Home 9.5 16 Multi-gauge 17.5 28 Pix Miscellany
WHAT'S NEW
25th July
Been doing a lot of work on a 17.5 silent machine, the Rex or Rural. Too long to put in here.
14th July
I've been making even more changes to my 9.5 tape splicer. I was finding that with older, shrunken film, the pins were doing almost as much damage as I was repairing. The pins are no doubt set at standard spacing, and old 9.5 ent standard any more. So I knocked out the two outer pins (I kept them, of course) and this has made a great improvement. The only drawback I've found is that the film is sometimes reluctant to stay in the slot until you get the tape on it, but this is a small price to pay.
I never seem to use the tape in its original position any more. Working from my new tape spool fitting at the front, I use a very slim jeweller's screwdriver to pick up the tape and place it on the film. By cutting at one place, I get a piece just the right size to wrap round and completely cover both sides of the film. By laying the tape short of the track on a sound film, and cutting at a different place, I can reinforce sprockets without covering the track. I've also more or less stopped using the film cutter, and just use scissors, since I always leave an overlap splices - I hate floppy, bendy butt joins.
11th July
This is a special adapter made on request for someone who wants to wind Standard 8 onto two spools after slitting. It's just a long version of the Std 8 adapter, with a spacer piece that has pins linking the two spools together and a collar with grub screw to stop it all falling off. Not known yet if this works.
8th July
Been fiddling with an H, a machine I don't think I've ever run a film on, the principal reason being the unavailability of lamps. It is an odd machine; the wires to the lamp, and the wire via the speed control resistance to the motor, all pass through the motor casing and close to the motor shaft and commutator. Then the space to wire up the lamp and resistance is very tight and inaccessible. I had to go there as the insulation of the wire to the resistance had rotted, leaving a bare wire to short all over the place. It was a bugger of a job. You have to dismantle the motor and remove the field winding, taking care not to stretch the springs that form the connection to the brushes and which have to be slipped free before you pull the windings out. Oh well, at least I know now.
Here is a prototype lamp conversion. It uses a lampholder which says on the packet it's for an A1/259, but it seems to accept a 12v 100w. The lampholder has some tiny holes in, which take a 12BA bolt. I drilled and tapped a couple of holes for these. Then the wires have to pass out thru holes drilled below the mirror, or you can't get the base to the right position, and thru again to connect underneath. It should now be possible to fit the original lamp wires over the lampholder wires. As you know, I'm not keen on permanent changes to projectors, but even tho' I've made some new holes, there is nothing here to prevent reverting to the original lamp. Actually, looking from a different angle for these pix, I think I shall have to raise the lampholder a bit to get the filament central. My current idea is to use a low-voltage lighting tranny - they are quite small - and either fit it round the original tranny and just bypass it, or if necessary, remove it altogether but NOT throw it away, and label it up for re-use.
5th July
Here is another recent acquisition.
It 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.
This is a Kodak 16/20, loaned by Pat Moules. It's in virtually mint, unused condition and, for a marvel, so is the box - these so rarely survive in really good condition.
28th June 2008
I've added to the end of the Silent to Sound section and found the following listing of 8mm machines, from when projectors were real projectors and still made of metal.
8mm Projectors
The above is from ACW December 1957. 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. Further parts were published in succeeding months.
10th June
Here are some pix for you - they were amassed by Gerald McKee and you may recognise some from his books.
Ugh!
I have no idea what the colour pic is. It looks like a so-called designer of the 70's took the old B&H silent and "re-styled" it. It's very horrible. Compare the Ensign pic, No. 5 top row, with the boring publicity pic below (15th May entry). The only other one that might need explanation is the fourth pic on the second row. It's the uncovered mech of a Coq d'Or, viewed from behind. And I just love pix of the Pathé factory.
28th May
Chris McCabe has provided some useful info on BTH projectors.
"The 452 was a mains voltage machine; the 450 and 451
(mag/optical with the extra preamps in a wooden
plinth) were 110v. The Belling Lee 7 pin plug assembly was needed because not
only did the transformer case supply 110v for the motor and lamp, but also the
entire exciter and amplifier voltages, including a U52 rectifier valve in the
case. Therefore, the projector main unit is not self contained. Unfortunately
these power supplies are usually missing. I have a nice 451 in this condition.
