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Arri35 Mirror


Kevin Masuda

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I saw this on ebay Germany, it says it has a missing mirror. Are these easily replaceable? Or do I have to have someone install it, which would probably cost quite a bit of money?

 

I'm not an Arri 2 expert but this camera looks like a 2A to me. My 2A/C (a 2A with 2C innards) has a serial number very close to the serial of the pictured camera. An original Arri 2A would have the older film drive claw mechanism which I've read doesn't register film as well as the late 2B and 2C mechanism.

 

I wonder what the seller is talking about, "mirror" as translated from German could be either the rotating mirrored shutter, the viewfinder prism, or the ground glass (email one of the Forum participants who are Germans or Austrians for help with the language). The ground glass would be trivial to fix, the prism more serious, and the shutter missing would probably nominate this camera as a parts machine. The camera technicians and engineers who do good work on Arri 2's are professionals working on professional equipment for a living. They are deservedly expensive and one can quickly spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on tune-ups, etc.

 

What's your interest in 35mm? If you're starting a DIY film school project, you might read some of the posts in the 8 and 16mm forums. There's a lot of advice in those forums from working professional Cinematographers (most definitely not a description of myself) suggesting that the smaller formats are a lot better to learn on, particularly 8mm. One automatically gets the "film look" in 8mm, albeit a bit grainy, and can economically edit and project at home. 100' of 8mm film is a project - 100' in 35mm is the blink of an eye. To give yourself a chance to really see what you've spent your money on with 35mm you either have to find a friendly theatre owner, be lucky (and rich) enough to live in a city where you can rent a screening room, spend a fortune on HD video transfers, or buy a cranky old 35mm projector that'll cost you a fortune to get shipped if nothing else.

 

Edmond, OK

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Well, I'm not really new to film, not to mention that I'm not really doing a DIY film school project. In fact most of the stuff I'm doing now has nothing to do with film school, it's my own experiments. Besides, I was mostly curious about the mirror in the arri.

 

 

Kev

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Well, I'm not really new to film, not to mention that I'm not really doing a DIY film school project. In fact most of the stuff I'm doing now has nothing to do with film school, it's my own experiments. Besides, I was mostly curious about the mirror in the arri.

Kev

That's why I was concerned about the word "mirror". The Arri 2's use a rotating shutter that has a two sectors with a mirrored back side. When the mirror is aligns with the lens as it rotates, the image is reflected 90 degrees through a prism and then projected on the back side of a small ground glass. What one sees in the viewfinder is the front of the ground glass. There are different ground glasses available for the camera with various aspect ratio outlines etched in them. For instance, mine has an outline that frames 1.85 flat. So as you probably can see, an Arri 2 with "mirror" trouble is an Arri 2 with troubles indeed!

 

Edmond, OK

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My reading of this..."mirror in the viewfinder' is the small 20 x40 mm mirror betwen the ground glass and the viewfinder system, in the door. This 2mm thick front surface mirror would cost about $4

 

Regards

 

Bruce

 

Reading it again you might be right. It's not really explained or shown in detail. From what I read in the article is it must have been sitting on ashelf for a number of years and got some rust on the drivemechanism.

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