Using a Pentaflex AK16

Gareth Blackstock · July 16, 2017

G'day,

Well after shooting around 400 feet of film with the Pentaflex, I have to say I am pretty impressed. It was not as noisy as I thought it would be, and while it is pretty damn heavy to lug around, I found it pretty easy to use. Sadly my projector has packed it in so I cannot upload some poorly transferred footage. I am shooting some expired colour soon, and I will get around 400ft of film transferred and uploaded.

Initially I thought I would have issues with loading film into the cassettes inside a change bag, but I came up with a way to do it without all the stress.

I posted the info here:

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=74577

Mostly I thought a good reason to find a better way was that when ever I searched for info on the camera, I came across lots of posts complaining of jamming film, noisy cassettes, torn film, or similar. So I figured a way to make sure the film path is just right, every time. That's reassurance I like. So needless to say, the film ran sweetly, no jams.

So far so good, after giving the camera a gentle lube, and re-adjustment of a few things, I reckon I have a reliable easy to use camera. The build quality is pretty good too, very solid, and the machining is very nice work. The only down side I can spot so far are the Bakelite gears inside the camera which would make it prone to getting stripped if someone tried to dry run the camera by hand without disengaging the gear lock.

Anyway, I hoped by putting this up on the board, future potential users might find a bit of positive info and give the camera a go.

Cheers, Gareth

For details of camera lube:

http://canon-s8-repair.yolasite.com/pentaflex-ak16.php