If you come across such a power pack spare please let me know. I do have the
technical data and service book for the 450 series around somewhere if you like
I will try to find it if you want the pin connections. Obviously one can lash up
the machine to run motor and lamp from 110v just to see the wheels go round and
the other circuitry could be provided but frankly although the machines look
nice and contain a lot of engineering (like the gear driven fan!!!!) the results
can easily be bettered by a 601."
25th May
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. Sad I can't print his email address for fear of the evil spammers.
16th May
Following on from the film size stuff below, I've decided to have a Film Dimensions section.
15th May
Been snowed under in a blizzard of film-checking. As it was 9.5, the experience was depressing.
Peter Spooner has kindly let me have a batch of cuttings. These
illustrate once again what a wealth of material there is out there if only we
could find a way of making it accessible. It was the difficulty of getting hold
of and spreading inform
ation
that led me first into the 28mm Catalogue and then into this website. I would
dearly love more people to send me more stuff so it can be disseminated as
widely as possible. For example, this cutting from David Humphrey. I really do
welcome such contributions - all it takes is a scanner and email. Please send
more stuff.
Anyway, here are some of the Seter Pooner cuttings. Quality is
appalling, being old photocopies, so if anyone has the originals........ (mostly
ACW I think).
I think this article (don't think I have the final bit) makes a fascinating
addition for the Silent to Sound section. I
had no idea about the ways amateurs could use this system or that, in
consequence, it lasted longer in the home cinema than in the big Cinema. And a
shot of the famous Pathex Baby sound system is one I've hankered after for a
while.
The Specto speed controller seems to be something to do with synchronising sound - what a fascinating find one of those would be! The Meopta OP 8 is unusual, but not as much as the drunken loops in these two views of the Atom 8. And I always thought Kalee were 35mm only. You see what I mean - there is so much I and, I guess, many others, simply do not know. I wouldn't call the final image one of the triumphs of advertising - just a boring black box. Weird.
I'm trying to accumulate as much info as I can about film specifications and related stuff. Here is the 16/9.5/8 film area comparison Pathescope were so fond of, a detailed analysis of Super 8 and stuff on running times and screen illumination. The Super8/Std8 figure of 47% of total area of film projected is much lower than the 55.25 figure in the Pathescope comparison. Super 8 comes in at 63% - almost the same as 16mm, and 9.5 sound is not given at all. The projected picture for 9.5 sound is 7mm x 5.5 (38.5), total area per frame is 7.54 x 9.5mm (71.63). I make that 53.75%.
2nd May
Have been busy compiling a list of films and stuff for sale - see Sales etc
11th April
Well, here it is at last, the day you have all awaited for so long - the inside bits of a 17.5 Home Talkie, which I promised you a long time ago.
Dull, isn't it?
I am struck looking at these chitterlings for the first time in many years at the simplicity of the mechanism. There are just two gears, with the single sprocket on the shaft of the large gear and, directly mounted on the motor shaft, a double cam which imparts a completely square motion to the claw, a thing I always thought excellent. I came across one or two twiddly bits which might help someone if they ever fiddle with a Talkie. The sound flywheel can only be removed and, more important, put back, when the two castings are at least partly separated. Same applies to adjustment of the pin next to the sound lens that forms the inner bearing for the sound drum. It may also be impossible to screw in the tiny lens for the sound reader when the flywheel is in place; it may, however, be possible to create enough slack to overcome this by loosening the rear bearing pin. It strikes me that the edge of the sound drum on this particular machine is actually a tad too far away from the sound reader, tho' I have yet to be able to test. This could mean that too much or the wrong part of the track is read, creating nasty noises. I am considering a little thingy to sit on top of the reader lens, with a small slot in it to limit the width of track read. I am also trying to come up with a way to make it possible to adjust the reading position while the machine is running (as most 9.5 sound machines do). The position can be adjusted, but the retaining screw you need to access is under the sound chute, and you end up with trial and error, and still no way to cope with varying track positions from reel to reel or, indeed, within a reel which I found with Lorna Doone.
