The starting point to restore Mitchell Standard #46 is to determine exactly what and how much material was removed from the original casting. The problem with this particular camera is that the previous owner machined away all of the material that registered the dovetails, the rackover registration plate, and the rack gears that slid the […]
Assessing the Damage: Mitchell Standard sn. 46 Read More »
Now that the Fox Cine Simplex camera is finished, it is time to take up another long-term restoration project. I won’t be working on this one full time, as there is much other work to be done, but it is finally time to begin bringing Mitchell Standard sn. 46 back to life. In its previous
A New Project Begins: Mitchell Standard sn.46 Read More »
The Twentieth Century-Fox Cine Simplex camera represented a revolutionary change in the design and intended use of a studio sound production camera. From its inception, this camera was designed specifically to be sound silent without the added size and weight of a blimp housing. To achieve this, the camera’s designers rethought everything about how the
Fox Cine Simplex Now Available! Read More »
I have come as close to completion on the Fox Cine Simplex as time allows. This camera is 95% complete and in good working order, with the exception of a few parts that make the automatic slater and follow focus units work. Some of the parts that attach the automatic slater to the camera are
An End of the Journey, and Some Reflections Read More »
Some time back, we acquired some military surplus Mitchell KF8 camera bodies and accessories. Only one of the cameras was complete, but each camera arrived with a case of 3 to 6 lenses in giant housings. Upon further inspection, we discovered that these were mostly Bausch & Lomb Baltar 50mm, 100mm, and 152mm lenses, along
A Bounty of Baltars Read More »
The camera is all back together and, as you’ll see in the video, it is amazingly quiet. I hope you will forgive the road noise in the background, but frankly I just couldn’t drag the camera back upstairs where it is quieter. At the end of the video is a demonstration of the unique rackover
A Penultimate Update on the Fox Camera Read More »
My disappointment was palpable, though not unexpected, when I turned the camera on for the first time and heard the terrible sound of the shutter scraping against the innards of the camera. The journey now returned to taking the camera apart again, and removing the camera from the rackover cradle so I could get to
Oxidation Troubles with the Fox Camera Shutter Read More »
After powering up and running the camera for only a few seconds, I noticed that the camera was producing a horrible scraping noise. The noise was very similar to what you get on a Mitchell camera when the shutter blades scrape against the forward-most light trap. This, unfortunately, was a sign that I needed to
Not So Silent, Silent Camera Read More »
New This Week: An Angenieux 25-250mm T3.9 zoom lens in Arriflex Standard mount with the bracketry for a J4 zoom motor. I may have to pull a J4 out of my parts inventory and fit it to this lens. https://bit.ly/3qCzlg7
Angenieux Zoom Lens Read More »
While I was struggling this week with a strange shutter noise on the Fox camera, I helped a private collector from back East to transfer these two amazing cameras to another private collector here in Los Angeles. The first camera is a 1910 Debrie Le Parvo Special, which is unique in that the camera housing
Two Beautiful Hand-Crank Cameras, ca. 1910 Read More »
