A friend and fellow collector called me and asked about the Mitchell BNC rackover camera that I just acquired (serial #357). So this is the first of the collection I decided to take a look at. Surprisingly, this camera is in remarkably good condition. The camera turns over smoothly, there is little or no rust …
An interesting question was posed recently to the committee I serve on at the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences asking about the history of geared pan/tilt heads. The questioner was only aware of the Worrall geared head, so many of us contributed our experiences with other styles and manufacturers of geared heads that …
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 …
Last month I received two Arri 2B cameras that were converted to 2-perf pull-down Techniscope by my friend Daniil Nevskiy. Sadly, the shutter in one of the cameras was damaged in shipping and needed to be replaced. I was able to source a shutter that was in fair condition as a replacement, so I thought …
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 …
The heart of all motion picture film cameras, like Mitchell Standard 46, is the movement (or film transport). When I hand-cranked this camera for the first time, I noticed a bump or hard spot as I was cranking the camera. As I reinstalled the shutter assembly, I made sure that it was free-wheeling and turned …
With many of the significant hurdles overcome, it was finally time to rough assemble Mitchell 46, put a hand crank on it, and hope that all my work would pay off. Mitchell Standard and GC cameras rely on three gears to control the overall camera timing. These gears keep the film that is being fed …
Hand-Cranked for the First Time in Decades: Mitchell 46 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 …
