Marian Gabriel Weber

Hi I‘m interested in your kit. Is everything in good and working condition? Any known problems? Thanks! Best regards Marian

Hey everyone! I promised to come back to you with updates about my Moviecam SL. The last few months the camera was with a technician here in Zurich who used to work at Panavision LA some 30 years ago repairing cameras. He has retired but offered to take a look. Unfortunately he was not able to find out what exactly the problem was with the blinking "12 V" error on my SL. Since I wanted to start shooting with this camera almost seven months ago – and couldn't – I'm reluctantly selling my SL now since I don't know how to fix it and have no clue what to do otherwise. In case you guys are interested, here's the camera on Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/304170449859?hash=item46d1f8bbc3:g:4cEAAOSwpW1hWJdZ Maybe some of you have some more resources than I to get this camera fixed or use it for spare parts. Thanks again for all your help! Best Marian

Sure! I'll let you know! Ok, good to know! I had a look on ebay, but there's no SL at the moment unfortunately. But I'll keep watching.

Thanks a lot to all you guys for your inputs, thoughts and suggestions! @Satsuki Murashige Thank you so much for taking the time to measure out the pleasure plate and sending the images. That's really helpful! Very appreciated!! @Dom Jaeger You mean, the height of the raised ridges are the most critical measurements? Only the ridges are directly touching the film, right? Is there are an obvious technical reason, why there are these ridges? I've seen pressure plates with (Moviecam, Krasnagorsk 3, Arricam?) and without ridges (Arriflex SR3 inside the magazine). Maybe to allow dust particles that collect to fall down between the ridges? After lots of phoning and talking to rental houses here in Switzerland and Germany I could luckily find an ex-engineer here in Switzerland who used to service film cameras like Arricams and Moviecams. I have made an appointment with him next week and I'll bring him the camera so he can have a look. I'll hope to have more info then and I'll keep you up to date!

@Satsuki Murashige Yes, indeed! Quite a bummer to say the least.... I was also already thinking about letting a machinist make me a new one. I think it might be actually possible to 3d print one out of aluminum or steel and then get it polished. Oh, if you could send me the measurements and some images of the pressure plate that would be more than fantastic!! Thank you so much! I'll definitely send you some delicious swiss chocolate in return ?

Hmm, and on top of that the pressure plate is missing: I contacted the seller yesterday regarding the missing pressure plate and his reply was: "This is an excellent camera. You just need to put on fresh Kodak film stock and you'll get beautiful images."? Oh well, it seems I have been really conned with this one...?

@Raymond Zananiri Yes, indeed. It was also very hard to believe for me. The whole crazy story with the cable actually went like this: The seller sent me the camera with no cable at all. I contacted them and a couple of days later I had the 3pin to 4pin XLR which actually had a label ("Moviecam") on it. I plug in the cable and battery...nothing happens, the camera doesn't switch on at all. I opened up the camera and found out that on the XLR connector from inside the camera the 4 pin XLR had a black wire on pin 1 and a red wire on pin 2, whereas the 4pin XLR cable connector was connected on pin 1 and 4 (!), but these two wires were not colour-coded at all, they were just black. I moved the wire from pin 4 to pin 2 on the camera cable, plugged the cable in again and the fuse popped... With the remote help of Carmine (an engineer from Rome) we checked continuity on the camera cable and we found out that the cables were twisted: pin 1 on the battery and went to pin 4 (now pin 2, because I had moved it) on the camera side and pin 2 (camera side) went to pin 1 on the camera side = reversed polarity, that's why the fuse popped. I was told that Panavision cables had their pins twisted, but since I moved one of the wires it created a reversed polarity situation. Then I swapped the pins and then (for the first time) the camera switched on, but, after a split second, always goes to the flashing "12V" led, no motor running, nothing... @Satsuki Murashige Ok, good to know! Yes, it's interesting to find out, that every Moviecam that I come across seems to have a different wiring... ? Yes, I will try to find a technician. I hope I'll find one here in Switzerland because the two remaining rental houses don't have any film cameras at all anymore?

@Raymond Zananiri Ah, ok. Thanks! I will get a lab power supply and then I can double check. According to the Compact manual, the 12 V is flashing for about 4 secs when a defective video accessory is connected. Since it flashes permanently, there's something else going on... I also moved the black wire to the middle pin on the 3 pin connector inside the camera, but still no luck. It's still flashing "12 V"...

