Duncan Brown

I'm going to guess they have one for sale but don't know how much to ask. Duncan

This is like Willy Wonka and the Golden Tickets. Who will unearth the other 24 of these? Duncan

I'm certainly confused why people pay near-new prices on eBay for ancient film when they could just have Kodak send them new stuff. But this deal here isn't awful - about 20% off new full retail prices - and in a couple of days will probably seem like a screaming deal against the impending price increases from Kodak. Duncan

The Pathe cameras all seemed to work fairly similarly, so this might be of help to someone who stumbles across this post someday while researching them. (I know your camera comes with a manual more specific to that model...) http://backglass.org/duncan/pathe/pathe_super_16_owners_manual.pdf Duncan

When I have a random thought about the 16S I'll post it here. I would be interested to hear what other people ponder too! Do you think if Arri had it to do over again, they'd put the drive ball on the gearbox, and the rubber coupling on the motors? Even if you weren't thinking ahead to people still using these cameras 60 years later, that was always going to be a wear item, something that needs predictable periodic replacement - why bury it inside the camera like that? Duncan

I was going to suggest using the Wayback Machine (archive.org) to grab a copy of that data from back when it was up, but it looks like someone else already did that a while back: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z8unfhH1qkNWmZHwIuRu1gjtlD49uncG6Pjfog8GAkY/edit#gid=0 If that doesn't cover the lenses you need, perhaps you could try archive.org on the link that no longer works. Duncan

eBay links are generally only good for about 60 days. When looking at a post from 10 months ago like this, they are usually going to lead to nothing. Duncan

Trying to shed some of the random bits and pieces that have come along with other things I've bought. I have a hard matte for a 75mm lens - unknown manufacturer. Outside dimensions about 138mm by 110mm, hole dimensions about 60mm by 44mm. It's almost flat, even! (Rocks a little when put on a flat surface, but what do you want for free?) I also have some sort of quick release tripod adapter plate? It's about 2-5/8" by 4-3/4" by about 1/4" thick. It has a 3/8" tripod screw in the middle and then a 1/4" tripod screw that can be either 11/16" off center (currently) or 5/8" off center. Whatever was previously mounted on it was round, about 3-1/2" diameter, like the bottom of a big tripod head? I'm assuming somebody will want one and somebody else will want the other but if someone wants both that's OK too. Truly free, I'll even pay shipping, to an US address. If you're outside the US I may still do it for free, or I might ask you to paypal me a few USD, depending on how much it costs to ship. Thanks, Duncan

Wow, just too far ahead of their time! Nice footage. Impressive that the camera could wake up and run that well after more than a decade of sleep. Duncan

Sometimes the Holy Grail really is the Holy Grail! Duncan

I have an app for my iPhone called "video tachometer" that can do the same thing through phone camera frame rate trickery. You watch your camera shutter through the live view in the app and change the speed dials until the shutter seems to be stationary, then that's your frame rate. (Or a multiple of it depending on how the shutter works - for instance on my Arri 16S with the bowtie shutter, the indicated rate is twice the frame rate because there are two frames for every revolution of the shutter.) Duncan

Exactly. This is some real careful, precision work right here. It definitely made an efficient emulsion-stripper! Duncan

I can't tell if that's an exclamation of joy, or of anguish because the post contains no pictures. If it's the latter, follow the link at the end of the post, for far higher res pictures than I could stuff in a post here. Duncan

I got a 16S as a parts camera - someone had tried to convert it to Super 16MM, which is not really possible, and I guess they figured that out after destroying a nice camera. It looks like they undertook the surgery using a chainsaw. Poor camera. I took a bunch of forensic pictures as I stripped it down, which I thought might be of historical interest. They're not captioned or described and only vaguely in the teardown order. This isn't a guide for tearing down your own 16S, which I heartily recommend you don't do, but I thought the detailed pictures of real world camera parts might be more informative than the greyscale pictures in the parts manuals, etc. This was a pretty late-model camera, making it even more of a shame. But I have another parts 16S husk that had already been massively stripped, and I might actually combine the two to make a functional camera. Or maybe it won't be functional. Nothing to lose by trying. I'll keep adding pictures to this page as I do more stuff. If nothing else, it'll just be a dumping ground for close-up pictures of 16S guts I guess. Duncan http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/16s_teardown/

I haven't put up the page with the all the disassembly pictures yet, but here are the comparisons for the hacked up gate and a normal gate on another non-hacked camera I'm disassembling. I had assumed that after butchering the camera they hadn't used it because what would be the point, but look at all that emulsion that gate gouged off! Oh my. You can see in the one picture that the stock mirror doesn't fully cover the gate, and then I have a picture with no mirror so you can better see what they did to it. Duncan

I knew it had to be a longer mirror! I have a parts 16S where someone foolishly tried to convert it to Super 16 (seemingly with a chainsaw) and that's the most obvious thing you notice about it - that edge of the film is never blocked by the mirror! Not sure what they were thinking. I'll post pics of that at some point (I'm taking lots of pics as I strip it down, just so people can see what all the parts look like in the real world, instead of in a parts manual.) Duncan

This is exactly right. Fuji Dark Box, model FDB12L - there was a moment in time, when minilabs all over the world were shutting down, where you could buy these by the pallet. But track one down and you'll be happy. Duncan

It makes a big difference whether you plan to shoot in B&W or color, too. With B&W you can more easily mix lenses that have different color casts; with color you either need to stick with one lens, or be prepared for extra color correcting when switching between shots through various lenses (assuming there's no such thing out there as a color-matched set of 1940s lenses for any reasonable price). Duncan

I'm guessing there's already a queue forming... Duncan

The official answer from Alan Gordon Enterprises: "That's an attachment to an Arri -S camera to allow an NCEIII animation motor. These items are obsolete and not worth anything." OK then! Duncan

Hey, that's definitely the little guy in the picture there! Interesting that the Arri was one of the more expensive ones, but it's a sturdy, well-engineered and constructed thing, with some precision gears inside. Well maybe someday I'll find someone with an NCE III animation controller and motor going cheap, or better still someone with one of those and a big budget will be desperately searching for the Arri adapter ? I can't imagine more than a small handful of those were ever made. Duncan

Done! I'll report back. Duncan

I was wondering what motor would go so slow you'd need to increase its speed 3X to get into interesting ranges for the 16S, but I hadn't considered the original motor! Other than crazy nostalgia, what would make someone want to hand crank an Arriflex? Duncan