Duncan Brown

Good point, but that's Kodak - they have basically always operated by phone. I guess that is why people will pay so much more money for the same film other places (ebay, https://filmphotographystore.com/ etc) that they can click a few buttons and get it, because they have simply forgotten how to pick up a phone and order directly from Kodak. Kodak did briefly sell movie film through their online consumer store (you know, the place you can buy Kodak t-shirts and stuff) but when they stopped doing that, that whole database was inaccessible to the people you call on the phone, so I couldn't have them just look up my last order and send it to the same place again. Duncan

There's a Hollywood office listed at the top of page 2 here: https://www.kodak.com/content/products-brochures/Film/Kodak-Motion-Picture-Products-Price-Catalog-US.pdf Duncan

I'm using Kluber "Isoflex LDS 18 Special A" which is readily available in the US from Amazon, and Nye synthetic clock oil #140B, also readily available in the US in various sizes from a seller on eBay (I got 8 oz which should be 10 lifetimes' worth...) I don't have enough time on my camera to tell you for sure that these are good equivalents, but I have a little bit of the originals and they do seem quite similar. The Nye clock oil is a tiny bit less viscous than the Chronosynth, but A) the Chronosynth I have is very old, which could be affecting it and B) synthetic clock oil does seem like the right type lubrication for the purpose. Duncan

I must admit I didn't really get what the OP was talking about... and then I saw the trailer for Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. My first thought was that Baz had made a CGI film and had gone solidly into uncanny valley territory. But everything online is treating it like it's real actors! So I guess Baz found the uncanny valley coming from the other direction, whoa. Even some of the visual treatments are CGI-like, the kind of floating shots and snap zooms you always see in video game cut scenes for instance. What is going on here?! Duncan

Heavy metal indeed! Answered my own question about the ground glass markings via RTFM. Duncan

There, hope that helps someone someday when they google search "how do I change the shutter angle on my Eclair NPR" ! Duncan

It goes all the way down to 5 degrees (er, a little past it if you go wild!) but you probably won't use it there unless you have an insane amount of light or some really fast film or both ?

It's a pretty crude mechanism, but it has "clicks" every 5 degrees and markings every 10 degrees so with a little fiddling you can get it to where you want it to be. Pushing in that knob and turning it counter-clockwise will increase the shutter angle again, though it seems to click every 10 degrees in that direction (goes to each of the marked lines) I guess to return it to 180 faster if that's what you're doing. Here it is in the middle of adjusting, and if your shutter was already adjusted off of the 180 degree default, it will have looked something like this when you first inched the mirror.

So holding the lever with one hand, use the other hand to PUSH IN on that mystery knob, while spinning it clockwise. This will decrease the shutter angle, by sliding another piece over behind the mirror to fill more of the opening between edges of the mirror. If it was previously at 180 degrees, once you do that you should start to see it appear, like this.

But first you have to go back to that lever on the other side and put it into "shutter adjust" position. It is spring loaded, so you definitely need to hold it against the stop screw while you do your adjustments.

Now we're going to use this mystery knob on the side of the camera.

Note the directional arrow next to the inching knob - that's the direction to spin it. Move the mirror around until the leading edge comes into the lens mount opening about halfway. The exact position is not critical, you just need to be able to see that edge of the mirror. If your shutter is set to 180 degrees, this is how it will look when you do that. (If it's already set to something else, it will look like the later pictures.)

Next you need to spin the mirror into the right position. To do this, move the lever on the side of the camera from its normal "run" position to the "reflex" position. This enables the inching knob above it. It's supposed to stay in the reflex position by itself, but mine tends to pop back pretty easily so you might need to hold it there while you inch the mirror around.

In my research on the NPR I see a lot of people asking how to change the shutter angle, and I've read the description in the manual myself, and the one crappy picture they have there and it was still not straightforward to figure out. So I thought I would go through it step by step with good pictures, so anyone can do it! First step is to unlock the turret, pull it out, spin it 90 degrees (between mount positions) then push it back in a bit - it will stay in that position while you do the rest of this.

Here's what my focusing screen looks like. I'm guessing the wide-crop-in-post guidelines were added by someone later on? The camera certainly isn't modified to shoot Super 16. Duncan

More questions with pictures! What's the weird screw within a screw above the viewfinder port? What's the stud with a hole in it on the other side of the handle from that? And what kinds of things mount to the bottom plate? I've seen on some cameras a single round rod mount bracket, like for a matte box or something - anything else? Duncan

Well seeing as how I started with a bunch of pictures, might as well turn this into the NPR-porn thread. I know I sure would have appreciated some more high quality pictures on the net when I was considering buying one, so I'd better understand what I was getting (and getting into!) Duncan

Oh it's probably the original base. I was referring to the 14 or 15 extra holes drilled and threaded in it! I have some mad-scientist plans for Pilotone so yeah, if that's an additional place to grab it that might be interesting to me. Duncan