Mark Dunn

There are some fisheyes, 8 and 16mm, I think, but otherwise it's very limited under 24mm. M42 was a stills format. There's a wide-angle adapter for the Meteor zoom, but the quality won't be brilliant. That would take you down to about 12 https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/626828-REG/Cavision_LWA07X77_LWA07X77_0_7x_Wide_Angle.html

The second one is much sharper- is it possible the anamporphic was off vertical on the first one, or your focus was off (second shot is much closer). Your cat looks very concerned- had she just seen the first clip or something??

The smell could just be years of accumulated dust on the transformer getting warm, it's harmless. Rollers. You're right to clean them but the only touch the film at the edges, not in the image area. I would be more concerned that the metal gate was as clean as possible. You should be able to get it out by removing the screws. I put small pieces of soft fabric on mine where the film is in contact, but if the metal is clean and well polished that may not be necessary. I wouldn't worry about the foam. It's not a halogen bulb as I said, so doesn't get very hot.

I think that piece of foam is just to stop light from the bulb shining onto the screen so you can leave it. The bulb isn't a halogen type so it doesn't have to be completely clean. Halogen bulbs run much hotter.

You are probably unlikely to have damaged your health permanently with one whiff of smoke, but if you're concerned, go to see your doctor. Be careful with the acetone as well. If you are very careful you might also be able to scrape the burnt foam off with a craft knife. As you have isopropyl alcohol, try that first, but it may not be very effective. If it's packing foam, and it looks old- and wasn't put there by your seller- the machine may never have been used. If you can't fix it, the bulbs are not difficult to replace.

To me a cement splice is a step backwards. It overlaps the film so it effectively cuts two frames in half. It is very obvious on screen, especially at 18pps, and if you need to remake a splice, you lose two frames.

I doubt you can divine much from a Youtube video viewed on a (dare I guess uncalibrated?) computer monitor. Not only do I think it was beautifully shot by Jack Hildyard, the Academy did too. It's useful to a lighting cameraman (that's English for DP) to be able to analyse a shot in great detail, but it's as well to remember the feeling of a scene. Here, for example, the contrast between the beauty of the sunset and the abject horror of the POW's plight on the Burma Railway. Who said counterpoint was only for music. They don't make 'em like that anymore. Lean hardly did again; after Kwai, he got slower that Kubrick.

You can usually rack the flash out on a projector, but unfortunately it's inherent on the Super-8 CIR. Mine has it too and it's always been a bit annoying. I always assumed it was due to innacuracy in manufacture, but hearing that you have it as well, perhaps it's intended as it's preferable to having the ends overlap. If you do manage to get the ends closer together , the splice may jump on projection anyway because you've effectively shortened the perforation pitch. It will show on a scan because they're usually overscanned to include framelines and perfs, but you can persumably crop it in post. It's not much different from TV safe action and safe title (look them up)- you never put important action close to the edges of the frame. Some of the 16mm. splicers have an adjustable pin to eliminate the flash- it's meant for shrunken film- but it was never an option in S8. Incidentally mine cost the equivalent of about €10 in 1978- they sure got expensive!

I haven't loaded a Bolex since 1980 but I'm sure there must be plenty of H16 loading videos on Youtube. I see that the Rex5 has automatic threading- have you disengaged the loop formers after threading? Your software isn't translating "loop former" properly. I can't help with that. Do you have instructions in Italian? How's this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF81ynqejeo

You don't need to load daylight spools in the dark- just out of direct sunlight, preferably indoors, but it's not essential. Just keep the spool out of bright light. If the loops are touching the formers they're too big. Reduce them by one frame or whatever's necessary to get them clear.

That's a BNC as well, with side finder offset more than usual for some reason. Something to do with the 'Scope lens hood?

Yes. I've correlated stills with the call sheet on my last show and the fractions match- episode/scene number. "Take" is just that, the take number for the setup. ("Ipcress File". The scene with the Steenbeck was cut?)

Not a problem with modern electronics, I don't think, but it does need to run at 25 for non-US TV. I wonder if shooting 16mm at 24 outside the US was always a bit of a rarity. We did it at film school, but that's because we were pretending to make proper movies, and save 4% on stock and process.

