Filmwasters
Which Board? => Main Forum => Topic started by: hookstrapped on July 30, 2017, 05:43:28 PM
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Robot Star 50 starts at 0:36
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAhnHoBq2kU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAhnHoBq2kU)
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"Sharpness is a bourgeois concept".
But I love Rosie.......... :D
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Here's mine that I recently dug out of the camera cupboard
(https://imageproxy.viewbook.com/4672/dfd270bba22a74dd34cb996f8ded27ca_hd.jpg?fit=max&h=1280&w=500)
And here's a test gif
(https://gifyu.com/images/Bc23d4.gif) (https://gifyu.com/image/zqxE)
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Does seem to work pretty darn fine.
I've never handled one but I wonder if the winding is smooth when you press the button?
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Does seem to work pretty darn fine.
I've never handled one but I wonder if the winding is smooth when you press the button?
Yeah, everything works well. The auto-advance is pretty noisy but works smoothly. I was wondering about the shutter speeds, but when Satish and I tested it (unscrewed the lens, opened the back) it looked ok, i.e., 1/8 was open longer than 1/500. These are overexposed a bit shooting at 1/60 but that could just my metering being off shooting against the sky.
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Haw fast can you shoot with it? I have a few auto winders for SLR's that will shoot faster than one per second.
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I just shot 26 frames in 10 seconds
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I just shot 26 frames in 10 seconds
So you can shoot a whole roll of film in about 15 seconds, that's pretty good film wasting.
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It's a square so actually you get around 50 frames. So 20 seconds
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What I like about square format 35mm is that the film is longer than regular 35mm but not eternal like half frame ;D
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Agreed, 50's great. On half frame I always take two pics of everything anyway.
Always loved and wanted a Robot, but pricey, settled for a Tenax for nice 24x24.
The face that the Robot is tiny yet over half a kilo too is crazy, I wonder if the bend light and cause inadvertent black holes if not handled correctly ?
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;D
One thing's for sure, you definitely get your money's worth with them... maybe they should start selling cameras by weight!
The Robot cameras have a very special role in history. When I think they were used in espionage and surveillance, you start to get the point why they are so overengineered.
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(http://www.ukcamera.com/classic_cameras/cameras/Vrobot.jpg)
Reading the wiki on Robots and discovered it has a rotary shutter, like cine cameras. Makes sense, I guess
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It really does make a lot of sense.
Rotary shutters are extremely fast and reliable. They're the simplest thing that would survive the burst rate this camera does. When you consider the limited advanced alloy knowledge they had at the time the camera was engineered, it probably was the best solution.
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From what I read on Camerapedia it looks like it has variable shutter speeds (1/4 to 1/500). Bolex made some movie cameras that had a variable rotary shutter to give faster shutter speeds. In order to keep the frame rate the same the shutter wheel closed the pie shaped wedge opening. You would be limited to how slow you could make it because of the frame rate. You could only increase the shutter speed from it's normal which was about 1/48 on an 8mm camera. It was only really useful for doubling the shutter speed. This one looks like it must change the rate that the shutter rotates to vary the shutter speed. Does it use a claw mechanism to advance the film like a movie camera or just rotate a cog like a normal camera?
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From what I read on Camerapedia it looks like it has variable shutter speeds (1/4 to 1/500). Bolex made some movie cameras that had a variable rotary shutter to give faster shutter speeds. In order to keep the frame rate the same the shutter wheel closed the pie shaped wedge opening. You would be limited to how slow you could make it because of the frame rate. You could only increase the shutter speed from it's normal which was about 1/48 on an 8mm camera. It was only really useful for doubling the shutter speed. This one looks like it must change the rate that the shutter rotates to vary the shutter speed. Does it use a claw mechanism to advance the film like a movie camera or just rotate a cog like a normal camera?
Yup, it varies shutter speed by varying the speed of the rotation. I read that they had some difficulty finding the right material that was light enough but stiff enough to work. Also read that (at least on the original model) it could shoot 4 fps "after lots of practice". I need more practice!
It doesn't have a claw mechanism, it has a rotating sprocket like a regular still camera.
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When you think about it, it still is pretty amazing when you think how long it took modern cameras to reach that level of performance!
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I think a lot of us really appreciate the mechanical complexity of older analog cameras. I used to really be into cars and through that I am quite an italophile, which led to my fascination with Ducati motorcycle engines. They have desmodromic valves, i.e., valves that are both opened and closed by positive cam-actuated action, rather than like every other internal combustion engine that opens valves positively but uses springs to close the valves. At very high engine speeds, valves have the potential to "float", i.e., not close all the way, which along with springs failing at high speeds is why desmodromic valves were invented (though not sure really how necessary they are since Honda and Kawasaki seem to do okay without them). Stuff is happening so fast, it boggles the mind. At 9,000 rpm (if I have this right), each valve opens and closes 75 times per second. High speed movie cameras are in the same class of amazing mechanical speed for me. I don't understand why stuff doesn't just blow up more often
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It's crazy that a film camera could do 18,000 fps without the film disintegrating. They were able to go that fast with a design that didn't stop the film for each frame otherwise they would have shredded the sprocket holes.
https://petapixel.com/2013/08/20/blast-from-the-past-18000fps-high-speed-photography-in-the-1960s/ (https://petapixel.com/2013/08/20/blast-from-the-past-18000fps-high-speed-photography-in-the-1960s/)
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Yeah, the Fastax cameras were pretty insane. And there were other designs that were even wilder.
Like the drum cameras where the film was rolled in a spiral onto a drum, then the whole shabang was accelerated to insane speeds and let to fly across the film gate. And there were electronic shutters, high speed strobe shutters.
Edgerton invented most of this stuff.
And then there were the solid state shutters used in the 50's to take pictures of nukes on 8x10 sheet film at 1/1,000,000th of a second.............
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I ran this old film on my desk through my Robot, so there are some doubles in there on top of the usual mess
(https://gifyu.com/images/bx_small.gif) (https://gifyu.com/image/zOAV)