When I first got this camera and ran it, everything seemed good, and I had previously used the camera on a Steadicam for a feature film I shot, and all seemed good then as well. Then I had to go spoil everything by trying to check the flange focal depth. This is where it all went wrong. The flange focal depth was off by almost two thousandths of an inch which is totally unacceptable. Not sure how we got such good footage when we shot with the camera before. As I looked at how the ARRI B mount is installed on this camera, there was no easy way to pull the lens mount off the midrib without taking the whole camera apart. Alas.
I’ve never taken a BL 2 apart before, but there’s a first time for everything. With much internal grumbling, I began the disassembly process and have learned the BL 2 is a little more difficult to take apart than the BL 4. All that said, I could only get as far as taking the midrib out of the housing and mounting it on the test stand. While the BL 2 is completely disassembled,there are four things that need to be addressed: the flange focal depth has to be set, the upper lens lock seems to be missing its spring, I will do a durometer test on all of the belts, and I will re-lubricate all the bearings and moving parts. I’ll be digging into that next week.
