Duncan Brown

Scanned some more docs. The 10th anniversary one is nearly identical to one of the other "Arri at work" ones I scanned, except for the hooplah about 10 years. My usual 600 dpi scans: http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/paperwork/arriflex_16sriie_brochure.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/paperwork/arriflex_16s_10th_anniversary_brochure.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/paperwork/arriflex_16_price_list_19630901.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/paperwork/arriflex_special_effects_mattes.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/paperwork/arriflex_angenieux_12_120_zoom.pdf The smaller 100dpi ones if you don't mind the loss in quality: http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/paperwork/arriflex_16sriie_brochure_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/paperwork/arriflex_16s_10th_anniversary_brochure_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/paperwork/arriflex_16_price_list_19630901_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/paperwork/arriflex_special_effects_mattes_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/arri/paperwork/arriflex_angenieux_12_120_zoom_100.pdf Duncan

I've scanned and posted at this site documentation for other camera brands, now I have some Canon stuff. I'll start off with this brochure and price list from when the original Scoopic 16 was released in 1968. I always scan stuff at 600 dpi just so there's never any problem zooming in and seeing even the tiniest details. http://backglass.org/duncan/16mm/misc/canon_scoopic_16_1968_brochure_and_price_list.pdf ...but some people don't need all that detail and just want to download and see the dang file, without all the megabytes. So I also always put up a 100dpi version too: http://backglass.org/duncan/16mm/misc/canon_scoopic_16_1968_brochure_and_price_list_100.pdf Duncan

I've scanned and posted at this site documentation for other camera brands, now I have some Bolex stuff. I'll start off with this crazy magazine conversion from SOS the "Tel-Amatic Bolex Conversion" I always scan stuff at 600 dpi just so there's never any problem zooming in and seeing even the tiniest details. http://backglass.org/duncan/16mm/misc/sos_tel_amatic_bolex_conversion_flyer.pdf ...but some people don't need all that detail and just want to download and see the dang file, without all the megabytes. So I also always put up a 100dpi version too: http://backglass.org/duncan/16mm/misc/sos_tel_amatic_bolex_conversion_flyer_100.pdf I have more Bolex stuff I'll get around to scanning someday. Duncan

This one took more work to edit and assemble so it's a straggler: http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_the_new_eclair_npr_brochure.pdf and the 100 dpi version: http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_the_new_eclair_npr_brochure_100.pdf There's already a copy of this up on the eclair wordpress site, but it's missing some pages (the cover!), the ones on colored paper aren't scanned in color etc. This version is more faithful to the actual brochure. Duncan

Oops, I overlooked one - the 1969 pricelist for the CM-3: http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_cameflex_cm3_price_list_19691201.pdf and the 100 dpi version http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_cameflex_cm3_price_list_19691201_100.pdf Duncan

Scanned some more cool old Eclair literature. I'll also send them to the Eclair website/ http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_us_preliminary_info_and_price_list_19631201.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_early_us_brochure_and_dealers.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_early_us_ads.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_am_cin_article_with_ad_196506.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_am_cin_article_196607.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_us_price_list_19660801.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_us_price_list_19690601.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_angenieux_us_price_list_19691101.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_cameflex_cm3_and_blimp.pdf As always, the crummy 100dpi scans if you don't wan o suffer the downloads of the 600 dpi ones above. http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_us_preliminary_info_and_price_list_19631201_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_early_us_brochure_and_dealers_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_early_us_ads_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_am_cin_article_with_ad_196506_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_am_cin_article_196607_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_us_price_list_19660801_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_npr_us_price_list_19690601_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_angenieux_us_price_list_19691101_100.pdf http://backglass.org/duncan/eclair/eclair_cameflex_cm3_and_blimp_100.pdf Duncan

