My First Analog Movie Camera
2021
[engineering]
Description
A proof of concept of an analogue motion picture camera that is lightweight, affordable, easy to use. I designed this product to be the first step into the world of analogue film making.
The user splices photographic 35mm film to make a longer strip and load it in a dedicated cartridge to shoot short footage. By using easily available film (C-41) instead of professional motion picture film (ECN-2), the entire process is much easier to get started with.
The project was initiated by my interest in analog cinematography. As a film photographer, I knew shooting a movie with film is insanely expensive. Even just trying it out felt too difficult due to not knowing people who do this, not knowing a lab to process film, and not having a proper gear first of all. Super 8 is relatively available and used widely by analog photographers/videographers, but its limited resolution makes the results difficult to achieve high quality. I decided to build a camera by myself to casually try out this experience of analog film making using ordinary photographic 35mm film.
After building a few prototypes to test different mechanisms of transferring the film intermittently, I decided to go for the mechanically synchronized gear and cam mechanism driven by a single DC motor. The motor is controlled by Arduino.
The light coming from the lens is split by the half mirror before the rotary shutter, allowing the shooter to see the real time image through the view finder. This decreases the amount of light projected on the film, but it can be compensated by the high ISO of high speed films.
For this functional prototype, almost all the components are 3D printed in reinforced PLA.