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Low price 35mm camera


Luigi Castellitto

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Who can recommend a portable 35mm cine camera? Which is minimally available.

Like Zeiss Kinamo, but not necessarily the same shape, even bigger, I took that as an example regarding the very low price range.

I would only need to experiment with films of very little duration, even just seconds.

The year of production is not a problem, for other formats I also use machines of the '40s, '50s, etc., the important thing is that it works.

Also Soviet, of any production.

Thank you. :)

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It's just a very suitable camera type, Tyler.
Unfortunately it's not sold at a very economical price.

 

I know, I don't know why they go for so much money!

 

I don't know of any cameras like it near that price.

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I always have an eye on ebay and similar hoping to find one at a lower price, maybe without lens, which I would take later.

It has a beautiful design, a great camera. Although not very different from some famous B&H 16mm cameras, much cheaper.

 

About the Kinamo, also there is a big difference in price between the 16mm and 35mm version. I guess only for rarity of 35, they have the same mechanics.

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The Eyemo is a first class product. There are nitrited steels in the film gate. Compared to that a Kinamo is a toy, where you have nickel plated sheet brass. Bell & Howell created a unique lens mount for the Eyemo which adapts easily to lenses. My recommendation would be for a big square base model. With max spools you can load up to 185 feet, depending on film thickness. Maximum spools have a ¾ inch hub and an bigger outer diameter.

 

Cheapest today are Konvas. In between you find a DeVry which is light. ARRIFLEX are still around and 35 BL have come down to less than 3,000 Euro. If you don’t need more than 15 feet for a shot, you can play with a Sept by Debrie. The Sept has register pins but they’re almost always worn. Soft material.

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I have your basic wind-up Eyemo and I have a couple Steve's Cine Modified Eyemos with crystal motor but unfortunately not reflexed. The motorized ones have been completely gutted and re-made basically. The gate and the sprocket drive is the same but the spring is removed and electronics put in. With a reflexed viewfinder this was like a $25,000 mod back in the day. Then they were used as crash cameras so that's throwing a lot of money around. Result is that many of the modified ones were damaged in crashes.

 

The wind-up Eyemo is small but incredibly heavy and a big chunk of solid feeling steel. Can see them being used as weapons in WWII.

 

With 1 minute per reel they aren't exactly practical for much but the one I have with a Nikon mount makes some beautiful images and the old wind-up one with the Eyemax 25mm lens has it's own charm too.

 

 

Wind-up Eyemo:

 

Crystal Eyemo (Steve's Cine Mod) with Nikon Mount:

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Konvas cameras are pretty good and portable if you have time and guts to repair them by yourself or you have a camera tech friend next door who can fine tune them whenever needed. it is not very economical or practical to send them away for service and you can have very hard time with them if they are not in good shape :ph34r:

an Eyemo would be much more reliable for sure.

I personally use Konvas cameras only when it is important to have a very easily portable small 35mm camera for a doc shoot (fits in my backpack ready for use with all the extra batteries, changing bag and extra film and the 200ft mag attached to the camera) or I need to use it with a gimbal. most of the other footage I shoot with a Cameflex Standard which is much better build quality camera and can accept Nikon lenses (and M42 too with my crappy diy turret modification :rolleyes: )

 

Konvas lenses have a very nice look though and they are affordable (if oct18 mount ones) .

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Home movies are of the three-to-four image aspect ratio.

 

Pity that the Eyemo is so often regarded as a one-minute camera. There are max spools with a smaller hub and larger OD to take up to 185 feet of film not thicker than 0,12 mm or 0.00473". If one can thread the camera with three feet of film, change bag covering the full spool, 180 feet are usable, two minutes at sound speed. Many stocks have a thickness of 0,125 through 0,135 mm meaning 177 to 164 feet, still 1'56" to 1'47".

 

The Eyemo also has the advantage that one can rest it on the forehead (seeing through the finder with the left eye). You can’t do so with a Kinamo or a Kinarri or any other camera, if it’s got to be hand held.

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With how loosely the Eyemos seem to wind the film up I would be hesitant to try and fit more than 100' in there. There have been quite a few times when unloading the film was running past the flanges. Seemed to happen with three different Eyemos. Usually have to manually tighten it up.

 

 

 

I don't think I'll ever see classier home movies.

