CinemaGear

I know I said last week that this new Pathe camera was going to be a future project, but before I could safely put it away, I needed to mitigate as much of the corrosion of the brass parts as possible to prevent any further decay. When I brought the camera over the bench to examine it, I noticed a few things. First, there is a lot of green corrosion on almost every single brass part on the camera. Fortunately, the vast majority of the steel internal parts are in good condition, with a few exceptions. I cleaned most of the steel internal parts with WD40, and then lubricated them all with a light camera oil. The brass parts were soaked in a solution of distilled vinegar, flour, and salt to clean away the corrosion. Then all of these parts were soaked again in a solution of distilled water and baking soda, then washed once more in distilled water. More cleanup will be done to all of these parts when I get into the actual restoration process, but this will do for now. The one part I was not able to save was the f-stop witness ring, where the corrosion had already eaten through the enamel coating. Second, I saw that someone had clearly tried to pick this camera up by one of the magazines, and in the process, tore off the wood that holds the light trap on the bottom of that magazine. All of the bits and pieces were still there, so I was able to glue everything back together. The camera also arrived with this interesting matte box that I had never seen before. It looks homemade to me, and features a cylinder that attaches to the threads on the lens dust cover, and then the body of the matte box slides onto the cylinder. I cleaned that off as well. That is all the work I have time to do on it for right now, so in the meantime, it is sitting in the showroom, waiting its turn. ln.run/gUTgD #CinemaGear #pathe #35mm #cameras

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3 days ago | [YT] | 0

CinemaGear

My apologies for the delay, I know that I promised that the ARRI S cables would be back in stock a couple of weeks ago, but I had some unexpected difficulties, mostly in sourcing materials. The copper I use to make the contacts became unexpectedly unavailable and much more expensive, so a workaround had to be devised. Different size copper tubing had to be ordered, a new machining process had to be figured out, and all of that just ate up a lot of time. Glad to say that I was able to assemble the cables and they are actually available now. In the meantime, I also took in another orphaned camera, this wonderfully complete Pathe wooden hand-cranked camera. It has a lot of corrosion and crusty parts, and it’s going to take an enormous amount of work to get back in shooting condition, but that will be a project for the future. #CinemaGear #arri #16mm #arriS #cameras #arriflex #pathe ln.run/XkpGZ

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1 week ago | [YT] | 0

CinemaGear

As I was going through my inventory of Arriflex 400’ magazines, I noticed that quite a few of them suffer from a missing or severely damaged “title block” (as the ARRI parts breakdown identifies it), you know, that silver piece in the middle of the magazine door. In the past, I have either painted over it, or ignored it, but with the advent of two color 3D printing, it occurred to me that I could print a nice looking replacement part for the magazines I have in stock. I also thought, if this is a problem I have, other people might also have the same problem. Originally I was only planning to make these for myself, but I wondered if I should print up some extras and offer them for sale? Let me know. ln.run/acMyC #CinemaGear #arri #arriflex #arri2c #arri35

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 2

CinemaGear

A couple of weeks ago, I got a phone call from a client who said he had a vintage wooden tripod. He was nice enough to come visit with the tripod, and at first glance I was not sure exactly what it was. I decided to buy it anyway and try to figure out what it was. Meanwhile, Erin was doing inventory and happened to notice the Wall camera we have currently sitting in the showroom with an Akeley Gyro Tripod under it. It looked suspiciously like this new tripod was an Akeley Gyro Tripod that someone had disassembled and put back together upside down so they could mount this Ries Model A Photo Plane Tilt Head to the underside of the bowl. A strange choice, but I hope it served them well. As I took it apart to put it back together correctly, I noticed sadly that they had cut some big grooves out of the bowl. But, I was able to successfully put it back together in the correct orientation, and there is plenty of material left for it to be a working tripod. I have a couple of Akeley Gyro Heads on hi-hats, so I pulled one out, put the gyro head on the tripod, and indeed, it is a perfect match. The tripod is filthy, so it desperately needs to be taken completely back apart and deeply cleaned, stabilized, and reassembled, but at least now it is a mystery no more. I will also need to make it a pan handle at some point. I will show you more of this interesting gyro head as I continue to work on it. ln.run/oMk3F #CinemaGear #akeley #gyrotripod #tripod

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3 weeks ago | [YT] | 3

CinemaGear

I sold out of the most recent batch of my custom ARRI 16 S power cables and I am hard at work on printing and assembling a new batch. They should be ready late next week. ln.run/YmEep #CinemaGear #arri #16mm #arriS #cameras #arriflex

1 month ago | [YT] | 1

CinemaGear

A short one today as my battle with Twentieth Century-Fox Cine Simplex camera sn. 105 rages on. The folks who designed this amazing camera went way out of their way to isolate as many things as possible from the housing of the camera to prevent noise and vibration from escaping the camera box. The components that drive the shutter, the sprocket, and the movement consist of four main parts. First in line is the sprocket drive gear box. Next, separated by an isolation coupling, is the gear box that drives the movement. That gear box also contains the isolation mount that turns the shutter. The shutter itself is housed on its own machined casting with an isolation coupling on its drive component that mates to the gear box that drives the movement. The issue I am having, as I don’t have fixtures to set this up, is getting the two isolation mounts between the shutter and the movement gear box to be in perfect alignment. While I have everything running relatively smoothly, there is still a point as the shutter rotates where there is a little bit more friction than there should be. This is a problem because the motor wouldn’t see a constant load as it operates the camera, and an intermittent load would translate to a problem keeping the camera in sync. The battle here is, I have to remove a lot of components every time I think I have found part of the problem, adjusting what I think the problem is, and then reassembling everything. I will get there eventually. ln.run/Lpuyt #CinemaGear #TwentiethCenturyFox #FoxCineSimplex #cameras #35mm

