Nick Mulder

mag and motor ? score! Love these GM cameras - keep up the good work ;)

Although I have been sent a PM by Craig asking me to 'don't reply to any more of my posts. Seriously' - I dont quite understand what I am meant to do here ... I've been discussing something in a thread and then he comes along mentioning something I dont understand and try to clarify/correct and then I'm kindly asked to refrain ? You're not the first - I take it as a compliment - anyway... There is no glue involved - in an original (reg16) RX4, RX5, SB, SBM, EBM, EL the finder mask is held on to the prism by two screws and the ground glass has been etched (or how ever they make GG in Switzerland) directly on top of the prism - in a conversion there is never a need for the ground glass "to be removed and replaced correctly" - that would be one and the same as removing the prism... In both my conversions I did however have to move the prism slightly more to the 'left' (the film compartment side) which is achieved by loosening a further two (or three, cant remember) screws behind the adjustable shutter in a wind up or behind the light meter in an EL - the holes are slotted already and can be moved up and L-R so the adjustment is very easy - no 'removal and replacement' at all. What is replaced is the little lens that sits atop the finder mask which actually is held on by glue to a regular16 mask which in turn is held onto the GG/prism by two screws it is here that it is loosened to be moved about - Now, if you are Bolex, which is to say, smart, you dont rip the lens off and file out the reg16mask to super16, you take it off and put it in your spare parts box and replace the mask with a new one - no glue! just two screws ... I am not Bolex, but I have access to a factory converted EL so I had a gander at it, figured out how they did it, designed my own and had it laser cut by a gobo manufacturer to similar spec. I made sure in my design that the screw holes were large enough for there to be a little slop for easy adjustment. I can now sandwich whatever markings I want between the hard mask and the GG - i.e. adjustable markings, mostly I just leave it open at the full super16 frame with no distractions, but a grid may come in handy one day. I may also make a behind the prism filter holder/mask combo so I can use heavy gel filters without them also coming through the finder, although I'm still not too sure if it will best optically... The local bona-fide Bolex technician (trained in Switzerland) down the road (thanks for the bag of kiwifruit!) has seen both my conversions and has semi-seriously joked "do you want to buy a business?", on a more serious note he has mentioned that if an EL came in he might send it to me as his area of expertise is in the wind ups... My conversions have been used on prime-time nationally broadcast TV advertisements - I'm trying rather pompously to say that although I am a backyard operator, both of my conversions have come out smelling a lot finer that what we are discussing here. as for standardization it would go something like this: make the gate super16 dimensions (look them up in your ASC manual or otherwise) - centre the lens for this new aperture, but also make some kind of re16/super16 lens centre changeover registration marks (which on the factory Bolex conversions there is only one mark, which can be 'pivoted' around, i.e. more often than not the lens centre is actually OFF) - make the finder represent the new shooting ratio and correct positioning for this ratio, perhaps some kind of marking showing the reg16 frame also - make sure the film transport no longer touches the new exposed area - the camera should operate the same as pre-conversion in all other aspects - Nick

We'll I've never touched one, just seen pictures of it on the net - so yes and no, I saw some sort of controller that I assumed could control the shutter speed in both continuous and stop start fashion (duty cycle/'shutter angle') and what looked like a stepper motor so thought I'd give it a crack for shits and giggles - it took me about a day to build the mount and program a uP with an LCD, it ran using discrete frequency units rather than period as an input which was annoying and a problem to be solved but I stopped because I had other things to do and it was scaring the cat. I imagine yours took a bit longer than a day ... Thanks, looking forward to those pointers! Nick

I built a version of the revolution system and jeez Reeves did it shake the camera ! I mounted it with a heap of dampening material which stopped it being so noisy but the drive train sounded ill ... BLLLLAARRGH - BLLLLAARRGH - GIBBOOOBBBB - BLLLLAARRGH etc... :lol: There were certain speeds where the speed of the step equated to the same rotational speed so it quietened down considerably, I had two of these speeds - one for wave (+ the other stepping method whose name escapes me) and one for micro (it wasn't simply a factor of two for some reason) so by either running in 8:1 or 1:1, I had four speeds - could be ok for a bolex based DSLR/telecine maybe Anyhoo, I canned further work on it and once I settle down with all my work and build my CNC drives I may convert one to run a Bolex ...

eh??? Glue ? There aint no glue that needs to be involved installing a super16 ground glass masking. Anyone can check if the masking is correct by simply shooting a flashlight (LED is perfect) down the finder - it will light up the GG in reverse which will reveal the masking and by opening the shutter you can now at least eye the gate and maskings orientation with each other and screw it down once its ready... Due to the fact the gate aperture is usually larger than the mask this could be enough in lieu of a proper factory rigged alignment.