Thanks. It was really fun to have the 35mm Arri 2c at the soccer games. Put those soccer moms with the $4000 DSLRs to shame. What I love is that I can go back and re-scan the film to 4k when I get around to it. Don't think the VHS home movies will hold up as well. :)

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Common with cameras not well looked to, they have a brake on the feed spindle and the take-up friction can be adjusted, too. My 71-C from 1931 winds perfectly.

 

The initial question is for low prices. Quality is not the subject. I’m out.

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if price is the most important aspect then the Konvas might be the way to go.

The ebay camera bodies may be in relatively good condition if the motor works and mostly need cleaning and oil (I recommend buying the older straight viewfinder side latch model Konvas 1KCP with the rheostat motor and using 7.2v airsoft nimh batteries to power it) but the magazines are nasty little things and will take forever to adjust if you want them to run reliably with stable image. You will probably only repair one or two magazines total and use them for all filming....if you buy more mags you will probably end up keeping them only for spare parts and will never bother repairing and adjusting them all.

 

one thing with the oct18 lenses is that generally the newer 1970's lenses fit correctly to the older camera bodies but old lenses may not work 100% with the newer camera bodies. For example the 50's and 60's lenses may have too long focusing move so that the locating pin on a newer camera body does not hold the lens in place when focusing closer than couple of meters. new lens with older body is generally not a problem.

 

if you want to use normal 2" film cores with core adapters you are able to fit around 42-45m film to a 60m magazine. with the original Russian 1.5" metal cores you are able to use the full 60m per mag but it means lots of rewinding so the core adapters + 2" cores is normally more practical

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I would look for an Arri 2C. Tons of parts out there, tons of magazines, and quite a few people can still work on them. If you look around you may find an unmodified one for $1200. If you can go up a little ($3000?) the later model Arri III's ads pin registration which will make a noticeable difference in steadiness. Both models give you flexibility in 200 or 400 magazines, reasonably priced lenses and accessories.

 

If you need to stay in the $500 range and there are no other considerations, a spring wound Eyemo would be fine.

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I would look for an Arri 2C. Tons of parts out there, tons of magazines, and quite a few people can still work on them. If you look around you may find an unmodified one for $1200. If you can go up a little ($3000?) the later model Arri III's ads pin registration which will make a noticeable difference in steadiness. Both models give you flexibility in 200 or 400 magazines, reasonably priced lenses and accessories.

 

If you need to stay in the $500 range and there are no other considerations, a spring wound Eyemo would be fine.

 

the 2C would be nice but the Arri Standard and Arri Bayonet mount lenses are very expensive compared to, say, the Konvas lenses. Or Nikon AI-S lenses which can be used with the modified Cameflex or modified Eyemo.

One really needs to worry about the lens mounts because nowadays a single old basic quality prime lens can cost more than the 35mm camera body... and one generally needs at least two or three lenses to do anything with the camera so good quality Cooke or Zeiss or Angenieux are out of the budget right away. maybe a very used 25-250 angenieux would do but even they seem to be pretty expensive (usable ones seem to be around 2k in eBay)

 

But if one can find a Nikon mount Arri 2C or 35-3 it would be great for the price because inexpensive lenses can be used and there is much more lens options than with the Arri mounts or oct18 . actually a PL mounted camera could be cheaper alternative than a Arri mount or Arri B mount one because it is easier to modify inexpensive lenses, at least tele ones, to PL mount than to the much smaller diameter Arri Standard and Arri B mounts. Even the Konvas lenses, at least some of them, can be modified to work with it more or less correctly

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Thanks to all, friends, many interesting tips!

Lomokino is a good experiment, but the result is a film not fluid. However, it remains a good option, at that low cost you can also accept its nature of a particular camera, with its personal viewer/projector.
The Eyemo, as mentioned, is beautiful, is precisely a high class room, out of economic budget.
I started to seriously look for the Konvas, without lens it's possible to find models at very low cost, and so:
you said some lenses. Which models can be used? Something Soviet like the camera or good substitutes? And if I wanted to mount a zoom instead of three lenses?
In Europe do you know someone who make haul on the Konvas?
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I started to seriously look for the Konvas, without lens it's possible to find models at very low cost, and so:

you said some lenses. Which models can be used? Something Soviet like the camera or good substitutes? And if I wanted to mount a zoom instead of three lenses?
In Europe do you know someone who make haul on the Konvas?