If you look at picture 3, you will see slightly above and to the right of the claw frame two brass-lined holes. These are the two stops in which the pin of the moveable sprocket roller retaining assembly locates (open or closed position). They are clearly later additions, presumably because of wear. I found that the special screw on which this assembly pivots had in a similar manner partially stripped its thread and would no longer grip. The thread was not one for which I have a tap to hand, so as well as making and inserting a threaded brass sleeve, I had to make a new screw as well, so I could use a thread I do have. I've also had to make a screw for the lamphouse pivot, and a replacement roller to replace one of an incorrect design - this assembly and its correct functioning are critical. Fortunately, I have another machine to copy from.
2nd April
Having said there will be none, this could be a poisson d'Avril, but if it is, it's superbly done. Ian Green found it.
1st April
There will be no poissons d'Avril here.
This damned conservatory building has dominated my life, hence silence.
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.
I realise I have not shared with you my pix of Argenteuil 2008.
I love non-theatrical 35mm machines. The first looks a highly specialised lab/studio machine; second is one of the Chinese-made luggables such as I once had and Keith Wilton has used, but set up for very big spools. Next is a very cute Debrie (I think). It has spools side-by-side at the back and looks superbly engineered. As for 4, this is just a 16mm writ large - I have never understood why 35mm machines had to be big - why couldn't there be more like this? Can't remember what the 16mm was - it says Lyon on the side.
Pic 5 is a left-hand drive Hortson; otherwise, these mainly show the scale and scope of the fair, with a side serving of paunch. Not big enuff to be mine.
I was very tempted by the Cineric, but there was no more room in the car! The final pic shows that even the back of some stands was interesting.
15th March
Been rummaging in the ACW folder again and have added a number of extra shots to the Silent to Sound section, including a Baby projector sound-on-disc set-up.
Obviously, cine enthusiasts were showing considerable mechanical ingenuity, and it was no doubt the same in many other hobby areas. The question is, unless you believe all this mechanical aptitude suddenly vanished from the human genome, where has all that ingenuity and effort been directed? What are the people who would otherwise have been converting cine projectors actually doing with their time now? Do they find it just as satisfying, whatever it is, or do they harbour buried, unrecognised urges to nerdery that modern life gives them no opportunity to fulfil?
Somebody actually reads this! Paul Schimmel says
"Where are the nerds is a good question; a few years back they were building
PCs, but this is becoming harder. Younger ones are fitting blue LEDs to the
bottom of their Corsas. I help with a youth group and something I generally
notice among the youngsters is no real interest in how things work. In my
teenage days I didn't have much money and scraped together a HiFi system etc
repairing as I went. These days with everything made in China and very cheap the
thought of opening it up and fixing it doesn't seem to occur to anyone.
It does have to be said that whilst a cine projector can often be repaired a DVD
player represents a different challenge: Clean lens, oil spindle motor is about
all that can be done."
I worry that this frustration of the nerdish urge may break out in some unfortunate way.
12th March
Re-organised the 17.5 pages a bit. Let me know if anything don't work.
11th March
Found a few new pix.
First is a Kodak Pageant, seen only occasionally in this country in my experience. This is about the only pic in the photocopied instructions I have that will reproduce well enough. Originals or scans thereof would be very welcome. The others I think I filched from ebay, a very old B&H, a Pathé 35mm mech, and 3 shots of a Monopol mech, 1914 vintage
Posh Projector for Posh People
By the time projectors get to this sort of size and sophistication, my interest is very much on the wane - not really suitable for a bit of fun showing a few reels to a few friends, more high-brow serious. Never really quite understood the point of these. They would never face the sort of daily bashing 35mm machines got, and all this clever advanced engineering has still only a 16mm frame and sound track to work with. What minor increments in performance could be achieved would be totally lost on audiences, anyway. Arm-and-a-leg jobbie, too, I suppose. Pass.
9th March
Don Sykes has sent some pix. Thanks, Don.
First we have the Heurtier Universal, in superb condition, but with the curious feature that the usual slit size adjuster for 9.6/16 sound is absent. The Ernemann Kinox, too, is in splendid condition - I wish mine was half as good. A nice toy 35mm and finally the 200B Scanrite actually fitted to a machine.
5th March
Have added quite a bit more to Pathescope Monthly, in the 9.5 section.