Finally got a chance to kludge together a 12V cable for this. (I don't want to hack up an original 16S cable, so I made an XLR-to-far-end-of-16S-cable adapter of sorts and gaffer-taped it all together...) To nobody's surprise, it runs dead on at 24fps when on 12V too. I was totally OK running this camera at its original voltage but I have a couple of generic camera belts I need to recell and if I could just make them both 12V and run all my cameras from them I could see the appeal of going 12V. (In addition to this crystal sync motor, I have the later Arri A16HME variable speed motor, which is supposedly fine to run at 12V or 8V). Duncan

I've done still film photography since I was a wee lad (which was a very long time ago!) I may even be pretty good at it. This exposure thing is a whole different ball of wax when you can't change the shutter speed, only the aperture and the light. And you have to look through the lens stopped-down. Practice, practice, practice. Duncan

Yes, as Mark said, you were always going to need the real meter anyway, for your initial setting. If the built in meter is broken, I wouldn't spend any time or money getting it fixed, just meter again if the light changes. Duncan

If you only ever get the one LED lit it does sound like your meter is broken, but just because this is a good spot to mention it, let me explain what that meter really is.... It's basically an "offset from ideal exposure meter" First you use an ACTUAL light meter to set your camera properly for the scene it's looking at. Then you spin the dial on the ACL to normalize the meter to that amount of light coming through the lens, by getting only the center LED lit. Then, if while shooting the camera with those settings, the light changes, additional LEDs will come on in the viewfinder to let you know that. Then you change your lens aperture until only the center LED is lit again, and you know you have changed the lens to match the changed light. So all of this assumes the lens is set so that the amount of light coming in is more or less in the range of something that would be proper for the camera. If you don't start off with the the camera set right for the light based on another meter, you might be fighting a losing battle to even get just the center LED lit, much less the fact that it won't be giving you information you can use. Duncan

Yeah, I've found that playing with the ambient light vs the app's light can help get a better image sometimes. It does have trouble focusing close-up, and close-up is often how you're using it. But hey, the price is right compared to a professional strobe light tach tool! Duncan

Not the most scintillating video I've ever watched, but hey, one of these motors in action! (And if you're using modern audio recording devices, easy perfect sync!) Duncan

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/video-tachometer/id1492583587

Oh, and according to my iPhone tachometer app it's running dead-on at 24fps with an 8.4-ish VDC power source (7 1.2V NiMh batteries). I've not had a 12V motor for my 16S before so I'll have to rig up a cord for that before I can test it with 12V but I'm guessing that will be a perfect 24fps too. Duncan

OK the analog scope does a better job of showing what's really going on - these are successively shorter timebases so you can see there's actually a higher level pattern to the noise that comes and goes. The underlying frequency of the base wave doesn't really change from about 7KHz but the cheap digital scope has a really hard time deciding what it is because of all the noise. I'm actually starting to wonder if this is an INPUT that we're just seeing internal motor noise on because nothing is plugged into it! Duncan

See attached. Sometimes it's a perfectly clean signal, sometimes it's got more noise than signal, this is kind of in between at the moment I captured it. I'm wondering if any of this is artifacting from the low-budget digital scope. I might have to drag out the old Tektronix analog scope and see if I see anything different. Duncan

I could only find a stereo version of that plug, which often but not always works in a mono jack. Clicked in OK, and I got a signal on the center pin with the motor running. But the signal makes no sense. It's a triangle wave, noisy, and not perfectly stable...and it's a little over 7KHz (I was expecting 1KHz). So yeah, I'd love to know what that jack is supposed to be for. I suppose it's always possible that someone stopped using this motor because the Pilotone signal was no longer good, or that nobody ever noticed it was bad because nobody used it with Pilotone...but it's also possible my theory about what it was is all wet, Duncan

It definitely looks bigger than 3.5mm - by eye I'd say it's "that next bigger size up that everything used to use, like microphones and things on stereo gear" but not as big a a phone plug. I tried to use some gear at work to peer down into it, just to make sure it IS a jack, and not, say, a collar leading to an adjusting screw, but its location and depth make it very hard to see into its interior. I'm hoping if I get a plug to "click" into it then I'll know it's really a jack. Duncan

