'd love to see the back side of it. Can we do like in the movies and say "Enhance!" and see it in this picture? So it looks like for an Arri-B lens, you'd twist the lens in the mount, like it was designed by Arri. On mine the lens stays put and the ring moves the locking part over top of it. (Which I guess means the lens isn't oriented quite the right way...not that it should make any operational difference.) How does an Arri-S lens work with that mount? I don't see any mechanism to hold or release it. Dunca
  13. The TS end of that adapter isn't just made to work like the more standard Eclair one, it's identical in every way. OK, the TS threaded ring is a little bit different because it has to be, to make room for the other two rings, but I can't believe someone besides Eclair made that. It's literally their parts. I could see how maybe there are some thin metal cover plates missing from the front, which would make it look more plain. Hard to believe those screws were intended to be exposed like that. But that's the kind of thing that gets tacked on with Pliobond and falls off decades later. Someone find a picture of a known Eclair one and prove me wrong 🙂 (Also, anyone feel free to post pictures of any and all TS adapters here - Eclair, Les Bosher, anything - as a resource for people buying, selling, searching for adapters in the future.) Duncan
  14. Next is an item I recently picked up with a lens, and was gobsmacked to discover is the near-mythical TS to Arri-B AND Arri-S adapter. Lots of people talk about it existing, but I've never seen an actual picture of one. I've seen the Les Bosher version (with its distinctive lever, like most or all of his adapters.) It screws on to the camera in the usual fashion with the big wide bottom knurled ring. Then there is a middle knurled ring which operates the Arri-S part of the mount. Spin it fully counterclockwise and the two little "wings" along the outside of the mount are retracted. You can then push in an Arri-S lens, aligned properly with the standard Arri-S locating tab, until it is fully into the mount. Spin the middle ring a fair amount until it stops, which pushes the little metal wings into the slot in the lens and holds it quite securely in place. (I show pictures of the two wings in the retracted and the mounted positions.) The outer knurled ring, then, is the one to use when mounting Arri-B lenses. Spin it fully counterclockwise to clear access all the way down the bayonet slots, push an Arri-B lens fully into the mount (takes a little wiggling back and forth at the very bottom) then spin the outer ring clockwise until it firmly latches over top of the bayonet tabs. This won't be much of a spin. Do it with all your might against the knurls on the rings, and you may still be worred that your lens isn't fully secure (but it probably is.). It just doesn't have the satisfying final click you get when putting an Arri-B lens into an Arri camera B mount. I showed it spun fully clockwise, which you'll never be able to do with a lens in the mount, then I show about how far I was able to turn it when a lens was there. I guess I see why Les adds the levers to his adapters! Oh yeah, when using one style of lens, the ring for the other style can be in any position at all. Clever of them to make the functions so completely separate like that. Duncan
  15. Next is a pretty common option that comes with the above mount: a CA-1 to Arri-B (bayonet) adapter. Using the knurled edges of the outer ring, you can spin and lock it into the CA-1 mount like you would a lens... and then an Arri-B lens can be pushed into it and spun clockwise to bayonet-lock it into the adapter-within-adapter. It works well, but of course when you go to remove the lens, there's kind of a 50/50 chance which bayonet will decide to let loose, so ou might end up with a lens in your hand, or you might end up with a lens with the adapter still on it in your hand! You can frequently spot this adapter in pictures of ACLs with lenses on them, because of the distinctive brass knurled ring on the outer part of the combined adapter - you won't see that in a picture of an ACL with a CA-1 lens mounted to it. This particular adapter was originally on an NPR that had an optional (home made?) setscrew on the side of the stock Cameflex mount, which would go through this adapter and hold in an Arri-S lens that had been shoved into the adapter until it bottomed out on the surface of the adapter, then the setscrew could be screwed in to the slot in the Arri-S mount and hold it in place. I guess that worked? Anyway that explains the spurious hole in the side of this adapter. I'm including a few pictures of the loose adapter, and then a couple to show what it looks like when it's in the TS to CA-1 adapter. Duncan
