Home 9.5 16 Multi-gauge 17.5 28 Pix Miscellany
STANDARD AND SUPER 8
8mm Projectors
In December 1957, ACW started a listing of 8mm projectors, continued in a number of subsequent issues. It seems to be a much more detailed account, on a technical level,
than any I have previously seen. It also gives details of many machines that were never marketed in the UK. What better intro to the world of 8mm? And of course, it
dates from a time when projectors were real projectors and made of metal.
Now various random 8mm bits.
Bolex 8mm projectors are on the Bolex page
Below is an interesting take on the Standard 8 idea, in an early form of double-run but without the extra sprockets. I think it's just as well they decided to go into coffee instead.
I still can't warm to the P8. However, for those who can, here is a link to a website with lots of P8 info.
www.marriottworld.com/pieces/pieces25.htm
Eumig Mark S
The Mark S is from the days when projectors were real projectors, made mostly of metal, weighing a ton and using valves in the amp.
Even this relatively late model was starting to go downhill I suspect, with plastic and transistors.
Here's another circuit diagram from a different booklet.
Interesting session with a Eumig Mark S. The problem being addressed was the motor mountings. In order to move to and fro to bring
the drive shaft into contact with the rubber discs that take the drive, the motor has to pivot. The pivot supports seem to comprise
some kind of plastic
in the form of a trapezoid (if that is the correct name for a triangle wiv the
top cut off) about 0.5" in most directions,
with a brass bush inserted. The trapezoids fit into appropriately shaped recesses. The originals are apparently prone to disintegrate, and
seemed to have done so in this case. Presumably, as Eumig went to the trouble of doing this, rather than just making holes in the supports
themselves, they saw a need for insulation, so I used nylon, about 6mm thick, cut and filed to shape. Tho' it might have been springiness -
the way the bits disintegrate reminds me of what happens with very old foam rubber/plastic eg as used to pack projector lamps. Here is a
pic of a machine with intact thingies - look rather manky to me, also these seem quite solid. You have to remove the amp and the fan
housing to get at the corresponding thingy further inside the machine.
While the thing was partly broken down, I thought I might as well give you a couple of shots of the amp.
I had to hand some brass tube with an i/d of 4mm (matching the motor pivots), which I force-fitted into a hole in the nylon.
I wondered what people might be prepared to pay for a pair if they had this problem. I guess about £5 tops, which works out for me to a princely £2.50
per hour. So I'm unlikely to make any more. Typically, having done all this, I found some strange nylon triangles in an odd drawer of spares. I had not
previously identified them, but guess what they were?
Here's a later model.
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This next one probably belongs in the Silent to Sound section, so I'll put it there as well.
These copies have defeated my photo-editing skills, but as I have one on the bench even as we speak, I thought
them well worth including. I'll do you some pix of the real thing. It's an amazingly well-engineered bit of tackle but, as you can see from the review,
it has some fairly basic flaws.
When closed up, it's just an anonymous two-tone grey box. As required by the Regulations for the Storage of Projectors Not in Use, it has obviously
been stored in a damp, unheated area, to maximise the chances of condensation, rust, mould growth and electrical dysfunction.
Take the covers off the sides and you have a fairly conventional tape deck, but vertical, and a projector, which is most odd, with those drunken
loops and a lens pointing straight out. To see any more, you have to dismantle, which involves taking off a cover that goes over 3 sides of the cube,
with the handle at the top. The mains inlet is odd; you need to unscrew and disconnect it before removing the cover, and in reverse on re-assembly.
I think I was lucky with this machine in that there was nothing much wrong; as you can see, further dismantling would be a job and a half. I did manage
to make a brief recording and play it back, so it's clearly functional. The entire thing is run by the one induction motor, to give constant speed.
Interestingly, it is based on an original French design. The Danson was based on an Italian design. Was there something
of a trend after the war for small British companies to find foreign designs to reproduce? I can't see it ever making much economic sense; the Danson
ended up remaindered for a mere £60. The Dominus can't have sold widely - I don't know the date of the ACW but it can't have been long before
8mm mag sound blew such machines out of the water. As it is, I was the only bidder on eBay and got it for a mere £2, which is insane. I only bid
cos it was local.
Technicolor produced mini projectors, either side of the emergence of Super 8, to show pre-loaded cassettes,
basically for industrial education use. I acquired a Std 8 and a Super 8 and loads of cassettes from the coal industry
many years ago, and played around with putting Super 8 silent films in some of the cassettes - there is a little
doover and instructions to help wind them the right way for the endless loop to work properly. You can project
direct or via a right angle mirror, either built into a box with a little screen built in or freestanding projector
and screen.
The lens was very short throw, but of very good quality. Larry Pearce sold the machines off cheap many years
ago, and also re-sleeved the lenses from some to fit projectors such as the Vox - a very welcome solution to
my domestic projection problems at the time.
Dave Whistler has reproduced the instructions for the Toei optical and magnetic Standard 8mm projector - they look good. He is happy to provide copies - they're a bit more informative than many - and I will happily pass your details on to him. Sadly I can't print his email address for fear of the evil spammers. Here are ads, a real one and a record/mixer unit.
This (2 LH pix) looks pretty sophisticated for a Noris, with coarse and fine speed controls and, as it's called a Synchroner, presumably for sound-related purposes? Compare with its baby brother on the right.
I found I had a rather battered old instruction book for the Synchroner - it appears only responsible people, married with kids, were allowed to use one.
Have had for years a Russian silent S8, but never looked in detail until now. It's a remarkable piece of mechanical design and engineering, but the styling must, even at the time, have looked rather dated alongside, say, the Eumig Mark 8. In those pre-Glasnost days, of course, stuff like this was heavily subsidised and you got a lot of bangs for your bucks.
The styling speaks for itself. Pix 3 and 4 show the idiosyncratic but cute way the arms fold away into the cube of Pic 1, hence the two deep round holes in the face of the machine. One snag is that the drop-down front just sits there - it will only go a bit further than flat, so you can't even dangle it over the edge of a table and it sits there in the way.
Undoing the single knurled screw next to the little red (of course!) pilot light, gives access to the chitterlings, or inside bits. Most unusually, some of the components, notably the transformer, are actually on the hinge-down flap, making it heavy and easy to drop. What would the Health and Safety people say, my dear. Close examination will reveal a disc with four projecting lugs on the end of the sprocket shaft above the projector. These operate a switch, four times per rotation. What you can't see is that on the back of the machine is a socket like an old-fashioned valve socket; presumably there was some kind of synchronising arrangement, possibly involving motor speed control.
What you also can't see, partly because I had taken part of it out before I took the pic, is that there is a centrifugal thingy on the end of the shutter shaft. This operates a heat filter which comes into play when revs drop. Even tho' I don't much like 8mm, I am reluctantly impressed by this machine. Quite a bright light, too, from a standard A1/186 12v 100w incandescent; I suspect the optics are very good, as was often the case with Eastern European stuff.
A sound attachment was advertised, too.
Here are the instructions.
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A Bauer, plus test report and ad, then a Meopta OP 8, followed by something that looks very much the same but is a Beaulieu. These two are maybe a bit unusual, but not as much as the drunken loops of the Atom 8. And is the B&H 8 or 16? - whatever, it's very horrid, like a 70's re-design of a previously nice machine.
Not sure what this first one is; the last two are a Memel (?) 8mm and a Cinar (?).