I've made a rig like this for interests sake and it worked (Bolex J, stepper motor, LED's behind some diff etc...) but what stopped me from making a 'production' version was the question: How many snaps do you get out of your DSLR before it goes kaput ?

'sepia toner' huh ? - you might find its just re-packaged/branded Sodium Sulphide... Stinky chem, but lovely images. The cool thing about reversal is that you can watch them develop before your eyes in the 2nd soup. As for a starting point in the first developer. No idea with that combo, a search for tri-x at http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.html yields no hits for D97 - D97 isnt even listed there, but it could still be helpful ... Someone may know the particular characteristics of that developer and cross reference a similar developer at the site - (anyone?) - aside from that, you need to test... shoot 3' or so of the same scene (go for a scene rich in tonality that you can replicate/compare with afterwards) - then develop 1' sections of it for I dunno, um 2mins, 4mins, 8mins - or 3min, 6min, 9 min - 4/6/8 maybe - take a educated guess here ... You'll see a transition from good to worse somewhere. For 20 year old Plus-X / D19 at 18deg I go for 6minutes and in the summer when the water is more often 20deg I go for 5 minutes - its the same developer I use to tray develop my large format 8x10 negs for platinum printing, with a 200ASA film I use it for 23 minutes/20deg - so you can see the range of different times for different films huh !

They work like a ring light - no shadows cast ... Exposed so they are easily replaced when they blow.

Not the one you are looking for but check out the opening credits of 'Dexter' for more of the same action

I forget which way around it goes but a dummy check is to take a reading at 0.0 then at + or - 0.3 and see the difference in exposure - the correct 'direction' would indicate you need a larger aperture

Sorry Ralph ! The notification of your question must of got lost in the pile of facebook crap I get (recent acquisition I may or not continue with) - Tobin Motor, I've used it twice... the prism loss stays the same, but I think the TCS runs on its own duty cycle which is to say the motor isn't running constantly... it stops and starts creating its own virtual shutter angle - email Clive to get the full details ;) Mark: shutter angle 135deg - yip correct ISO 1/3 slower - no not for correct exposure - I dont know your meter but you need to find the compensation function, look up 'filter factors' in the index of the manual and you'll probably find the correct page ... The 0.3 isn't a third of a stop, its a filter factor which uses Log base2 - you have to think mathemagically to get your head around it, and in the meantime I've forgotten the exact potion to get it going on the calc here That being said, rating your stock lower like that (above and beyond what is required to compensate for the prism) isn't a bad idea as IIRC you'll punch up the shadow detail a little (but not pull developing btw) ... Go Team Bolex!

Thats the face I'm talking about ... The beer and cigarette dont help either ;)

Take a photo of yourself really shooting/composing through a super8 and try to keep a smile like she has on her face ... :rolleyes:

well - yeh - its bad ... the pressure plate applies pressure and if tape is going through there its just like someone putting their jammy finger on it to 'stick it down' so depending on which side the stickiness is it will pull on the pressure plate or stick to the gate, either way the claw could be ripping sprockets - there is no reason they should be using tape unless they have fingers to large to get into a day light load - less than %1 of the population I'm guessing, and in which case they still shouldn't do it... I'm not sure what is going wrong without seeing it - a great diagnostic tool would be a dummy load of leader or ruined film you could load and run through while watching - I dont think using shorter winds will solve it and you'll just be restricted to shorter takes anyway, that being said you've got the camera in front of you and if your intuition says do that ... then do it - the running it to 95' in the meantime 'solution' sounds good - its not a show stopper and if it works until you can get it looked at then good on ya ;) If you are going through New Zealand in your travels pop over for a beer and we'll load up some dummy film - there is also a proper Bolex trained tech here (lucky buggers we are)

Well, how bout instead of the hunch you got when eating your Cereal-o's this morning simply look up the frame rate of NTSC and plug in the answer in place of the PAL 25 and then you'll have it ... I think you'll find the effect isn't very noticeable with the speed difference you get - a subtle point of difference from the rest though (nice).... have fun ;)

rotate the viewer...