I'm still trying to figure out what kind of jack it is (I moved a year ago and can't find my box of various plugs...yet...) so I can hook up a scope. I believe the actual Pilotone signal would only need two wires, though a lot of camera "Pilotone" connections had more, for also passing through audio from some near-camera source, etc. It's just a sine wave at some known frequency. I'm about as far from a Pilotone expert as one can be, having never actually used it, but as I understand it unless you have a crystal-controlled motor on the tape deck too (and maybe not even then, if you're dealing with wow and flutter), you're still going to need a signal from the camera that's a known frequency to match your recorded audio up against. So even with a crystal motor like this, there could still be situations where you'd use an output signal from it to match up audio. Duncan

Here's where the jack ends up when the motor is mounted. Duncan

No, it definitely doesn't plug into anything on the camera. It's situated such that a cable could plug into it while the motor is mounted to the camera. (I'll have to add a picture showing this.) I really can't think of anything besides a Pilotone signal that you'd want from inside a motor. As to the other question, yes, inside an Arri 16S there is a switch leaf with a contact on it, that the similar button contact on any of the motors for it hits against as the motor is slid in, with enough pressure to make solid electrical contact. There is a nub on all the motors that mates with a little notch in the motor opening, to make sure the motor is locked in the correct orientation to make the contacts line up. Clever, elegant design, really. Duncan

Here are some pictures of a motor I picked up a while back and am just now looking into. It's a Model 504 motor by "Georg Jensen Denmark" that's spec'd to 24fps. I was going to ask if anyone knew anything about it because I could never find anything via google (except that a guy named Georg Jensen makes lots of sterling silver items!), but since I last looked, Pacific Rim Camera has put up a very helpful brochure: https://www.pacificrimcamera.com/rl/01130/01130.pdf That answers almost all my questions - it's crystal sync, it can run on either 8v or 12V, nice motor! It seems to work, I'll have to do some tests on 8V and 12V and see if it's really synced at 24fps in both cases. I do wonder what the little jack is on the camera side of it - Pilotone signal maybe? I'll have to look at that with a scope. Duncan

This seemed like as good a place as any to post some pictures of my other, S16-modified-after-the-fact NPR. The cases and equipment came with Optical Electro House stickers all over the place so I'm going to assume they did this mod back in the day. But I was trading pictures with someone who has a freshly-Les-Bosher-S16-modified NPR and the c mount fix looked 100% identical, so that's what made me think to post these pictures here. It seems to be a standard way to do the mod. The C-mount is remade with the hole offset, then put back in the same hole in the turret plate, such that the offset is in the correct location for a S16 widened gate. The Cameflex mount was pulled out and remounted in an offset position - maybe by widening the hole in the turret, maybe by narrowing down the outside diameter of the mount, maybe both, hard to tell without disassembling it all. But it's definitely been moved the appropriate amount to the correct side. The gate aperture was widened, but the relieved portions that are scooped out of the gate plate were NOT made wider, so the image area of the single perf film will in fact ride on a bit more metal that in a proper S16 camera. But it's very smooth, polished metal, so... Finally, the focusing screen was painted with something on the outside in such a way as to create a wider-looking translucent area for framing. Does it really match the image area of the film? Looks too wide to me. Is the cross centered to the new center of the widened gate? I don't see how. It looks more like a helpful guide than a proper critical framing screen. But I did all those lens and framing tests with this camera too, so whenever I finish up that 400' roll of film and get it processed, maybe I'll be able to answer those questions better. Duncan

Yes, they definitely machined away the "pocket" between the rails, to make the entire left side rail narrower to match the wider gate, plus painted the new wider pocket all flat black. So bonus points for going to that trouble - I've seen some conversions where they don't even bother. But it looks like a really dreadful machine-shop job, at least in terms of the mirror-smooth film-friendly surfaces the camera started with. He may not know anything about the conversion, but he should be able to answer some questions about the camera sitting in front of him, if he could be convinced - lens recentering, mirror-widening, markings on the ground glass, etc. Duncan

Tell us more! (Pictures?) Lens recentered? Mirror bigger? Duncan