Sunday, June 05, 2005

Ikonoskop A-cam questions, Bolex comparison, etc.

A few things that you won't find on the website ...

The 9mm Kinoptik lens that comes with the camera shows a minimum focus of .25m, or 25 centimeters from the film plane. Although you can twist the focus to less than that. But how much less?

Without a reflex viewfinder, it would be impossible to tell without painstaking tests. If you had ANOTHER camera with a reflex viewfinder, then you would be able to tell.

so that's what I did.

with a Bolex, after verifying that the lens focuses to infinity (so the rear flange is the same), I focused it to the closest, found an image, then measured.

It seems to be about 13cm from the film plane.

Ikonoskop claims 25 rolls before the internal battery dies out. This would be true if shooting at 24fps, and switching the main power OFF between rolls. Not true if you are shooting a) constant high speed, b) time-lapse, c) single frame shooting where the camera is left on for a long time.

In these above cases, the camera seems to last no more than a few hours. If shooting long term time-lapse, use a high capacity external battery, or plug it in.

Du-All camera can reflex the camera http://www.duallcamera.com/

It's a little hard to find, you have to click on Online Store, click on accessories on the side panel, then click on A-cam.

A bit pricey without the viewfinder ($3,500 USD !!), and it takes about a couple of weeks to get done. But I imagine it's well worth it, and the design would be solid. At a total price of around $10K, it would still be the cheapest new super-16 camera you can buy.

A brand new super 16mm bolex, at current conversion rates, would cost about $9,000 USD without a lens. So the price comes out to about the same.

The advantage with the a-cam is you can remove the viewfinder when you want to go total low-mode. It's also an overall lighter camera with a smaller footprint and size.

If anyone out there is an A-cam owner or wants to know more about this little wonder from Ikonoskop, please contact me or the makers at http://www.ikonoskop.com.

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