Mark Dunn

Sound cartridges were discontinued ten years ago. Should you take a chance with old stock, processing is identical- the stripe isn't affected. This presupposes you use a sound camera and have a sound projector for replay. Sound cameras will take silent cartridges but not vice-versa, as the sound cartridge is deeper. Silent film can theoretically be striped after editing, but I don't think anyone offers the service anymore- environmental regulations apparently stopped manufacture of the stripe. In any event the sound quality was always rather poor, and editing rather difficult because of the 18-frame displacement between sound and picture. You might be better off forgetting about lip-sync and make up your track on computer and burn to CD, as I now do. Playing it in 'loose sync' with the picture works quite well- there's no more than a second or two of drift in a 10-minute film.

Think about '2001', then- no travelling mattes, all hand-drawn frame-by-frame, each element exposed separately on the same roll, no compositing.

I know it's not going to work often, but the late great English photographer Terry Donovan's terms of business were: 'When I get the wedge, you get the pictures'.. In other words, cash on delivery, at close of play, before you leave the set. Perhaps if a few more tried it, you might get somewhere. Naive, probably, but it's a thought.

From what I can work out it's a fairly high contrast red-sensitive film for photographing against a blue sky, which would record clear. Either that, or one lightens the sky with a blue filter. The shellburst, being a bright flash with white smoke, records black. One then makes whatever measurement is required direct from the neg. During my time at a weapons range we used colour reversal. But then in England, a blue sky was a bit of a luxury.

How do you think you get paid? Out of re-invested profits. If no-one makes a profit, no-one works. Haven't you worked that out? What do you think your fee is? It's the profit you make out of your skills, the surplus over what you'd make if you had none. You make less than an entrepreneur because you don't risk capital. Movies need capital because they're the only art form where the artist can't afford his own materials. I don't know how an American can be so wide of the mark and survive.

There shouldn't be a problem with a 100' spool as regards the film running or not, it just won't run very long. It might not turn over at all at very low speed. I'd have thought it would run OK off the domestic mains up to 2000pps at least, with the proviso that if you're in the 110V US it will draw a higher current. Assuming the photocell, if present, is working, I'd agree with the incorrectly set gear. Unless it's had it.

Google is your friend- first hit on 'antique suede 3 factor'. 2 stops. http://www.videodirect.com/Merchant2/merch...ode=FORM138CLEF

Being able to see the money on the screen. Think 'Barry Lyndon', not 'Eyes Wide Shut'.

I think I'm a bit too far from you, unless you took a holiday and brought your rushes with you! http://homepages.rya-online.net/markdunn/s...k/steenbeck.htm

The difference is that 12.5mm is a fair wide angle on 16 but quite long on Super-8. David is quite correct- a given focal length will have about half the angle of view on Super-8 compared with 16mm. So the Super-8 equivalent, in angle of view, of the 12.5-100 would be about 6-50, or a little longer, because Super-8 is a bit bigger than half the size of 16mm. I hope that's not too much information.

Films like Seven, Fight Club, Solaris, The Limey, Traffic, American Graffiti and Star Wars, stir the soul. The latest incarnations from these directors just leave me distracted and emotionally detached Tarkovsky died in 1986. He hasn't made a film lately. And yes, I was being deliberately obtuse about remakes.

The adapter would have to be huge to cover the front element so probably not. You focus both lenses to the subject distance.

What a shame. I can hardly complain, I haven't used film since. 2003. I always found Agfa- now gone as well- more suitable to the English light, but I used plenty of Kodachrome on a trip to CA in 1987. It was fascinating to be able to take it to a prolab and get it back the next day, it not being process-paid in the US. At least its demise won't kill 35mm. as Kodak virtually killed amateur Super-8.

Drum cameras ran up to a couple of million fps, although with stationary film and one lens per frame, the image being reflected off a mirror spun up to a similar speed with compressed air. The practical limit for moving film is really about 10,000 fps, or 20,000 using a half-height frame. 16mm. being less massive will go quicker. The limiting factor is really how fast you can run up to speed, and how much film is left when you've done it. Even at 5,000fps which is really the limit of my experience, it takes about as long to run a 400' spool as to say 'high speed cine is very expensive'.

I never noticed serious flicker from Blondes or other 1 or 2K sources, even at 10,000pps.

