[Konvas] Sound Barneys

[Peter Haas]

The first, and for about thirty years the only, blimpless, totally  
silent production camera -- the Fox Studio Camera. This camera also  
introduced the Bausch & Lomb Baltar series of production lenses, and,  
much latter, in 1953, the Bausch & Lomb Series I and Series II  
CinemaScope adapters, and, in 1954, the Bausch & Lomb "combined"  
CinemaScopes.

This example is a rare one: a Fox-designed fluid head is being  
employed instead of the usual Worrall Gear Corp geared head, and a  
Cretien anamorphic lens is being employed for CinemaScope. The  
Cretien lenses were discarded after the first three CinemaScope  
pictures were completed, to be replaced by the Type I (B&L, Cretien  
formula, anamorphic). The Type II introduced the B&L formula anamorphic.

This camera is one of twenty which Fox commissioned to be built by  
Cine Simplex (no relation to the Simplex projector company) in the  
late 1930s.

Whenever this camera is seem with a barney over the magazine, it is  
not for the purposes of noise reduction, as this camera is blimpless  
and noiseless. Rather, it is for reasons of thermal insulation, to  
prevent the raw stock from overheating in the direct sunlight.

This camera was intended for sound shooting, only, and it had a 230  
volt, three-phase, 48 Hz, 1440 rpm synchronous/interlock motor, but  
could also be operated from 96 volts dc. When operated from dc, the  
camera's motor supplied 230 volts, three-phase ac to the sound  
recorder. The camera's motor and the shaft which ran the length of  
the camera were one in the same, and the camera's shutter was  
directly driven. The pin-registered movement and the film drive  
sprocket were driven from the main shaft through right-angle gears,  
the only gears in the camera.

Unlike most contemporary cameras, of which the Mitchell would be the  
prime example, the pin-registered movement did not employ the  
traditional sinusoidal movement of the various intermittent parts.  
Rather, accelerations and decelerations were employed within the  
movement to reduce, actually to eliminate, noise. It is still a cam- 
operated movement, however, but the cams were specially shaped to  
avoid abrupt changes in the physical position of the parts. Modern  
railroads have been using this technique for a century or more, in  
which case it is called an "easement". In the instant example, the  
movement components are "eased" into their changing path.

Photo courtesy of Marty Hart.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Fox Studio Camera.jpg
Type: application/applefile
Size: 9462 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://konvas.org/pipermail/cinema_konvas.org/attachments/20090904/87f068b9/attachment-0001.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Fox Studio Camera.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 90113 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://konvas.org/pipermail/cinema_konvas.org/attachments/20090904/87f068b9/attachment-0001.jpg>