@Raymond Zananiri Yes, the battery is supplying around 27V.

@Satsuki Murashige No, unfortunately I have just the VCLX battery right now, but I was thinking about getting an adjustable lab power supply to nail exactly 24V and see if that solves anything... Thanks a lot for the picture of the black plastic 3-pin connector! Hmm, this is getting really interesting now, because on your connector there's the red wire on the right pin and the black wire in the middle pin. Mine looks like this: There's no cable on the middle pin, just left and right... I think this might cause the problem... I think I'll move the black cable to the middle pin. I hope I don't fry the board... but seeing that you have it like this makes me confident that this should work. After all I'm running out of options what could cause the problem.

@Satsuki Murashige Thanks!? Yes, really happy about the setup @Raymond Zananiri I removed the Compact viewfinder system and reinstalled the SL viewfinder but no luck... I also removed the movielite component but still the same unfortunately ?

I had separately bought and installed the compact viewfinder system on the SL in order to use the anamorphic eyepiece and anamorphic lenses on the SL. Maybe that's why it's showing me something from the compact system? I wonder if the viewfinder system from the compact might cause problems? I'll remount the SL viewfinder block and see if that changes something...

Even though I found nothing in the SL manual, the compact manual actually mentions the flashing "12 V" led: But in my case it's not only flashing for 4 seconds but constantly...

@Raymond Zananiri Yes, initially when I had tried with the wrong Panavision cable the fuse popped out. I then rewired the cable and put in a new fuse. Now the battery powers up but shows the flashing "12 V". I checked the battery with the multimeter and it is supplying power at around 27V.

Btw, the syncobox attached to the accessory plug of the camera seems to work just fine...

@Satsuki Murashige Dear Satsuki: Thank you so much for your kind words! It's really a pleasure and very exciting to be joining the Moviecam club and looking forward to shoot on film soon! ? @Raymond ZananiriThank you for your input! With the very generous (remote) help of Carmine (a great engineer in Rome) we managed to figure out that the seller had provided me with a Panavision cable where pin 1 and 4 are swapped which is unusable with the Moviecam. So I re-soldered and re-swapped the pins and soldered them to pin 1 (-) and 2 (+) and... the camera switched on! ? Uff... However, the initial excitement was short-lived because immediately the fps led started flashing "12 V". For a split second it shows a "0" then it changes over to a flashing "12V". Here's a little video that shows you what happens when I turn on the battery: https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZOjghXZFz6BGm4Qtq0hbyb79afvIH142sJk I checked my Anton Bauer cine vclx Battery and it provides around 27V. I read the SL manual again back and forth several times but theres no mentioning of the flashing "12V" led on the fps led. Do you guys know what that means or what the problem could be? Thanks in advance for any input!

Hello everyone I'm a new owner of a beautiful Moviecam SL. Yesterday I plugged the camera cable that was shipped with it (4pin xlr on the camera end to 3 pin xlr battery end) into an Anton Bauer vclx cine battery (28V, 3 pin xlr) and... nothing happend! No lights, fps indicators etc. I checked the fuse and it was alright. I took the camera cable apart and found out that on the battery side (xlr 3 pin male) pin 1 is (-) and pin 2 is (+) whereas on the camera side (4 pin xlr female) pin 1 is (-) and pin 4 is (+). This wiring matches the wiring depicted in the SL manual on page 137: http://www.davidelkins.com/cam/manuals/manual_files/moviecam/sl_manual.pdf I have read here on the forum, that sometimes the wiring has been changed by rental houses: I opened the SL up and had a look at the wiring inside. I discovered that apparently pin 1 was ground (-) and pin 2 was power (+): I then rewired/resoldered the xlr 4 pin female end of the camera cable and moved the (+) from pin 4 to pin 2. I then plugged the camera cable in the vclx cine battery (28 V) and into the camera and the fuse popped... I'm kind of clueless why this happened now or what might be the problem. Satsuki Murashige mentioned on another thread: that Moviecams wouldn't tolerate voltages much higher than 24V so I assume this might be the problem? Do I also need a voltage regulator in conjunction with the Anton Bauer vclx cine battery in order to make this work or is the problem somewhere else? Thank you very much in advance for any helpful hint! Best regards Marian