4th March
I am in the process of trying to do a bit of site tidying, mostly taking older stuff from this page and putting it in its proper section. I have also made a Sales, Wanted and Supplies page, where I intend to detail places where you can get stuff, things I want or have for sale, or things like the Cinema Chez Soi DVD's where I can make copies available if anyone wants. Click SW&S for this page.
3rd March
Just to share with you some pix from ebay etc I found interesting.
This is an Oehmichen, 16mm sound.
This is a Cineric 16.
This is a Pathe Pax 16mm
My notes say this is a Debrie Pax. ?
Not sure what this first one is; the last two are a Memel (?) 8mm and a Cinar (?).
27th February
Ian Green found these pix on American ebay, a Victor Home Cinema. A very rare creature, Victor's last attempt to shore up a flagging 28mm market with a cheap machine. It still has an intermittent sprocket, tho'.
23rd February
Continuing
the theme of toys and badging, here is another variant on the Bingoscope theme,
this time called an Astor. It has the added advantage of demonstrating one of
the finest examples of bodgery in its class, with an attempt to fit sprockets
using Meccano(TM) etc. Note how the retaining rollers are
held - TIGHT - against the sprockets (if one can call them that), by a single
spring for both sprockets! The Super Arms are missing but you can see where they
would have fitted and the drive pulley for the take-up.
Being a classy machine, it would have had a condenser lens (removable like B&H
and so, naturally, removed from this one). The chitterling picture shows that, although there
is a bit of casting right where the hole would be for a rear-mounted lamp as in
the Bingoscope and Hunter versions, this has not been bored and we have instead
a lamp mounted on the side. I even have some instructions, which show clearly
how this variant lamp arrangement has simply been added to the basic drawing.
All but the third of these are in Son (ugh!) of Gallery but are repeated here. The first I have been told is a Coronet, the second could be a Dekko and the third is (I think the back is meant to be that colour!), with its a slightly more advanced cousin at 4, then a Bing and, in yet another slight variation, a Bingoscope.
I actually ran some film thru the Coronet, using a 12v 10w QI lamp. Very dim picture, and the take-up kept pulling the film out of rack, there being not even the slight restraint offered by the sprung guide of a basic Baby.
22nd February
Not
a lot happening on the cine front at present in view of major works on the
domestic front - new
conservatory and replacement of all internal doors. Have done a bit of tidying
up, tho', and found a Bingoscope lurking. You don't have to look that closely to
see it's the same as the Hunter (or vice versa), whatever the label says. I
wonder if there was a Gamages version? Has anyone got a machine of the same
pattern but yet another badge?
Have been playing with an "H", but haven't had time to get it running yet. Hard to know why they seem to have been relatively unsuccessful, despite a good claw (same as Super Vox). The lamp was as usual one of those bastardised Pathescope specials, 80v 100w, with a tiny base and a "T". As I don't think Pathescope even made lamps, I'm not sure why this was of any benefit to them. Did they get batches specially made and then charge the earth via dealers?
Incidentally, I found that the B&H arms were too far out of line for my Home Talkie (see 28th November below), and I have been unable to think of a way to overcome this. So I guess it's back to Plan A. When I can get round to it.
14th February
Here is a Hunter, basically just a toy machine - there is another very much like it, called an Astor and there may be more; it seems to have been a badge engineering or supermarket own brand approach. I have one where someone has added sprockets (!), chain driven from Meccano (TM) sprocket wheel. Actually, better executed it might even have worked. As you can see, it's in pretty good shape. Except that it isn't, as the un-doctored photo shows. It's so easy to do this sort of thing today.
Here is the Rex acquired in France; the Pathé logo on the lamphouse and the Rex badge on the front are about the only differences from the Eumigs. (See Eumig Super in Son (ugh!) of Gallery). More badge engineering. Also a couple of pages from the instructions - rest still in progress, and in French, so I doubt you're that interested.
And my 8mm-converted-to 9.5 (by Colin Loffler) Specto. It performs very well; the only slight hitch I have found is that the 9.5 framing needs to be at one end of the available adjustment. This means that when I want to open the lens housing to clean the gate, I have to slack off the framing a bit before the thing will open, and re-adjust afterwards. But the light output with original lamp is excellent.
