History
One of the first motion-picture film cameras, if not the first at all, was designed by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It still exists with the National Media Museum, England. Le Prince employed paper bands and celluloïd film from John Carbutt and or Blair & Eastman in 1¾ inch width.
Another pioneer is William Green of Bristol, England. In 1888-89 he had an A. Légé built a perforating apparatus in order to prepare paper film for his camera.
Georges Demenÿ, employee with Etienne Jules Marey, constructed the Beater Movement in 1893. The film width is 60 mm.
Max Skladanowsky conceived his own make of camera in 1894-95, but more interesting is his “Bioscop” projector, the first duplex construction in practice. Green, part designer for Prestwich, also designed a duplex projecting machine. This 1896 wide-film projector can be seen at the South Kensington Science Museum.
The Lumière Domitor camera was originated by Charles Moisson, chief mechanic of the Lumière works at Lyon in 1894. They shot on paper film of 35 millimeter width. In 1895 the Lumière could buy celluloïd film from New-York’s Celluloid Manufacturing Co. This they covered with their own Etiquette-bleue emulsion, had it cut into strips and perforated. It is not known which recipe they used for positives.
Then an ever increasing number of cine cameras came up. The makes and brands would be: Birt Acres (1894-95), the Latham Eidoloscope by Lauste (1895), the Marvin & Casler Bioscope by Dickson (1895), Pathé frères (1896) with ratchet claws, Prestwich (1896), Newman & Guardia (1896), de Bedts, Gaumont-Démény (1896), Schneider, Schimpf, Akeley, Debrie, Bell & Howell, Leonard-Mitchell, Ertel, Ernemann, Eclair, Stachow, Universal, Institute, Wall, Lytax, and many others.
The first all-metal cine camera is the Bell & Howell Standard of 1911-12. One of the most complicated models is the Mitchell-Technicolor Beam Splitting Three-Strip Camera of 1932. With it, three colour separation originals are obtained behind a purple, a green, and a red light filter, the latter being part of one of the three different raw materials in use. Blue and red light passes a purple filter . . .
Technical details
Basic operation: When the shutter inside the camera is open, the film is illuminated. When the shutter is completely covering the film gate, the film strip is being moved one frame further by one or two claws which advance the film by engaging and pulling it through the perforations.
Most of the optical and mechanical elements of a movie camera are present in the movie projector. The requirements for film tensioning, take-up, intermittent motion, loops, and rack positioning are almost identical. The camera will not have an illumination source and will maintain its film stock in a light-tight enclosure. A camera will also have exposure control via an iris aperture located on the lens. Also, there is a rotating, sometimes mirrored shutter behind the lens, which alternately passes the light from the lens to the film, or reflects it into the viewfinder. The righthand side of the camera is often referred to by camera assistants as "the dumb side" because it usually lacks indicators or readouts and access to the film threading, as well as lens markings on many lens models. More recent equipment often has done much to minimize these shortcomings, although access to the film movement block by both sides is precluded by basic motor and electronic design necessities.
A spring-wound Bolex 16 mm camera
The standardized frame rate for commercial sound film is 24 frames per second. The standard commercial (i.e., movie-theater film) width is 35 millimeters, while many other film formats exist. The standard aspect ratios are 1.66, 1.85, and 2.39 (anamorphic). NTSC video (common in North America and Japan) plays at 29.97 frame/s; PAL (common in most other countries) plays at 25 frame/s. These two television and video systems also have different resolutions and color encodings. Many of the technical difficulties involving film and video concern translation between the different formats. Video aspect ratios are 4:3 for full screen and 16:9 for widescreen.
Multiple cameras
Multiple cameras to take surround images (1900 Cinéorama system, for modern version see Circle-Vision 360°
Multiple synchronized cameras may be used and the films then projected simultaneously, either on a single three-image screen (Cinerama) or upon multiple screens forming a complete circle, with gaps between screens through which the projectors illuminate an opposite screen. (See Circle-Vision 360°.)
Sound synchronization
One of continuing problems in film is synchronizing a sound recording with the film. Most film cameras do not record sound internally; instead, the sound is captured separately by a precision audio device. This is called double-system. The exceptions to this are the single-system news film cameras, which had either an optical --or later-- magnetic recording head inside the camera. For optical recording, the film only had a single perforation and the area where the other set of perforations would have been was exposed to a controlled bright light that would burn a waveform image that would later regulate the passage of light and playback the sound. For magnetic recording, that same area of the single perf 16 mm film that was prestriped with a magnetic stripe. A smaller balance stripe existed between the perforations and the edge to compensate the thickness of the recording stripe to keep the film wound evenly.
The clapper board which typically starts a take is used as a reference point for the editor to sync the picture to the sound (provided the scene and take are also called out so that the editor knows which picture take goes with any given sound take). It also permits scene and take numbers and other essential information to be seen on the film itself. Aaton cameras have a system called AatonCode that can "jam sync" with a timecode-based audio recorder and prints a digital timecode directly on the edge of the film itself. However, the most commonly used system at the moment is unique identifier numbers exposed on the edge of the film by the film stock manufacturer (KeyKode is the name for Kodak's system). These are then logged (usually by a computer editing system, but sometimes by hand) and recorded along with audio timecode during editing. In the case of no better alternative, a handclap can work if done clearly and properly, but often a quick tap on the microphone (provided it is in frame for this gesture) is preferred.
Some cameras have low-accuracy ("non-sync" or MOS) film-advance systems. One of the most common uses of these cameras in commercial films are the spring-wound cameras used in hazardous special effects, known as "crash cams". Scenes shot with these have to be kept short, or resynchronized manually with the sound. MOS cameras are also often used for second-unit work or anything involving variable or non-standard speed filming. Due to their non-sync nature, some designs forgo traditional low-noise considerations for a studio camera and thus are quite noisy.
The most popular 35 mm cameras in use today are Arriflex, Moviecam (now owned by the Arri Group), and Panavision models. For very high speed filming, PhotoSonics are used.
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