 

 

I recommend the black oct18 lenses from the 70's which are made for the Konvas 1m, and purchasing a older straight viewfinder camera body which has the side latch 60m magazines and rheostat motor. they are both easier to find in good shape and cheaper than a full 1m package... the 1m body is good and has orientable viewfinder but you will have hard time finding a good working motor for it. I managed to get the better crystal motor for my 1m but I had to hunt the motor for a year or so, they are very rare in working condition and pretty expensive compared to the camera body. so the rheostat is the way to go I think...

 

the lenses I would recommend for you from the newer 70's series (black finish on the lens body, usually with white and red markings) :

35/2 (very good lens, can be found in good shape for well under 200 on ebay. )

50/2 (good lens with nice look. I recommend the newer black 70's model but you can manage with the older silver bodied model if the close focusing issues are not a problem (the lens locating pin disengages if focusing to few meters or closer and you will need to mount the lens again to the camera body to be able to focus to infinity again. has not been a huge problem for me but may be a bit disturbing if you want to do lots of rack focuses every time)

135/4 (pretty ok lens. this is very handy and affordable tele lens, the cheapest ones can be found for around 50 or 60 on ebay. I would get one even if you only need it once a year because it being very handy and costs next to nothing :)

75/2 (newer black model. these are good lenses but extremely overpriced because of portrait photographers. can be in 500-700 euros range or more when the real price should be less than 300. I would not buy any of these unless you can find them under 300 in good shape. you will want the 50/2 black model instead which is couple of times cheaper)

28/2 (much much better lens than the 28/2.5 model which is more common on ebay. these can be relatively high cost, couple of hundred euros even but is worth it if you can find one in good shape.

22/2.8 (the lowest cost OK quality wide angle I have found for the camera. not super good "zeiss" quality and the corners of the image are not that high quality but you can save lots of money if you need wide angles all the time with the camera. for optical reasons the lens produces pretty dim viewfinder image with lots of falloff but the recorded image on film is much better than the difficult-to-see viewfinder image)

18mm lenses, various models (pretty rare and expensive ones if you can ever find them in usable shape :/ . have never tested these but they should be ok )

 

I would purchase the 35/2 , 50/2, 135/4 . specifically the newer black 70's models. and then either the newer 28/2 which is good but expensive or the old 22/2.8 which is affordable but much lower quality. 18mm ones are so rare in usable shape that you may need to forget them and concentrate to get good mid range instead . and totally avoid the overpriced 75mm ones.

 

It should be noted that there is some incompatible Soviet lenses on eBay which are listed as "oct 18" but are really the AKS4 camera lenses which is completely different mount and incompatible with any Konvas model. For example if you see a Jupiter 85/2 lens advertised for Konvas it is the classic scam, that is really a AKS mount lens which cannot be used on Konvas at all. The mount can usually be spotted from images because it has different slants near the locking groove of the mount and the end of the mount whereas a real oct18 mount has much straighter cut groove and mount end.

 

If you have some old Pentacon Six lenses in inventory you can use them with the Konvas with an adapter as well. I personally like the original Lomo lenses more but it is good to have options and the Pentacon lenses are very easy to find and affordable :)

Soviet zooms like Lenar or Lomo Foton can be used as well though they are pretty overpriced and have much lower optical quality than the Lomo primes. If you ever shoot b/w with the camera these zooms are truly great for it creating a nice retro look for closeups, I personally just don't like them for color photography because of the chromatic aberrations and poor speed compared to primes etc.

 

I personally repair my own cameras because I normally don't have time to wait for them to go Ukraine and back for adjustment and the shipping would be expensive. I think these cameras work best for you and are most economical if you can do the repairs locally or by yourself, even if the repair/service quality is not on par of a real overhaul made by a trained camera technician. As said the magazines are the real problem with these cameras and cause about 70 or 80% of problems with them, the rest being loading errors by the operator or just bad luck...

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Than you, Aapo, you have been very precise, also for advice for "oct 18" for AKS4, there are many on ebay and similar.
I notice that even the Lomo are not very expensive, I could also buy one and then the other two after some time.

It's precisely the motor that worries me, often it is not working or even absent on sales.
Let's see what I can find.

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If you'd like more Konvas specific information, head over to Konvas.org, peruse the archives, read the FAQs and join the mailing list.

 

I started the original Konvas Users Discussion Group back in 2000, and it's had a very up-and-down life, but retains a lot of information on all types of Soviet-era motion picture cameras.

 

You can read the history of the group here: http://konvas.org/faq/faqs/faq/whats-the-history-behind-the-konvas-discussion-list

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