Mark Dunn

Polavision suffered from being strikingly expensive- two or three times the price of Super-8, IIRC- and being uneditable and unprojectable, despite having Super-8 dimensions. The film had to stay in the cartridge so it could be back-projected in the special viewer. It was much too dense to project and never had a chance against the beginnings of home video. A high-speed Polavision camera, with b/w film, had a slightly longer life as an on- set check for slow-motion 16 or 35mm. It featured in Samuelson's catalogue until the late 80's.

The viewfinder optics are in front of the gate so you don't see through it. No camera does. That's why the gate is always checked after every shot in the professional world. You wouldn't do it with Super-8- you'd have to remove the cartridge- but it's worth checking when you change. Cleaning off emulsion residue is worthwhile too- you can check the effect by adjusting the projector racking so you can see the frameline.

A 180 deg. shutter is open for half the time, so at 18fps, it's 1/36 second and so on. For different shutter angles the shutter speed would be 1/ (F(360/A)) sec., where F is the framing rate and A the shutter angle.

That sounds about right. There's the old still photographer's reciprocal rule- f/16 in bright sunlight for a shutter speed which is the reciprocal of the ASA rating. The OP has found a very old data sheet.

Unfortunately your table is far, far too much of a generalisation., and an inaccurate one at that. You can't possibly use the same exposure over a two-stop range with colour reversal. The bright sunlight setting for K25 (which is no longer made, btw) is more like f/16 at 18fps, shutter speed being about 1/30 sec. In the absence of a decent automatic exposure, there's no substitute for an accurate hand meter.

Tiffen 6x6 inch (Not 6.6 square) filter set 85, 85N3, 85N6, glass, in wooden slotted case. Optically perfect, some edge marking, smaller than a fingernail, no scratches or surface marks at all. Open to offers.

Locams do produce much sharper images but can't really be described as handy. You'd need to make sure you got the proper leads with it. Some models have a reflex prism for line-up: it drops out of the light path when the camera starts IIRC. This one http://cgi.ebay.com/REDLAKE-Locam-II-16mm-...8QQcmdZViewItem is a bit pricey- no leads or battery. That ebay one has been listed a few times recently. The Locam 3 is a better bet. Oh, and they're a serious pain to load, with double-perf film only,IIRC, on daylight spools.

Instrumentation cameras aren't very handy at all; no finder, battery pack (if any) heavier than a car's, heavily built. This one has a rotating prism, not an intermittent movement, so the resolution is a good deal lower than conventional 16mm. Since most high-speed cine has now gone to video, and VNF is no longer made, there are plenty of these about. It probably cost upwards of £10,000 new in the 80s.

Perhaps it HAS when he's finished with it.

Why not measure it? Take a paper rubbing and you wouldn't have to touch it with a ruler.

If it has a speed switch it's 18 and 24, and the slow motion will be 36fps. I don't know about 100 and 200, it should meter for 40ISO (25 in daylight) and Ektachrome 160 (100 in daylight, or 160 for the type G without the 85 filter). If the speed selector has more than one feeler it will read other speeds- the measurements are on wiki.

The b/w C-41 process films don't have the orange mask.

The reason everyone thought the b/w was shot on colour neg, I think, was the difference between the two scenes. I'd have said the office scene was shot in colour, the toilet scene in b/w. What really happened? Either way, having the prologue in b/w was a stylistic error, IMHO. And presumably the DI helped confuse everyone, as presumably it was meant to do- to iron out the differences. I hope I'd be able to tell a real b/w print, even if I can't recognise a DI.

So- if the prints were b/w, he must have had a DI, because b/w print stock isn't panchromatic, right? Or can you have a b/w panchromatic IN?

For What it's Worth. Pour ce qu'il vaut? A reply which the poster doesn't think is very useful.

The hype certainly implied it was all HD. Simon King was using some jerry-built Heath Robinson high- speed rig. I couldn't help thinking that a Locam at 500pps would have done the job. At £200 a pop, though.

Hopefully it's the camera that's breaking down, not you. Lens elements are cemented together with canada balsam, a glue which can go bad due to damp. But I'd say it's worth a test. Perhaps you can live with it. After all, it won't be deteriorating any further, because you'll be looking after it.

You could shoot some in a stills camera and process C41 to see if it was at all viable. But tell the lab because they might not like the remjet. 20-odd years ago there was a fad for doing this in the UK- shooting '47 without a filter and correcting in printing. It didn't last though.

How do you pay? Bank transfer is expensive from the UK and they don't seem to take credit cards. Notes? Oh, yes, a dollar doesn't buy a euro any more! More like $1.40.

It's not just the usual anti-reflection coating, is it? It's supposed to look rather rainbow-like. As long as it 's fairly uniform you may not have a problem.

I wonder why THAT is. A recent wildcat strike at the port of Calais meant that the M20 motorway between London and Dover had to be closed and turned into a lorry park. It's a long time since the unions ran this country. Sorry, failed quote. "We don't film a lot in France"- I wonder why THAT is.

Farmer's is really meant for thinning negatives, or just taking a bit of density off a paper print. Used concentrated and excessively it tends to stain yellow.

I know cine stock is supposed to be thinner than still stock- they haven't just taken the ordinary 64T and slit and perfed it for Super-8, have they?

16fps was the standard silent rate for 8mm. Super-8 increased it to 18.

I'm not sure that ND comes in anything other than .3ND, 1 stop, increments, but any combination of filter material adding up to one and one third stops ought to do. Like two layers of 85A.