How bout you email them and get an exact estimate (and then post it here for others who aren't as resourceful as yourself) - while you're at it you could suggest to them that they update their website with the price ;)

My cine work so far as been mostly being the techy guy testing out some camera mod - time-lapse/strobe shutter sync/weirdo shutter-angle-this-and-that - I'm lucky to have a friend in the industry (director/DP) willing to chuck me in the midst ... Because of this It's not often I get a chance to light anything but lately I've been getting into 8x10 (large format) stills and have access to a Lowell Tota lighting kit - three 800W open face lamps and I thought I'd give it a crack Any impressions welcome ;) ------------------ ------------ pix will link through to a larger version ... The B+W are printed on standard B+W paper the 'sepia' toned ones aren't sepia at all but hand coated palladium prints which have a 11~13 stop range of which the negs were developed to suit - by comparison you can see here the difference in printing from one medium to the next: ------

A perfect camera will jam up if you put in a bent/pinched daylight take-up spool ... Without seeing it thats my guess. As for your film, take a look at how the daylight spool works - it uses the film itself to mask the rest of the film with a small tolerance so as to let the film actually spool (which is why sitting on it will bend it and make this tolerance zero or negative ie. catch the film and cause a jack-in-the-box party streamer effect when you open the camera) - the daylight load spool needs a few good turns of film preferably with some 'overlap' to make it light tight, or the edges will fog from direct light and a bit of internal reflection on the film base - which if you are shooting reg16 isn't so much of an issue, with super16 which wasn't a spec in mind with the original designers you will have issues with edge fog... So I cant answer your question, but hopefully have given you some clues as how to ascertain the answer for yourself - good luck!

www.bolex.ch - the prices are all there ... As for 2nd hand the prices are as changeable as the wind, think $1000+ easy - searching for completed listings on ebay might give you an idea ...

Some other chemical suppliers friendly to the photographer: Bostick & Sullivan or Artcraft Chemicals where you can buy 15Kg of Silver Nitrate for $4900 and "Rhodium (III) Chloride" for $159 per Gram :o

eh ?? I'll take a guess that you didn't like my manner ? You'd get used to me, and understand my personality if say we were working together for a while ;) ... above all else though, I do hope it was helpful and made sense to you...

goodo ! - have fun, it certainly works ... and once you get your process down the results can be excellent. Some info here: http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/43233-m...ppreciated.html

I use D19 ... its an 'aerial developer' - made for developing aerial photography where apparently they needed a hi-con developer to cut through all the mist etc... - it also keeps the base fog low so you'll get good blacks in the reversal ... I bought some from freestyle initially but now mix my own with added Sodium Thiocyanate (try your local chem supplier) as a silver solvent ... If you want I can supply you the formula as the chems aren't too hard to come by usually. Its great for me as that it also is a good B+W still developer for platinum printing which requires hi-con negs and it also works well as a B+W paper developer - triple usage :D a little dependent on it you might say ... Go Team Home-Soup !

no ... but good try You are correct in your 'fluxy' description of light being spread out more and therefore requiring more power, when you focus your trusty AA maglight you see happening before your eyes - wide, not so bright - spot, brighter ... righto... The lens coverage is basically the same as the wideness of a maglight - thing is, its already set ... and in all cases except the Switar 10mm, 12.5-100 and POE (to a lesser extent) the coverage or 'wideness' is already good enough for the super16 frame... Lucky huh! - it really is a case of the lenses having more spec/leeway than they required in the first case for reg16 - some might say that even though the lenses give adequate coverage/even illumination at super16 the edge areas have much poorer optical qualities, color aberration, blah-ness, zimzam, floobum etc... Summing up> A super16 mod in effect has nothing to do with your lenses (unless you've sent your 12.5-100 off to Switzerland for modification) so yes your physics are correct but the reality aint quite as exciting ;) - it should, but thats a total redesign of the lens - you'd end up with something like this: In terms of photons, yes the prism diverts more - but the extra amount is spread over a correspondingly larger area so it balances out... (we wont mention the fact that the portal where the periscope prism is isn't quite large enough and soaks up a little of the image, which at that stage of the 'beam' is still relatively incoherent so nobody notices - shhhh! )