Duncan Brown

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

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

3 hours ago, steven jackson said:

I've looked at this page many times over but somehow missed this little bit of info on being able to adapt the NPR viewfinder to the ACL, which I didn't think was possible, however, the author states that he has done this and it was adapted by a company called Optical Electro House in Culver City.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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?

#2 looks like it natively accepts both PL and Arri-S.  Nice!   Where do I get one of those?!

Duncan

8 hours ago, Boris Belay said:

I believe the NPR and CP viewfinders are swappable...

That I can confirm.  I had a CP-16R viewfinder on one of the NPRs I sold.  And both my NPRs accept both the Kinoptik (non-orientable) and Angenieux (magically-orientable!) viewfinders.  So I think NPR is the easy world of interoperability with all NPR and CP-16R viewfinders... while ACLs are the land of frustration, where even the two choices of VF don't interchange with each other, and none of them interchange with NPR.  Darn you, Eclair!

Duncan

OK so wait, I have an Angenieux VF on my ACL, and the mount looks exactly like that (well, flipped 180 degrees but I guess it doesn't matter.)  It's the reorientable VF.  None of my CP or NPR VFs fit it.  The inner barrel is too big to fit in the hole of that mount.  Are there more than two kinds of removable VF mount for the ACL?  

Duncan

I have checked, and the standard NPR viewfinder (exact same mount as CP-16R) does not fit up to the original ACL mount.  The tube is too big and doesn't even mesh into the hole.

Duncan

Did this ever go up on ebay?  I didn't see it.

Duncan

I hate posting links that are sure to be dead when someone finds these posts in the future, but someone here might be interested now, so:

Oof, that's a bummer about the prism.  I've seen something somewhere that makes it look not-awful to pop the prism out of an NPR.  How is it on the ACL?  (I mean, ignoring the fact that there are likely no replacement prisms to be had...)

Duncan

1 hour ago, Gregg MacPherson said:

Did the adapter ring have any optical elements? If not then a simple spacer shifting the VF mount away from the camera body would work..?

That's my interpretation of what he's saying.  Of course it also has to adapt the different mounts, but that should be...straightforward?  They're the same idea, but different sizes, and I think different orientations of the nub.

Duncan

If someone wants to sell me cheaply one of those legendary CP-16R fully self-orienting viewfinders, I'd be happy to try it on my NPR ?    In general, it looks to me like the CP-16R finders put the eyepiece a little too far forward to be comfortable when operating an NPR, but that's just a guess.

By the same token, I think adapting an NPR VF to an ACL would put the eyepiece farther back then the standard VFs... but that could possibly be a good thing in some cases?  I guess someone needs to come up with a 3D-printed design for that mythical adapter!

Duncan

3 hours ago, Gregg MacPherson said:

Nice as it is to have self leveling viewfinders, I remember coping quite well without one. Most of the time with an ACL on sticks I was leaning over it, the VF rotated 45 to 90deg and my head  the same, to level the image. The young, unspoilt directors also seemed fine with it...

OK old man, and you probably walked to the set and back, uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow, too!  (I kid, since I think I'm actually older than you are...)

Duncan

8 hours ago, David Sekanina said:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7124126878960922626/

<mind blown>

Duncan

The standard Angenieux VF on the ACL spins the image as you rotate it, but then there's another ring you can turn to put it back where it needs to be again.  That's perfectly fine, as you don't generally rotate your viewfinder mid-shot or anything.   But this one that does it automatically is like magic!  I can't even wrap my head around how it works.  Very happy to have found a loose one.

Duncan

Well a motor that needs work is much closer to being a working motor than no motor at all!  (Or one that needs 3-phase power, yikes!)  If I had to guess, I bet the 12-27V upconverter is the problem.  Most of these old motors need a whole bunch of amps, and little converter boxes like that are rarely up to the task.  I bet a real 27V battery belt would have that thing flying.  But, as you say, a lot of money to risk on a guess,.

Duncan

I know nothing at all about this era Eclair, but is this a suitable motor for your camera?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/145044427703

(Not mine, just saw it in passing and remembered this thread.)

Duncan

Some more pictures:

Now for the much less often seen Angenieux  fully orientable always-upright-image viewfinder.  The basic functionality is the same as the Kinoptik, but without the goofy image spinning.  In this case rotating it fore and aft does NOT spin the image in the VF - it's always upright!  Also, no detents.  And there's a lock ring instead of a little lever - turn it towards the S to lock it; the other way to allow it to rotate.  I thought it was weird that there are two slots in the mount, so it can be put on the camera one of two ways but if you think about it, it makes sense.  The standard way to mount it is with the red dot upward.  Then the image is always upright.  But if you were to spin it 180 degrees, then stand in front of the camera and look into it the image would be upside down!  (Well, strictly speaking, you are looking into it upside down compared to where it started.)  So if you absolutely have to operate the camera in that position, you could mount it with the red dot down, and be all set.

Just like the Kinoptik, the rear part can spin around 360 degrees for matching up with where you want to put your eye, and doing so does not change the orientation of the image through the finder.

It has the same little lock knob and diopter adjustment as the Kinoptik.  But the eyepiece shutter is opened and closed with a big skinny ring right behind the eyecup, and is not done automatically for you as you press your eye to it.

Some pictures:

.

Some more Kinoptic VF pictures: