May 2022 – CinemaGear

Dykstraflex: Preparing to Service the Camera that Shot the original Star Wars Trilogy

May 26, 2022 / Cameras, Restoration

It’s a little late for Star Wars Day, but we wanted to share this latest project in anticipation of the premiere of “Obi-Wan Kenobi” tomorrow. Previously, in 2019, I completed a major restoration of the Dykstraflex camera crane for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The restored Dykstraflex was prominently displayed at the […]

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The camera setup on the milling machine after all adjustments are complete

The First Step in Setting Mitchell 46 Up for Machining

May 20, 2022 / Cameras, Restoration

Despite my good intentions, replacing the roof on our building interfered tremendously with progress on Mitchell 46 this week. My next step in restoring this camera was to prepare the casting so it can be accurately mounted on the milling machine. There are very few things on the casting that remain true, so the only

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A Pana ARRI 35 II C!

May 17, 2022 / Cameras

A Pana ARRI 35 II C joins our offerings! While we were in the middle of moving from our previous location to our present one, we were offered a collection of cameras and accessories that we never had much of a chance to sort through. This diamond in the rough came to the surface a

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A side-by-side view of a stock Mitchell GC and Mitchell 46 side by side, demonstrating that Mitchell 46 is now nearly returned to its factory dimensions.

Mitchel 46: The Glue Crisis

May 12, 2022 / Cameras, Restoration

In order to move forward with the machine work on the replacement bottom plate for Mitchell 46, the front plate had to be installed so that three important things could be established: First, the proper thickness of the front plate so that the camera will slide freely on the rackover L-base and still light trap.

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Mitchell Standard #46 with its new bottom plate epoxied and screwed into place.

Is This Glue Really Going to Work?

May 6, 2022 / Restoration

After the puzzling and disappointing failure of the Loctite adhesive last week (Loctite has never failed me before!) I went through a process of cleaning and degreasing the camera casting and the replacement bottom plate. I spoke to an adhesive expert, and he recommended 3M’s Scotch Weld 2216 2-part epoxy. The process required 4 arms

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A view of most of the equipment that we have to move out of the warehouse area to assemble and place new shelving units. They are stacked 3 levels high in some places.

Reorganizing, Again . . .

May 4, 2022 / Company Updates

Now that the Showscan cameras and equipment have found a new home, we found ourselves with a lot of much-needed, free space. So the reorganizing began once again! We cleared out a whole section of the warehouse space and acquired new shelving so we could better organize everything. There were sooooo many Mitchell 1000’ magazines

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