  16. Seems like a good idea to have a place for everything TS-adapter, because there's a real dearth of information on them out there. There are the original Eclair ones, Les Bosher will make anything you ask for (given enough lead time...) so there are presumably tons of adapters out there, but very few good detailed pictures, or other information. For those new to all this, the TS mount is this large diameter set of threads on the front of the ACL, to which a very sturdy adapter can be screwed on with a standard (TS) side, and then the other side can be designed to adapt to any number of other standard lens mounts. The mount on the camera also has c-mount threads in the center, so for light enough c-mount lenses you can dispense with the adapter entirely and just thread the lens directly to the camera. Clever setup! First up is the adapter probably everyone is familiar with because it seems to be the default adapter included with most ACLs - it threads onto the TS mount on the camera and allows you to mount a Cameflex (CA-1) mount lens to the camera. It has the big threads on a knurled ring that spins and fixes the adapter to the camera, the locating pin that matches up with the camera mount to keep it from spinning on the camera once it's cinched down, then the Cameflex mount in the center, which is a bayonet-type mount which allows you to push the lens in the mount and twist it clockwise to lock it into the mount. Duncan
  17. Justin, Sorry, it was up there for over a year, before finally selling late last year. Duncan
  18. Another ebay treasure, whose link will be lost to the sands of time for future readers of these posts, but might be just what someone is looking for right now: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266652201046 Title is "16mm Film Camera Eclair Npr Working Condition converted to s16 by Les Bosher" - it's got 3 mags, the Alcan motor, PL mount and Arri mount (Arri-S I presume) and he links to several Vimeo uploads of movies shot with it. $2300 opening bid (nobody has bid yet), ends in a few days. He says one of the mags has a stuck counter, but if you've been following along on my NPR mag thread you already know how to fix that ? I guess one way to avoid the legendary waits for Les Bosher to work on a camera, is to buy one he's already done! Duncan
  19. Well that at least explains why they were such Eclair experts. From the May 1973 Journal of the SMPTE: George Zorzoli has been appointed West Coast Service Manager for Eclair Corp. of America, 62 W. 45 St., New York, NY 10036. He has been with Eclair since 1969 as an electronics and camera technician. He was formerly with Birns & Sawyer. Duncan
  20. Optical Electro House seems to have been quite the group of Eclair experts back in the day. I have a Super 16 NPR (that seems to have been converted by OEH), with a Tobin-clone sync motor (that seems to have been made by OEH), that came in cases plastered in OEH stickers, with the last shipping labels showing it came back from OEH. I haven't dug too deeply but haven't found any obvious evidence of what happened to them. Sure would be nice if someone could track down whatever might be left of that operation or its people and find answers to questions like "Wait, you CAN adapt an NPR finder to an ACL?!" Duncan
  21. Here are the additional photos. The questions I've asked in my post up there could possibly be answered with detailed close photos (like some you've already done!) but of those parts - lens mounts, focusing screen, etc. I've had decent luck aiming a smartphone camera into 16mm camera viewfinders, with the camera having no lens and pointed to a light source, resulting in a picture of the focusing screen markings. It can be tricky to get the camera lens aimed straight into the VF so there's no vignetting but it can be done. Duncan
  22. Clearly that is worth $5. Where do I send the check? ? I've never seen one of those Tobin NPR motors before, that's really cool. I have a motor which looks and works much like it (even takes the same external speed controller!) but is probably a clone by Electro Optical House rather than an actual Tobin. I've often wondered how they deal with the added distance with the video tap - is there some sort of compensating lens in the straight (non-beam-splitting) path to make the optical distance end up correct again? What do the lens mounts look like in detail? How did they carve away the body to fit the PL mount? How did they recenter the C mount? What does the focusing screen look like? The eternal question: what, exactly (if anything) was done to make the mags work better with S16? I'd love to finally hear the definitive answer on that, even if it's only inferred from looking at some mags that come with a S16 camera. SO, you should have no problem selling that, even if you don't fall for my $5 scam. But we'd all love more detailed pictures of stuff before it leaves your hands. (Or once it gets into the hands of some lucky other person here.) If you're hitting the picture limit on posts, you can email them to me (PM me for the address) and I'll post them here, since I'm a subscriber and have a higher limit. Thanks! Duncan
  23. Here's a trail of breadcrumbs to follow... https://my16mm.com/eclairacl/list_topica/msg00937.html I wonder if super16@aol.com still works?? Duncan
  24. I don't own this VF myself, but I believe that is the mount for the much-harder-to-find Kinoptic fully orientable viewfinder. (The Angenieux VFs are much more common.) Duncan
  25. What are those red pull-knobs for then? I've only ever seen those on cheap-but-hey-they-work Arri-S mounts. Duncan ETA: Oh I see maybe they're cheap-and-ugly-but-hey-they-work knobs for grabbing the PL mount ring and spinning it?
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