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At one stage I even used the H16 Reflex as an optical printer. We were making a doco titled
"Because of the Wheel” on the history of Queensland’s Main Roads Department. We had been
loaned some very valuable historic film on the building of the Cairncross Dry Dock in Brisbane
c. 1942. Shot on 16 mm Kodachrome at silent speed (16 f.p.s.), the film had had an incredible
amount of use over 25 years and was now so badly shrunken that it would not go through a
projector without damaging the sprocket holes and constantly losing loops. This meant there was
no way we would ever get it through a Motion Picture Printer to make a copy. So that was that,
end of the line for the Cairncross film. Unless... Mmmm…
I did have a little English Sofil projector that would run the film at very slow speed with an
occasional adjustment of the loops. If I set the projector up on a solid wooden plank, and then
mounted a camera opposite the gate, could I photograph the image in the gate one frame at a time
using the Bolex single frame button? It would work like this:

• turn the projector one frame, photograph it on the Bolex. Click!
• turn the projector another frame. Click!
• and so on...
Just like shooting animation. It
would be slow, but we could make
a 16 mm Ektachrome copy frame
by frame, restoring any lost loops
on the projector as we go. Yes! It
was worth a try.
Briefly, the construction of the
“FranzFilm Optical Printer” went
like this: We screwed the Sofil
Projector firmly on a short plank.
Made and fitted a large inching
handle on to the main shaft to
accurately advance one frame per
turn. Installed a low voltage lamp (10V 7.5A) into the lamphouse together with a diffusion screen
and pale blue filter for colour correction to 3200K.
The projector lens was removed and a 3" Yvar camera lens was mounted on an independent
support centred 6" from the projector aperture and 6" from the camera aperture at the other end,
providing the 1 to 1 copy distance. Adjustments could be made for fine focusing the lens and
altering the camera image size. The projector aperture was slightly enlarged to reveal the full
original image. And a short black telescoping tube was cut to fit between the lens and the camera
(felt lined to make a light tight connection). The Bolex camera was firmly mounted upside down
(think about it) on the optical axis exactly opposite the lens and projector aperture, and the
Heath-Robinson device was complete.

Luckily the original Cairncross film was perforated on both sides and could be threaded into the
projector with the base toward the lens to give us correct left to right configuration. With single
perf. film we would have needed a surface silvered mirror or a high quality optical prism with the
camera mounted at a right angle to the projector. It gets very complicated. Anyway, we did tests
to find the correct exposure for the Ektachrome (Tungsten) film and also to check picture
definition, steadiness and alignment. It all looked good.

June 2020 REEL DEALS 11