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1 month ago | [YT] | 1

CinemaGear

My work on Twentieth Century-Fox Cine Simplex camera #105 continues on, this time with reinstalling the sprocket, the film keepers, the buckle trips, and starting to reinstall the movement. One of the interesting notes is how the movement is installed in this camera. There is another set of steel plates that are laminated to what looks like it might be rubber, but I couldn’t tell for sure, and I am not going to take a chance on delaminating it to find out. This is another one of the engineer's ingenious isolation devices. It isolates the movement from the midrib, I think in a very clever way. One of the plates bolts to the midrib, the movement bolts to the second plate, and the rubber isolation material between the two plates holds the movement rigidly in place while keeping it from making direct contact with the midrib. This keeps the noise and vibration generated by the movement from being transmitted out of the camera box. I can’t complete the installation of the movement until I have repaired the remaining shutter drive assembly isolation mount, and reinstalled the shutter drive assembly. In the meantime, I reinstalled the sprocket, the upper and lower film keepers, and the upper and lower buckle trip levers. Unlike in a Mitchell camera, the Fox camera has a buckle trip lever at both the top and bottom of the film path. Both operate a single buckle switch by means of a mechanical linkage. My replacement leather and adhesive have arrived, so I should be able to complete that portion of the repair in the coming days. ln.run/pDa3u #CinemaGear #TwentiethCenturyFox #FoxCineSimplex #cameras #35mm

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1 month ago | [YT] | 1

CinemaGear

Despite my grand ambitions of assembling the main drive components and reinstalling the movement in this Twentieth Century-Fox Cine Simplex camera, sn. 105, I was stopped by one of those silly little things that stops so many projects. Last week I mentioned the steel plates sandwiched around a piece of leather that work as a sound isolation mount between the shutter drive assembly and the midrib of the camera. These isolation mounts are the attachment points that physically hold the shutter drive assembly to the camera’s midrib. The isolation mounts also help minimize the noise and vibrations of the shutter drive assembly from being transmitted out of the camera box. One of the two isolation mounts for the shutter drive assembly became delaminated, and the leather so saturated with decades of oil, that it could not be cleaned and rebonded. So this silly little problem stopped this reassembly until I can acquire a new piece of leather and the correct adhesive to proceed. I was able to get the sprocket drive assembly lubricated and mounted back on the midrib. So, some progress! While I wait for necessary materials, my plan is to work on the sprocket, keepers, and buckle trips. ln.run/gzp4B #CinemaGear #TwentiethCenturyFox #FoxCineSimplex #cameras #35mm

1 month ago | [YT] | 0

CinemaGear

A friend of mine brought this Twentieth Century-Fox Cine Simplex Camera to me well over a year ago to see if it could be cleaned up and restored to working condition. I have been busy with many other projects, so I am just now getting to it. The camera appears to have been neglected and improperly stored for some time before he rescued it, so there was some corrosion present on several of the drive components. This looked far worse than it turned out to be, happily. To this point, the camera has been completely disassembled and the movement, the sprocket, the keepers, and all of the major components of the film path have been repaired, cleaned, and lubricated. My focus at the moment is to clean and restore the gear assembly that runs the sprocket, the gear assembly that runs the shutter, and the unique mounting solutions that the engineers chose for these components. My first assumption when I looked at how things were mounted inside the camera was that everything was mounted on rubber isolation mounts. But I was wrong. The clever solution the engineers found here was to make a sandwich of two steel plates with a piece of thick leather glued between them, and all the components were then mounted to the outside steel plate, isolating them for sound purposes, but being much more rigid than a rubber interface. There is a whole lot more stuff that I will share in the future, but that was the most interesting thing I discovered this past week while I was de-rusting and de-greasing these components. This is another camera that looked far worse that it actually was, and it should be back to shooting film over the next few weeks. ln.run/aaPwa #CinemaGear #TwentiethCenturyFox #FoxCineSimplex #cameras #35mm

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2 months ago | [YT] | 0

CinemaGear

Back in stock! I think I mentioned last week how hot it has been here, so I wasn’t doing anything too strenuous. Well, it’s still hot and humid this week, but I sat down in the air conditioning to finish the restock of ARRI 2B/2C power adapters. I had 3D printed enough shells to make 25 of the standard big pin/little pin adapters, and had enough room on the build plate to print 5 for the big pin/big pin adapters. Last week, I machined a majority of the copper connectors, but I ran out of material to make the full 30 units. The assembly is a straightforward process that starts with trimming the copper connectors, ultrasonically cleaning them, soldering on the wires, adding heat shrink tubing, aligning and pressing the copper connectors into the 3D printed shells, stripping and soldering those leads to the 4-pin XLR connector, adding more heat shrink tubing, and finally assembling the completed adapter. After a quick test on an ARRI 2C, the adapter is complete. I am still waiting for my shipment of XLR connectors and copper bar, but I have 9 of the standard big pin/little pin adapters and 5 of the big pin/big pin adapters available immediately. ln.run/osUFg #CinemaGear #arri #arriflex

2 months ago | [YT] | 0