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Lomography introduces handcranked 35mm Lomokino Movie Camera with identical UltraPan8 aspect ratio of 2.8:1


Nicholas Kovats

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This is incredible in my humble opinion. Officially released just a

few hours ago.

 

1. Cheap as in $79 US cheap.

2. Undeniable mass appeal.

3. Handcranked!

4. 36 exposure 35mm film cassettes.

5. Shoots identical UltraPan8 aspect ratio = 2.8:1, i.e. 14mm x 8.5mm

frame area is created by utilizing a 35mm 2 perf pulldown resulting in

144 "UP8" frames" per 36 exposure 35mm film cassette!

 

Official Lomokino site -> http://microsites.lomography.com/lomokino/, i.e

 

Film type : 35mm

Exposure area : 24mm x 8.5mm

Frames per. roll (36 exp.) : 144 frames

Frame rate : Approximately 3-5 frames per second

Taking Lens : 25mm

Angle of view : 54 degrees

Aperture : f/5.6, f/8, f/11 (Continuous aperture)

Shutter speed : 1/100

Film Advancing : Manual

Film Counting : Volume display

Focusing : (Normal) 1m~infinity, (Press button for) 0.6m close-up

View finding : Inverse-Galileo foldable viewfinder

Flash sync : x-sync (hot-shoe)

Tripod mount : Standard 1/4" tripod screw

 

Check out the sample footage -> http://vimeo.com/31503625. The

implications are wonderful!

 

Cheers!

 

Nicholas

UltraPan8 ->

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It's a nice toy, but I can't see it being anything more than that. Transferring looks to be a bit of a pain in the rear.

 

Not that I don't want one. I just sent my wife the link and titled the email, 'Christmas hint.' B)

 

I'd love to take one to Saigon next year, set it up on a tripod and crank it slowly. Get those time lapse shots of an amazing city.

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you can buy a desktop 35mm film scanner for less than the price of a 100foot telecine!!!

These work with both neg and slide film!

Yes, but have fun scanning each frame (144), saving it out as a jpeg then reassembling as a movie. Not hard, just time consuming. After Effects could do it ok.

 

 

Shoots identical UltraPan8 aspect ratio = 2.8:1, i.e. 14mm x 8.5mm

Except it's twice the size, right? It is simply 2-perf 35mm...

 

Too bad there's not a 100' roll version! That would be fun. Then maybe add a motor...hmmm.... sounds like we're getting into 2-perf Eyemo territory which is something I've always wanted.

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The manual labor involved in scanning and then putting the pieces together would be too much for me. I have a Nikon R10 super8 and love shooting with it. Super8 is just the bomb, to me.

 

Still, this will give some great pleasure.

 

I suspect that people will write software to improve the workflow in time!

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It really isn't a big job in after effects and I believe there's also a Photoshop script for turning film strips in to separate frames!

 

Cool! Previously, I was viualising me manually cropping each and every frame. Now to scan a whole film strip, obviously, you'd need a flat bed scanner. It seems to be the general consensus that dedicated neg scanners give better quality results for 35mm negs / slides compared to flat bed scanners. Is there any truth to this? Is there actually such a thing as a flat bed scanner that would rival a negative scanner for quality output?

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A few months ago I sold my dedicated flat bed scanner, which could scan negatives and deliver stunning quality. Whoops. My bad. :blink:

 

But hey, we were going to move overseas and I couldn't take it with us. Of course, now the move is cancelled. Sold lot of poop I wish I hadn't.

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Why is this in the Super-8 forum anyway? The 24 x 8.5mm frame is closest to Techniscope's 22 x 9.47 mm - and either way it's 35mm.

 

Albeit with a frame rate that's useless for full motion and a hellish post-production workflow unless you've got plenty of time or some nice automation happening.

 

If you did happen to be blessed with an automatic-advance scanner though - either automatically advancing a ~230 mm strip or automatically advancing the entire uncut roll, either way IIRC some Canon and Nikon models did one or the other - you could hope that the Lomokino's registration was accurate and probably get more than decent results.

 

Which kind of leads me to hope that somebody will find a way to adapt the Lomokino's movement to a motor-driven 100-foot-load camera :P

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Will,

 

indedd, good work. We made a test for schmalfilm magazine and did not get more than 2-3 pictures per second. And we had real problems with steadyness even on a tripod - this is because of the handcrank and the whole plastic construction. I am not sure how long such a crank will work...

