Testing rental film cameras.

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Do you test your film cameras when you rent or just start shooting?

If you test, what are the type of your tests?

Thanks

[Dom Jaeger]

Depends on the scale and budget of the production, but a well-organised one will always allow time to check and prep all the gear before the shoot, including cameras.

For film cameras, it used to be pretty standard to shoot a registration test to check the camera stability and general functionality, but that was maybe more important before the days of Digital Intermediates and post stabilisation. A rental house tech will usually have checked the important settings like camera flange depth and ground glass focus, and ACs will go through the lenses eyeballing focus charts through the viewfinder,  checking distance marks,  sometimes shooting lens or location tests. Any lenses showing issues will be checked by a tech. A quick scratch test with 10 feet of new film can check for any scratching or other damage to the film as it passes through the transport. Mag loading and film lacing are usually practiced and camera functions and noise checked.

We don't get too many well-budgeted film shoots down here in Australia anymore, so it tends to be student shorts and low budget music vids which usually don't have the time, money or experience to properly test much nowadays, but if you can it's worth doing to avoid unnecessary disappointment. Big budget film blockbusters that rent from places like London or LA can spend weeks in prep checking the gear.