German manual of the Quartz Zoom

Tonight I upload the German language manual of the Quartz Zoom. You can download it from the link under.

Benutzerhandbuch für die Quartz 3 Zoom Ciné Kamera.

The Quartz Zoom in details

Tonight I uploaded a video to YouTube about the details of the Quartz 3 Zoom. You can find the video at the end of this post, but if you have a Quartz Zoom without manual, I suggest to read the post first.  

Kodachrome selection

Tonight I post a small selection of Kodachrome slides I have from the 60s and 70s. Some of them I could identify some not. Feel free to comment if you know when or whereabouts. The first one here was easy, she is a lady in Paris sometime in the 60s - 70s. 

A very little step forward

Proudly standing on the tripod

The Quartz Zoom has a 3/8 inch diameter socket for tripods while my tripod has 1/4 inch diameter screw. The solution is a little adapter from Hama that can be turned into the Quartz's socket making the diameter only 1/4 inch long. This simple it is.

Today I bought the adapter for about 0.80 EUR. Now the Quartz can be mounted to my tripod and this makes possible to shoot single frames with a cable release. 

Tonight I will give it a go. For more pictures click read more then scroll down. 

A little bypass to my Cmena8 still camera

A closer look on my Cmena8

For me photography is a rather difficult thing to do. I am not much of a composer. Of course when I found my godfather's old Cmena 8 camera I took some pictures with it. I was not very satisfied with the result that time (back in 1998). So I borrowed a Zenit and Praktica type camera which were both mirror reflex cameras. 

As I grew older I became more attracted to analog film and I also had to give the lended cameras back to their owners. Later on Lomography became a trend so I started to use the simple and let's say not that high quality Cmena to shoot some pictures with again. Bad quality sort of became a trend that I liked.

I took the Cmena to family trips, once even to Prague. With the many years between using my Cmena I always had to re-learn the basics of film photography. I told you I am totally amateur.

Next week plans

Not much to do in the 8mm intro project this weekend, but there is more to come next week. On Tuesday night I will give the footage to Szilárd Szilas for processing. He works in Emőd and Budapest, Hungary. He has a Facebook page under the name SzilasLab. I very much recommend him. Later next week or the week after we will have the telecine process at keskenyfilm.hu. Besenyei Zalán is said to be an expert on 2K scanning.

We will see.

Meanwhile I probably introduce my Smena8 Still Camera and some pictures I made with it.

Planning a channel intro in 8mm

I am planning to have an intro on my YouTube channel that would show up before my videos. I can't tell much details, but I can say that tonight it took about an hour of hard work to properly load the camera (in total darkness in order to have longer shooting time) and then filming some parts of my ideas.

A successful repair

Today afternoon I checked the faulty mechanism again. I made a few unsuccessful phone calls this morning to have an expert for the task but in the end I had to take the courage to act myself. My initial thought was that gun oil should do it.  The machine was halted for decades, the motor, the springs are 51 years old, probably the original lubricant is the sinner in this case. At least that was what I hoped for.

A faulty film forwarding mechanism

The first footage I tried was a failure. The film was forwarded but not the proper way, thus the film broke away. At a first glance there was nothing special with the film forwarding mechanism but after the problem occurred I realized that one little knob that is supposed to turn the cartridge has several difficulties during forwarding to turn at all. This looks a minor problem since it is moving mostly, but in the end it is enough for a film jam.