This post comes a day later than our habit as we have spent much of the last week lifting, carrying, opening, and sorting a treasure trove of Mitchell camera equipment and lenses. (My back does not forgive me for this!) After several days of negotiation, I acquired a storage unit filled with absolutely wonderful movie …
As we wind down 2022 I wanted to revisit some of the highlights of the past year. Starting off the year, we were hard at work bringing the amazing Fox Cine Simplex camera and Freehead Camera Mount back to life: http://bit.ly/3hwC8WC After an in-depth restoration of the Dykstraflex camera crane and trojan head for the …
The other day I was reminiscing with a new client about early motion control cinematography and I happened to mention one of the various versions of video taps that I built long ago. That spurred me to dig this out of storage for a nostalgic look. The concept behind this video tap was not to …
A Look Back: Drop-In Video Tap for Mitchell Standard or GC Read More »
On Mitchell Standards and some early GCs, you could order an option that had a series of gear boxes that would do automatic fade-in/fade-out over a selected number of frames. Mitchell 46 at one time had this option, but the kind folks who tried to reflex it ripped out most of it and disposed of …
Recently, I was contacted by my friend and fellow vintage camera enthusiast Michael Geiger, who had recently acquired Mitchell Standard #125. This camera, like Mitchell 46, had been abused in its previous life. Mitchell 125 was hacked into an animation camera, and whoever did the conversion, removed and discarded most of the original shutter control …
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 …
I have been fortunate enough to find new homes for several Mitchell Standards, GCs, and Fries conversions recently. A common question I get about these cameras is, now that I have it, how do I put film in it? This is a reasonable question. And as I looked around online for a video to demonstrate …
A Basic Guide to Threading a 35mm Mitchell Standard/GC/Fries Mitchell Film Camera Read More »
After winning last week’s struggle with the rear bearing race, I could actually move on to properly aligning the shutter in the camera casting. I hope you will all forgive the tedious details of this process, but it seemed important to me to outline the many steps it took to achieve this. Several things had …
The Long and Winding Road to a Balanced Shutter in Mitchell 46 Read More »
First off, I want to thank everyone for all of the wonderful suggestions they made. All of them were quite good and helpful. Before I had read your suggestions however, I went at this problem with a thread file, honing stones, and lapping compound. After several hours of work, I was able to get the …
Why is it that the jobs that are supposed to be the simplest always turn out to be the most complicated? Thinking that the most labor-intensive part of the restoration of Mitchell 46 was behind me now, I was supposed to be at the point where I reassemble the working components of the camera, set …
