A brief post this week as we have spent much of the last week and a half unburying the collection of my dear friend Ewing Miles “Lucky” Brown. I’m sorry I forgot to take a picture of the disaster that was the storage space where Lucky’s equipment has been living for the past few years, …
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A friend of mine pointed me toward an estate sale of a former USC professor last week and I found a couple of interesting relics that begged me to bring them home. This home in Westwood, CA had the most amazing and eclectic collection of just about anything you could think of, from a player …
As we continue our quest through the backlog of tripods, I happened upon this cute wooden unit that lacks any identifying labels. The wooden legs are robustly made, but the integrated pan/tilt head was clearly designed for a smaller camera. This tripod features a cast aluminum pan/tilt head which is joined to the wooden legs …
As we continue our trek through the forest of tripods, we rediscovered these Peter Lisand studio pedestals and were once again impressed with the engineering that went into designing and building them. A few years back we bought out the remaining inventory of the Peter Lisand Machine Corporation from the daughter of the founder, and …
You know how you have that one thing that you are always meaning to do, but you just never get around to it? And the longer you put it off, the larger the thing gets? Well, tripods have become that thing for me. I keep meaning to make time to photograph them and list them …
Sadly, a former client passed away some time ago and his family asked if I would review his collection and rescue his movie-related gear. This was a wonderful life’s collection of audio, video, and motion picture film equipment. As my focus is only on motion picture film equipment, I dug out a Mitchell tripod, some …
New arrivals: From the Rocco Gioffre collection is a small cache of wonderful items, including some fascinating ancient Cinema Engineering relics I built long ago. In the back row you see a single frame animation motor with a motion control interface box, an RCA friction head with pan handle, some Baltar lenses, some Cooke Speed …
I took some time this week to catch up on a number of smaller projects while I carefully considered what my next step will be on Mitchell #46. Beginning with Mitchell #46 though, I spent a great deal of time considering how to set the camera up so I can begin machining the replacement bottom …
Parvo pan and tilt head restored and waiting for its camera! Now that I’ve had my hands on all the bits and pieces that make this unit pan and tilt, there are still a few very interesting mechanisms that make this head unique. Our 2nd photo shows one of the most interesting assemblies; the jackscrew …
During the disassembly, de-greasing, and reassembly of the Parvo pan tilt head, I was fascinated by the unique anti-backlash adjustment features of the pan and tilt axes. This geared head only tilts down from the horizontal position, an interesting limitation. The hinge point for tilt and the worm gear that operates pan live in the …
