I have shown you my recent work repairing the Fries Ultra 70 3×65 IMAX format camera. The owner of this camera doesn’t have lenses that were made specifically for it, but it occurred to me that the lenses that were built for the CP65 Showscan cameras “might” work in this situation. This week I experimented …
And so we come to the end of my project repairing the Fries Engineering Ultra 70 3×65 IMAX-format camera. This project was quite challenging. Coming up with retrofit parts that would preserve the function and integrity of the movement, but still be serviceable in the future, required a lot of careful thought and planning. Because …
Last week’s adventures ended in the machining of a successful replacement hub blank for the Fries Ultra 70 IMAX format camera. This week, I machined the required features onto the hub blank so the flywheel could be permanently mounted to the movement and timed correctly to the shutter drive. The process was straightforward, if a …
Fries Engineering Ultra 70 – Hub Battle, Part Deux Read More »
This week I continued work on the Fries Ultra 70 IMAX format camera. It was mainly a week of head scratching, doodles, starting over, and eventually creating successful parts. As I mentioned last week, my plan is to machine a new flywheel hub that will attach to the movement using the remaining threads on the …
Fries Engineering Ultra 70 – Honing in on a New Hub Read More »
Back in March 2021, I had a chance to evaluate the Fries Engineering version of the IMAX camera to diagnose why it had stopped working. The immediate problem was pretty straight forward: There is a flywheel that is part of the movement, but that also acts as a coupler between the movement and the shutter …
Along with questions about threading a Mitchell camera, I have recently also been getting a number of questions about the proper way to clean and oil the movement in preparation for shooting. This short video demonstrates the method I was taught and have used successfully for many years. I hope it proves a useful resource …
An interesting camera came through my shop for evaluation this week. This is a Fries Engineering Ultra 70 (3 X 65) camera that shoots IMAX 15-perf pull-across 65mm film. I am evaluating what work needs to be done to get it up and running again, but currently it isn’t pulling film. Fascinatingly large and heavy, …
While hard at work on the new website, we have been assembling brief histories of camera manufacturers whose equipment we own. There are several major players in the movie equipment world whose histories are difficult to research. Among those, I was shocked to find that there was no information about Fries Engineering, a major innovator …
