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COVER PICTURE

PAILLARD BOLEX G3

The Bolex G series of projectors were manufactured by
Paillard Bolex in Switzerland from 1936 until the late 1950s.

They were an expensive machine at the time and consid-
ered “top of the range” by many. Bolex offered the model
G in several different formats, all were silent machines:

G-8 A single gauge model designed for 8 mm film.
G-9 A single gauge model designed for 9.5 mm film.
G-16 A single gauge model designed for 16 mm film.
G-816 A dual gauge model designed for 8 mm & 16 mm film
G-916 A dual gauge model designed for 9.5 mm & 16 mm film
G-3 A tri-gauge model designed for 8 mm, 9.5 mm & 16 mm film

Unlike most other projectors of
its day, the Bolex used a gear
drive take up and rewind (as op-
posed to the usual spring belts).
They could be purchased with
either a 750 or 500 watts lamp, all
offered variable speed (12-24
FPS) and a still frame (with re-
duced brightness), and a high
quality Bolex lens.

Above: The twin condenser lenses - the
holding plate was inverted to swap be-

Format change was made by swap-
ping the gate and the arm spindles to
the required format, and in the case
pf 8 mm, turning the claw pitch con-
trol on the rear of the machine to
the 8 mm position and inverting the
bracket holding the twin light con-
densers to the 8 mm position.

Image quality is quite good and
steady. Illumination is poor by mod-
ern standards, but pretty much as
expected for a machine from that era.

8 REEL DEALS June 2019