You will find daylight quite limiting at that framing rate. Remember your slowest shutter speed with the 1B is 1/5000sec. With 400ISO that's about f/4. Depending on your field of view I suggest you're going to need at least a couple of Blondes. FYI a number of 16mm rotary prism cameras go to 10,000pps- the Hitachi, the NAC E10, the Fastax 2- and the various Fastax 1s with no speed regulation will manage about 6000. With pin registration you're really limited to the Locam or the 1PL at 500. Of course you need double-perf film.

The stock wouldn't be compatible. Modern 70mm. stock prints from 65mm., so it has the perfs in the same position as the neg stock. The extra width is outside the perfs. The Grandeur neg and print stocks were both 70mm. with the perfs on the outer edge, in a different position from modern stock. No doubt Kodak would perforate you some if you ordered enough. The 4-perf pulldown wouldn't affect processing, which doesn't use the perfs, but you wouldn't be able to contact print on conventional stock or project. It's a great piece of kit, though.

The personal stuff is a real turn-off, btw. I just thought I'd mention it.

Ah, I remember that graph, but we always made up our own from a speed test. In my day the Goose had been superseded by the CD2 made by Bowens. Visual Instruentation must have taken on the support in the 90s- when we bought replacement Fastax 1s in 1990 at about £6500 each they were being made by Redlake, but the old grey WF3s from 1963 were mostly still going strong. Apparently the original was designed by Kodak on the 30s for Bell to study relay bounce. Bell took over the development themselves, then it passed via 3M to Wollensak.

My changing bag is of a woven nylon and can't shed at all. It might be time for a change if you're having a problem.

The MANUAL? Never seen one of those. That will help a lot but you still need to test-these cameras draw a lot of current so the power supply can affect the run-up and top speeds. I always had 30-60A but the manual will specify what's required. They don't always run exactly the same on diferrent supplies.

That would be (360/120)*6000= 1/18000 sec. So 1/3000 at 1000fps. You still have the problem of not knowing when the speed is correct; as I said, the WF3 is unregulated and will just keep on accelerating until it runs out of film. The best you can do is assume the speed-time curve is a straight line, which it will be, more or less, at the low voltage you need- and work out your notional 1000fps from that. I suggest testing voltages around 30-50V, although that is a complete guess. I've never run a WF3 that slow. As to plotting the speed/time curve, and approximating it to a straight line, you know that the roll is 30m long. Say it runs through in 5 sec. Plotting speed against time, the area under the line is your 30m, so the maximum speed is half the base times the height, or 12m/sec. You can then measure off the time at which the speed will be your required 1000fps, or just under 8m/sec. I don't have my graph paper handy so you'll have to do that yourself. Try voltages around 30-50V, although that's a complete guess. I never ran a WF3 that slow. It doesn't run well at low voltages; you really are in the dark working without timing marks. There's no reflex focusing, so you have to focus through a loop of film in the gate; we used a special focusing film with a surface like ground glass. Chips of film may need to be removed with tweezers; at high speeds we used a vacuum cleaner. Good luck. Good luck.

I used these cameras extensively in the synchro-ballistic mode some years ago but also did a lot of high-speed cine. If you would like to send me a private message I would be pleased to pass on some info. Presumably you know that the WF3 doesn't have a regulated speed. You have to be running at the correct speed when you trigger the event. That's why we always used a sequence timer to start the camera, allowing it time to run up to speed before triggering the event. The only way to calibrate the running speed is to run test films at a range of voltages and then plot speed against time- in addition to a power supply you also need to drive the timing lights which will place a mark on the edge of the film at a known frequency. If you don't run these tests you will be quite unable to achieve a predictable running speed at the time you trigger the event. Assuming all this is in order, you can work out the exposure time for your desired framing rate with the 4-sided prism from the shutter factor engraved on the prism. This will be either a ratio, such as 3, or an equivalent shutter angle, such as 120 degrees. If a ratio, multiply by your framing rate to get the reciprocal of the effective shutter speed; if an angle, divide into 360 to get the ratio. I don't recall the ratio for the WF3- I never used it in the framing mode- but it will be a number like 3 or 4. You can then work out if you have enough light with a meter but I have to say if you're expecting to run at anything over 1000fps, bright sunlight will barely be sufficient. We occasionally got away with it, but only with 400ISO stock. If you work it out at 1/3000 of 1/4000 sec that's about f/4.

I wonder how well the joke would travel. NTSC doesn't look awful on NTSC sets. It's just the transfer that used to be bad.

You don't have to worry about running pre-striped film any more. It was discontinued in 16mm. a long time ago. It's even gone in Super-8.