Duncan Brown

Just thinking about all the times I've done this in 35mm still cameras, I don't think this part is as hard as you're thinking. The leader was light-struck the first time you loaded it, you can just go ahead and light-strike it some more the second time you load it. Well, with 35mm still film you can because of the light tight felt lip the film feeds out of. As you say, if the daylight spool unwinds significantly while out of camera, that could be an issue. You should probably tape the leading edge down again like it was from the factory. It's going to be significantly harder than with a still camera to get to the same spot in the film the subsequent time(s), so of course you have to overdo it just to be sure and waste a foot or three of film in the process. (on edit) - OH, I see, you are both talking about pulling BOTH reels out of the camera mid-shoot. Yuck. I am talking about rewinding the film and putting it back in the can, then threading it and (with the lens cap on!) running the camera to the same point in the film again. Which would require a camera that can run in reverse of course. Duncan

Quite the shame that the world wasn't ready for this at the time (so that there could be more of them floating around for sale now years later). Duncan

Keep in mind that is orthochromatic film (blue sensitive) - cool, in that you can handle it under a safelight, but may not give the look you want when filming stuff out in the world. Their duplicating film would give you all the good and bad points of that print stock, but is panchromatic: https://www.orwouk.com/dp-31 Also worth pointing out the usual warning that running polyester-based stocks in a camera can cause issues because it doesn't tear if there's a jam. (This warning always comes up as a theoretical; I have never actually seen a story of a camera damaged in this way.) Duncan

Here's a set of sell sheets someone scanned for that era Magnasync products! Pretty fascinating. https://archive.org/details/TNM_Magnasync_X-400_series_recorders_16mm_synchro_20170710_0444 The problem is, of course, that nobody is recording sound onto mag-stripe 16mm film any more, not the least of which is because it hasn't been made in eons. So a museum is about the only place that this would be of any use, and only then just to look cool while representing some long-obsolete technology. (I say this not to be mean, it's just the hard truth. I am a completely irrational fanatic about obtaining and using obsolete technologies, but this one is too much of a stretch even for me.) Duncan

PM me your address and it will go out Monday! Duncan

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