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.
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
Toei
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.
Here are the instructions.
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A Bauer, then a Meopta OP 8, which is 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 (?).