photovdz
Well-known
but a movie camera...
I just got my hands on a DITMAR 16mm camera, with a possible american military provenance (supposedly given by an american film crew that was based in an ardennes farm for the last month of the war, they seemed to have a full laboratory and mounting equipment and stayed there for some month... going to front lines and coming back for processing and so on...when leaving they gave the camera and some BW news reels to the farmers family... that's what I'm told, but of course it may be "stories"...)
I got the DITMAR camera for 50€ and the guy showed me the reels (bw 16mm not commercial movie... mounted... seemingly news... 10 or so 100m or more reels... ) but I didn't got a projection tool with me... and the guy didn't want to sell me the films...
The DITMAR camera is a very nice compact camera (hand camera) with 30m (or 15 ?) reels, two speed, mechanical rewind, a berthiot 20mm 1,9 lens and a selenium lightmeter with needle in the viewfinder (in fact two needles and two scales above the viewfinder image, one on the left with the needed fstop and one on the right with the actual aperture).
With a bit of skill you can adapt the fstop with a finger trigged button linked with the lens diafragm so that it follows the reading of the lightmeter...
of course the lightmeter is probably dead... but the aperture trigger is so smooth that you can really change fstops while filming...
My informations tells me that the camera was made in Austria before the war... 1938 (a sort of contaflex tlr sister... in a way).
SO who knows about that camera... is the story of the "seller" plausible (date, use of that camera)... and so on... ?
picture will follow...
and is there someone that could rewire and regenerate the selenium cell?
(got a contax III with a still acurate lightmeter so why not this one)
I just got my hands on a DITMAR 16mm camera, with a possible american military provenance (supposedly given by an american film crew that was based in an ardennes farm for the last month of the war, they seemed to have a full laboratory and mounting equipment and stayed there for some month... going to front lines and coming back for processing and so on...when leaving they gave the camera and some BW news reels to the farmers family... that's what I'm told, but of course it may be "stories"...)
I got the DITMAR camera for 50€ and the guy showed me the reels (bw 16mm not commercial movie... mounted... seemingly news... 10 or so 100m or more reels... ) but I didn't got a projection tool with me... and the guy didn't want to sell me the films...
The DITMAR camera is a very nice compact camera (hand camera) with 30m (or 15 ?) reels, two speed, mechanical rewind, a berthiot 20mm 1,9 lens and a selenium lightmeter with needle in the viewfinder (in fact two needles and two scales above the viewfinder image, one on the left with the needed fstop and one on the right with the actual aperture).
With a bit of skill you can adapt the fstop with a finger trigged button linked with the lens diafragm so that it follows the reading of the lightmeter...
of course the lightmeter is probably dead... but the aperture trigger is so smooth that you can really change fstops while filming...
My informations tells me that the camera was made in Austria before the war... 1938 (a sort of contaflex tlr sister... in a way).
SO who knows about that camera... is the story of the "seller" plausible (date, use of that camera)... and so on... ?
picture will follow...
and is there someone that could rewire and regenerate the selenium cell?
(got a contax III with a still acurate lightmeter so why not this one)
Marc James Small
Member
I know little about the Ditmar camera, I fear. But selenium meters fail primarily for one of two reasons -- the cell leaks and water ruins the integrity of the selenium substrate, or else the complex mechanical linkage goes adrift and needs reconected. Many US-made selenium cells were only intended to last a few years, and so, for the most pasrt, many US selenium cells have gone bad -- mind you, GE and Weston and Kodak selenium cells were sealed for the ages. And European (Metrawatt and Gossen) cells were similarly well sealed. So, I suspect that your linkage has simply gone astray. Incidentally, the cells for the Prewar Super Ikonta BX and for the Contax III are available NOS over the net, though for the life of me I cannot recall the name of the vendor.
Marc
Marc
photovdz
Well-known
relinkage job in progress ;-)
Dralowid
Michael
For matters to do with movie cameras I refer to this book, Some 16mm but mostly the smaller guages.
www.atollmedien.de/english/home.html
Michael
www.atollmedien.de/english/home.html
Michael