A comparison of the standard 9.5mm Motocamera with the Rural 17.5mm Motocamera. It seem that precisely the same mech was used, all the extra thickness going to the opposite side.
8th February
This is a superb pic, courtesy Ron Ashton.
5th February
I have finally finished re-commissioning my 16mm Rural and it works just fine. If one was to use it, there are various improvements it needs, eg shorter throw lens (one fitted is 100mm) and more light (tho' the Vox lamp works fine), but I plan to do these to the 17.5 version if I can get it converted. I do have lenses that will fit the barrel, but they come nowhere near being able to focus. It's a crude but solidly-built machine, obviously intended for heavy use in the French countryside. Here are pix. Sorry about the pink background, but it's the colour of my cinema. It's called bull's blood, tho' I think bordello red might be a better description. It was as near as I could get to real cinema colour, and it had to be very dark to avoid reflections lighting the whole place up.
You will note it has rather limited spool capacity - that bottom spool is 1000'. I suppose that's what you would expect from a 17.5 machine. One can only assume they ran them in pairs, maybe even with some lash-up changeover unit, almost certainly using just the one amp. Threading thru the sound head is tricky, tho' it was probably easier on 17.5
Anyway, the main event outside that was a trip to what may be Europe's largest film fair at Argenteuil, near Paris (see the next issue of Flickers for more info). I scored heavily on the 17.5 front - a 17.5mm camera, in its case, with 3 loaded chargers of film and the instructions, together with a silent Rural (Rex) projector (from which someone has swiped the tranny, tho' that's not a problem). Separately I got a rewinder complete with a robust-looking silent splicer, and 7 reels of French sound film. The rarest thing was a folio-size volume of posters, advertising the "programmes" (main feature, cartoon or comedy, documentary or Pathé Revue) or packages in which Pathé Rural provided material to the proprietors of the small local 17.5 cinemas. There are over 100; here are a couple as a taster - eventually I shall need to scan them all, but Argenteuil took better part of a week out of my life and I am even further behind than usual.
This is the first information I have ever seen about French silent 17.5.
The Rural/Rex projector is in fact slightly different from my made-up one; for one thing, it has a lens with a smaller barrel and a throw of 50mm. When I have time, I shall do pix.
20th/21st January
I thought I would prove my point about a Sound Rural just being a silent Rural or Rex with a soundhead added.
I thought that, while I was assembling a 16mm Rural, I might as well assemble it as a Rex along the way. Please excuse some rough edges to these pix; I had a very untidy background for these shots and I've been playing with removing it to various levels. Note on the back there are two small round knobs; one controls the lamp output, the other is not connected at all. Obviously, the original Rex had an ordinary series wound motor, controlled by this knob. Just add the sound unit, an induction motor with condenser and voilà! A Rural! This could explain why the Rex/silent Rural itself is so rare - they all got converted. One wonders if, like the Vox, the conversion was in mind right from the start. You can compare the above with the Rex pictures in Big Brother 1. I must say, I do think it's a very clever adaptation, pre-planned or not.
The lamphouse on these machines worries me. The lamp would be 200 or 300 watts, which is what is marked on the ammeter dial. It burned upside down, like the Vox, but must have been very slim, because there is very little room between the mirror and the condenser lens. In fact, now I've actually looked, it IS a Vox lamp - same pin arrangement and the filament seems to be in the right place. I tested the voltage, but without load the lowest I got with the lamp control turned right down was 17.5v. Unwilling to risk a rare Vox lamp, I used a QI 15v 150w and, under load, the voltage fell to a much more reasonable 13.7 or thereabouts. So if I turn up the lamp control a bit, I should get exactly 15v at the 200w point on the ammeter. Don't want to try the Vox lamp until I have the motor and fan connected, too. Interesting that the Rural with Vox-type lamp was meant to be able to handle audiences of 3 or 4 hundred (it has a 100mm lens). Was there a different lamp with a different filament layout? Obviously, the same layout would not be as effective for both 17.5 and 9.5 (especially the even smaller 9.5 sound image). Maybe their eyes were just better in those days. And as I recall, when Vox lamps were re-manufactured at some point, there was a simplified filament pattern. I find these odd little byways curiously fascinating.