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It's completely a toy; fun but not practical for real work. It's all plastic and you can't crank it fast enough...it won't let you even if you could rig a motor.

 

What we need is something like a reflex Eyemo that shoots 2-perf on 100 ft rolls. Spring driven or motorized; that would be very useful. Nikon or Canon lens mount would be nice too.

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What we need is something like a reflex Eyemo that shoots 2-perf on 100 ft rolls. Spring driven or motorized; that would be very useful. Nikon or Canon lens mount would be nice too.

 

How about a Techniscope Arri 2C? Reflex, 2-perf pull-down, motorised and about as far from plastic as you can get. B)

 

The rental house I work for has one sitting in a cupboard waiting for me to overhaul it, but the demand for rental film cameras in Australia is virtually non-existent these days, so it's well down the priority list unfortunately.

 

There are plenty of other cameras that have been converted to 2-perf since the original 60s Techniscope era (local camera engineer Bruce McNaughton has done a few), but a 2-perf 2C would probably be the most affordable, if ever one pops up for sale.

 

In the US I imagine you could rent older 2-perf cameras for peanuts these days.

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Dom,

 

That is a very nice camera. However I suspect the Arri 2C Techniscope mod is not very common over here in North America. I preuse eBay on a daily basis and I rarely see this specific Techniscope mod. I suspect the newer (2007) 2 perf Arri 235 cams are much more plentiful as per the NA rental houses. Albeit pricier I readily found 3x 235 examples on eBay.

 

Bruce McNaughton's Techniscope work is very highly regarded indeed.

 

Cheers!

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I motorized mine with a cordless drill and ran it about 18fps. here's the demo and how to... it's really easy :)

 

 

haha yea, i just saw this on youtube earlier today - great idea!

 

I'd really like to see more examples of this technique with faster moving objects like people etc. just to see how well it holds up

 

I see you completely removed the crank - could you not have just attached the nut ontop of the crank?

 

great work, regardless

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you can buy a desktop 35mm film scanner for less than the price of a 100foot telecine!!!

These work with both neg and slide film!

 

Geoff, the cost of a DECENTY 2-perf. scan (better than standard def. pixelated, mushy quality) is still up there. A 2-perf. frame is a very small size to scan well.

 

 

That being said, this is an INCREDIBLE little invention. I note there's already a post on here from November, that I totally missed, probably from banging head against darkroom wall with all the Kodak doom and gloom. I digress. . .

 

Anyway, I don't think anyone should knock a fun, simple, inexpensive foray into the world of filmmaking. This is arguably the greatest invention for the amateur filmmaking enthusiast (read student filmmakers, schoolkids, up-and-comers) since the '50s.

 

 

Honestly, this is better, more flexible education than any windup 16mm, 8mm could be for a kid. Give a 12-y.o. a Bolex and some Kodachrome 25 back in the dayand you'd probably shell out 2-3 times the cost of processing a 35mm 36 size to get blank film back.

 

 

 

 

Think of the potential here!

 

 

 

This is a HUGE OPPORTUNITY for any of you in the lab industry as well.

 

It's a $90 2-perf. camera!

 

 

 

Honestly, I think it's only a matter of time before they come up with some sort of simple rubber-band or 24 system. Even a 100-footer wouldn't be too outside the realm of possibility.

 

 

 

There's a Flickr and a Vimeo group (or groups?) on this camera worth checking out. IDK if I'll buy one personally, I shoot plenty of 8- and 16, but I'd love to have one of these movies for an icon at the lab.

 

 

Anyone that is willing to lend me theirs I'll make you high-res TIFF 100+MB scans of four or five of your movies for the "rental." I'm going to explore the opportunity of making either contact prints, or 2- to 4-perf. pulldown conversions so that one of these can actually be looped on a 35-mm projector.

 

That'd be another great innovation for this company. . .

 

 

 

 

 

Hmm, looking at it here, it's already been motorized, how hard would it be to stick say a 100W lightbulb in it and project a positive copy? Like I said HUGE, LOW-TECH. potential that is limited only by the bounds of imagination.

 

This, arguably brings HD production to the masses even more than any $XX,000 camera that supports single frame time-lapse mode too.

 

 

 

 

As to the optics, I'd really like to know the quality, but I wouldn't surprise if even a 2-perf. with a simple meniscus lens is capable of reaching 1080P quality.

 

 

 

Again, my offer stands, anyone wanting to get 4-5 movies souped scanned and *printed* in exchange for us making a LomoKino movie about LomoKino processing :-D

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