As Duncan says the lens is expected to go inside a special blimp fitted on the outer larger bayonet mount on the camera- without it the noise level will be higher. But it works perfectly well without one. There's a single locking button on the left (door) side of the camera behind the blimp mount- fig 1 (12) in the manual here- just ignore the references to the lens blimp which we're assuming you don't have. https://archive.org/details/arriflex-16-bl-instruction-manual/page/n1/mode/2up?view=theater but it should click in automatically when mounting the lens- you should only have to press it to remove the lens.

Well, full-frame 35mm. neg should be pretty grain-free at 10x8 and acceptable at 16x20, certainly up to 200ISO, so that puts the half-frame limit at about 8x6. So not "awful" but it may explain why it never really caught on. As to the still/cine difference, David's post needs no elaboration. The effective shutter speed at 24pps is rarely above 1/50 second, so there is often considerable motion blur in every frame which the brain simply ignores, but seen as a still it would be very noticeable. 16mm. Kodachrome is something to be extremely envious of.

Isn't that the visual effect for the Imperial Star Destroyer hyperdrive efflux?

A good reason to use an off-camera monitor you can, like, actually see.

I'd watch out for Belgian number plates myself. Red on white. Particularly lorries.

You haven't posted a link to the footage, and there's no way to tell from the settings whether your exposure was correct. One thing- "Distance: 466mm"- was the focus really set to 46cm? That's way close for a long shot even allowing for DoF.

In a former life (late 80s) at the Ministry of Defence we had a CRT film recorder using a mid-range Nikon SLR (probably FM10) and RGB exposures through a filter wheel. It was the only way to get report-quality stills other than small ones from a diffusion transfer printer at great cost. Something like the Polaroid Palette, but knowing the MoD, the money-no-object model. We used colour neg so the images could be printed to A4 sheets for reports. It was stand-alone, no computer. Now it's just Ctrl Prt Scr. Ah nostalgia for lost skills. Without the CRT and ancillaries, that item is probably a brick, unfortunately, except for the very good enlarging lens. Here's the manual https://lasergraphics.com/lfr/files/lfruserguide.pdf

He may. But as of now, he has to do something with it, at the lowest cost and effort. it's only going to survive if it's cheaper and easier to keep it than to take it to the tip. Sorry recycling centre. If it was in the UK I'd try to find space in my garage. The Cinema Museum in Lambeth might take a look as well.

I'm not so sure about this. Scanning can get a very great deal from these now. Last year a client came to me with the cut workprint of a 1996 BBC show from the archive at Perivale. Why not the transmission print, you ask? Because they'd binned it by accident rather than the workprint. The ideal might be to put them away where they won't deteriorate and for somebody else to wait 50 years- your 30s stuff could well be of interest to an archive show, and being that old it's beyond any concerns about clearance or qualms about living individuals. But if Roy's downsizing he hasn't the space for what is a small roomful of material. As Tyler says, anything but disposal (maybe even disposal) involves a ton(ne) of money. Money that could go on a new show. I don't know how I'd get into the zone where I could dispose of originals. I can't even junk other peoples'. Sorry, OP.

I couldn't throw away my own material, but then I have under 1000' of Super-8, not 200,000' of the wide stuff. Maybe you could bin the negative if you have the show print or workprint from it- I've been on a couple of archive shows and no-one has ever gone back as far as neg, admittedly because they didn't have it though. But don't listen to me, I bought a Steenbeck just to look at one roll of workprint from film school. It's come in handy since, however. There's a decluttering technique (sounds a bit like Aapo's) where you put stuff you're not sure of in a box and seal it for six months, then if you haven't needed to look for any of it (and you never do) you throw it away. But you'd ned a big box. Your, shall we call it archive, must weigh most of half a tonne.

There is a cut-off switch below the lower sprocket- it's held shut by the edge of the film when loaded. Assuming you can power up the camera you should be able to check it's running without film by holding down the switch briefly with the speed set to minimum.