Been working on the soundhead too. This is on the crowded top of my workbench and I have cropped off extraneous material. You can see all the salient features. The sound telescope is just lying there; it fits to the unpainted area. The original sound system was of course a photocell, plus a mirror, highly reminiscent of the Pax. The mirror is the little silver thing, bottom right. It fitted into the little black dome-shaped thing just left of it, which in turn fitted to the main body with the dome protruding into the hollow end of the sound drum. I have made instead a little bracket (seen above the mirror) and fixed a solar cell thing to it using my liquid rubber insulating stuff. The wires from this will be soldered to the wire sticking out of the main body (the wire will have to go out thru the hole opposite the end of the sound drum), then the dome has to be mounted in place and the end cap (square thing, lower left inside the armoured wire loop) put on. To minimise alteration, I have simply soldered the wire to the pins of the photocell mount and, at the other end of the armoured cable, added a phono socket to an existing hole and connected the existing wires to that. It means the machine could be very simply re-fitted with a photocell if desired.
12th January
Here is a classic example for you of just how NOT to do it. A while ago, I acquired a (second) Siemens 16mm pre-war silent projector. They made several variations on the them, including both claw and beater mechanisms and 9.5, 16 and dual models. My first was a beater 16, this second is a claw 16. The problem with the second machine was that when switched on, the lamp lit but there was no sign whatever of life from the motor. On examination, the mech proved to be pretty stiff, and oiling and running the machine with a drill/driver attached to a conveniently-accessible end of the motor shaft did not help. So I gradually took more and more bits of, trying to find where the stiffness originated. I think this was the first big mistake; attacking the job piecemeal with no clear idea of what I was going to do or how far I was going to dismantle. The second was relying far too much on memory. In the good old days, I could expect a fair degree of recall of how a projector was put together, even after a gap of several months. I did actually label most, but not all, of the wires I disconnected, but the problem is, I can no longer understand some of the things I wrote on the labels.
So, let this be a lesson to me and to you to work always in an organised way, with photo's, plans, sketches, diagrams and whatever (assuming you don't have a workshop manual), so that you don't face the task I had with this machine. I dismantled it ages ago; I've been putting off rebuilding it partly because I had found no solution, partly because it was very fiddly and partly because I knew I hadn't got good enough records of how to.
It was
Paul
Schimmel who put me on the right path. I had had to remove the motor, because
there was no other way to uncouple it from the mech to see where the problem
was, and it was the motor itself that was the problem. I had spotted that the
brushes seemed to be at an odd angle to the commutator, but was then stuck. Paul
spotted it was Mazak distortion, loosened one of the screws holding the motor
and lo! - the mech freed up. Some considerable time had already elapsed, and I
continued to prevaricate until the other day. I finally got it back together and
wired up as best I could in line with this wiring diagram. I have marked with a
? the connections I'm not really sure of.
However, perhaps my crowning folly was with the reversing switch. I didn't think it through, and just assumed that, in neutral, the motor would not run and, as shown in my wiring sketch, there should be no electrical contact made. What I subsequently came to realise was that the motor could not stop on neutral as the lamp would still be on and there was a mechanical linkage as well to the reversing lever that took care of that side of things. So I had needlessly bent the contacts, with no idea now of how they had been originally. I tried the projector, but I got no lamp even and still nothing from the motor. All I got was a red-hot glow from some thin windings at the lower end of the internal resistance, which may or may not have been there before. I wasn't too surprised the motor wouldn't work; even if I got the wiring right, it may well have been burnt out long before I got it. And the wires from the motor are single-core and therefore stiff; I may well have damaged them. Ron Ashton (Siemens Guru) tells me this Mazak business is a known problem with these machines and can readily cause them to be scrapped. Anyone need some spares?
Not, I think you will agree, my finest hour.
I have copied this to the 16mm Silent section and added some photo's there. You will also find there some more on the Zeiss machine I described in the restoration section.
15th November
In response to popular demand, Flickers has changed its overseas sub rates to £15 Europe and £20 rest of world.
7th November
Frame Enlargements
This is something I have never been able to achieve
satisfactorily. I have been helping Pat Moules look at this issue to try to get
good material for Flickers. He has been to the Welsh National Film Archive, who
produce superb results using a (heavily adapt
ed)
thing called an Illumitrans, now unavailable new. On spec, he bought a Veho, a
bang up-to-the-minute mini-scanner, 5m mega pixel, USB 2 connection. As you can
see, it's a tiny little thing, only 6 inches high.
You
insert slides or negs (35 of course) into the special carriers - this is the
slide one. You can just see in it a bit of 17.5, which produced very good
results. This one was sourced from Mediawales, who have
an ebay shop and are very helpful.
The problem is, the only way to use the Veho is to cut film into bits that will fit into the carriers, as they slide into a central slot, making it impossible to use a section of a reel of film. I have been able to adapt the Veho (details on request, or maybe even without) so as to get the carrier in from the front, so you can wind a film to the right place, put the carrier (which also has to be adapted) around a stretch of film, and then insert the carrier into the machine.
Above you see the raw 17.5 scan, then cropped and converted to greyscale, then 28mm, then 9.5. All of these were produced by cutting film, done before modifying the Veho. The 28 is less good, I think because of the condition and curl of the film. The 9.5 is disappointing - again, only a tatty bit of film ( I'm not going to cut up good stuff, am I?) and possibly bowed a bit and it may be that emulsion up or down makes a difference. Experiments continue.
These are with the fully modified set-up. Shots are from Calling Paul Temple, far too much of which takes place in Stygian gloom. No.2 is emulsion up - not a lot in it, seems to me.
28th October
FLICKERS
Flickers is back, with issue 121 just released. Right up to his death, Gerald McKee had been hoping to produce just one more issue, but time and age defeated him. However, he had prudently asked Patrick Moules to be ready to take over editorship, and Issue 121 is the first result. Cannot praise it too highly, as I write for it, but I would urge everyone who cares about cine to take out a subscription. We have very few magazines, and their hold on life is tenuous, as the demise of ACE showed. They need all the support they can get. Flickers is good value at £10 for 4 issues per year; send a sub via PayPal to Terry Nunn at tnunn@f2s.com. Sadly, it costs a lot more to send overseas; £20 to Europe and £30 to rest of world. (Since reduced to £15 and £20 respectively).
Have tidied up a couple more Duplex blueprints, so have decided to have a special section.
Have added a few more pix to the Joinville equipment page.
10th October
A
while ago, I bought a very basic device for folding metal. It is exceeding
useful, as any other way I have ever tried to fold metal has just resulted in a
mess. My most recent piece is a cover for a B&H transistor amplifier, which I
want to use as a stand-alone, so can't leave it bare. The construction method is
crude but functional. But I have no instructions or diagrams and it don't work
and I have no idea why. Later, I found it was just a matter of shorting two pins
in a weird plug on the back.
26th September
Surely, you think, this time the aliens must have got him and destroyed his mind with their vile experiments? But no, here I am, like the proverbial mad penny, turning up again just when you thought it was safe to go on the internet. What then, you ask, has he been doing during this unprecedentedly long silence?
I've also been on holiday for a fortnight, assisted in a modest way with the re-launch of Flickers (New Flickers, as in New Labour?) and scanned into my computer the whole of the illustrated 1928 Pathé-Baby catalogue (it's in French). I now have the even bigger job of improving all the images to present a pristine version. None of these provide much material for a web-site. Also, of course, the continuing saga of film-checking and writing inflammatory articles for Group 9.5 mag. Some have already said to me that I should bear in mind the age of the films. My answer has two "l"'s; without bad projectors (Kid and similar) and even worse projectionists, films are easily capable of lasting 50 plus years in good condition.
16th August
General
I am increasingly convinced that I must find out more about amplifiers so that hopefully I may one day be able to fix some of them myself. So I have been trying to find books etc on valve amplifiers, of which basically even the youngest examples in projectors are around 50 years old in both design and manufacture. Difficult to find books on this as you can't define titles. I may have to go to Hay-on-Wye and trawl thru the second-hand bookshops. There are one or two modern books, but they do persist in trying to tell you about the theory, when what I want to know is the practise. If anyone out there has books to spare or titles to suggest, I should be most grateful.
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