Son of Gallery
SON (UGH!) OF PICTURE GALLERY
Far below Chateau Nerdistan, beneath even the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, lie the Projector Vaults (cue spooky music). Here lie the broken, the rusty, the incomplete, the surplus and the just plain I-haven't-got-round-to-it-yet. Yet among the dross glimmers the dim glow of desirability (to a certain kind of boy). Your intrepid explorer has penetrated deep into the bowels of these half-forgotten recesses to bring those that may yet prove worthy blinking, perhaps only briefly, into the light of day. Here then is another tiny fraction of the vast range of cine stuff that is the stuff of life to the collector.
First, tho, some news from New Zealand. Trevor Adams sends pix of a micro projector using 9.5, a Monaco, and a composite of Imp, Princess and something I don't recognise, (he says it's a Gamages 16mm toy, probably by Friese of Peak fame, none of which I have, and a really off-the-wall S8 machine - probably a triumph of styling over function. (I do now have a Monaco and a Princess).
Trevor later sent some more pix, which I've only just got round to loading.
Left we have a tiny camjector - see battery (tho' I suspect it's a C not AA) - then a Radex in colour and b/w (not a camjector) and three more camera projectors, the Screnus, a later-model Campro and a Midas. Finally, an amazing larger-scale camjector. There's a whole section on camjectors.
There is also a whole section on Toy projectors. Here are a few.
From top left, Bingoscope; Bing; Ace; one which has no markings at all but Trevor in NZ insists is a Coronet - the ad I found later bears this out. 2nd row, Princess; Piccolo; Kid: LaPierre; Radex.
The first two above are the 8mm and 9.5mm versions of the only truly proper machine produced under the Dekko banner. Highly unconventional in design, they were solidly built and used a 500w lamp, the general maximum for 8mm machines before the cold light and tungsten halogen revolution. In between the toys and this pukka model was the rather fetching item in pic 3. It has some serious flaws; a gate that doesn't open for cleaning, as per Pathé Kid, a 50v 25w lamp with a big resistance in the base to get down from 200/250 input, and weird spool nose arrangements whereby the spindle is just a plain rod, over which fits a thing just like a 9.5 rewind adapter which is driven by a belt and held on by a spring-loaded knob fitting on the end of the spindle. This means two loose bits per arm to lose. There is a whole page on Dekko.
Standard 8 basically collapsed before the heavily-marketed advent of Super 8. Standard 8 was just too limiting - the enormous (relatively) sprocket holes carried over from 16mm and the consequently tiny image which greatly limited potential projection size. But in its time, it gave rise to some lovely projectors. Some of these appeared in Gallery; here are a few more.
First is an earlier, 200'- only B&H, which threatens to oust the 606H as one of my favoutites. Next, the Nizo Cinemator a very compact machine. The early Revere in pic 3 is not to my mind a patch on the exquisite model in pic 4. This is a gorgeous machine with some lovely little touches like a little cover which can be opened to allow light from the lamp to illuminate the threading area. Last but not least, some of the pix I have of the variety of models produced by Zeiss labelled Movilux. I think it's worth collecting some Standard 8 just to get ahold of some of these machines. Some ot these machines went on to feature tape sound synchronisation, as did one of my least favourites, the ubiquitous Eumig P8. The very first machines for pre-striped 8mm magnetic tracks were on Standard 8 too, like the famous Mark S.
I may have to devote an entire page to cameras at some stage. I don't like cameras as much as projectors, but it cannot be denied there aresome interesting models out there. Here's a few.
First (of course) the original Pathé Baby hand-cranked camera, together with a later Motocamera. Next an H with a decent lens and another which I don't really know what it is. A wartime austerity H? Next a couple of exposure-calculating thingies - one of the many items of Gear that encouraged extra spending once you had the basic camera or projector. Sorry the next ia a bit blurry; they ar a Coronet and a Pat, a really cheap and nasty camera from Pathescope. And finally my favoutite, the Prince, companion to the Princess but of far higher quality. Guess I'm just a sucker for that black amd light grey look.
A couple of B&H next - there is a whole page for each of silent and sound 16mm.
The first is there mostly for its box - these usually end up taking more than a bit of a beating. The other has a lovely slim pedestal and I think it is one that folds down to have its lens facing up at you and being very compact. Much prettier than the later model in the box.
I don't really like Kodascopes very much, with the possible exception of the cute Kodatoy and the Model B.
There is an obvious similarity in pix 3 and 4 between 8mm and 16mm models. Both the L and the K 16mm models look much like pic 4 above; neither machine impressed me.
I know I just said I didn't much like Kodaks, but as I was doing a bit of sorting out, I came across an original Kodascope C storage box. It's just a square steel box, leatherette covered, with a handle (missing on mine, but standard type). I acquired it years ago as it was in very good condition. It prompted me to sort out the three projectors I had lying around. Fortunately, one of them turned out to be a D. Although the two machines are very similar, there are a number of differences. The most important is the lamp; the C consumes 150w with a 100w lamp. The D uses 350w with, presumably, (not got one in mine) a 300w lamp. This in turn necessitates a proper fan with air ducted towards the lamphouse. The other changes are minor or cosmetic; the D has no rewind handle, power rewinding being provided. The outer skin of the lamphouse is a much more attractive perforated metal affair, rather than the nasty wire affair of the C, and is a nice bronze colour rather than Model T 
Ford black. This perforated pattern is extended to the motor speed control housing and a neat little cover over the top of the mech. In the C (well, mine, at least) the mech is just open. It's only a 0.5in. slot between two steel plates that form the main frame. The speed control itself is a rheostat on the D; the C has what seems to be one of those carbon compression jobbies. The only other difference I've spotted is the threaded storage hole the D has for the lens. There are two different patterns of gate spring on my two C's; one is simply a loop of spring steel, the apparently later version, which is also on the D, uses an arm with a coil spring. I have discovered a further box whixh seems to fit the D as well as the C.
I have three different motors between three machines. One C has a Westinghouse, made in Springfield, showing signs of Mazac spalling. The other is from the North East Electric Co of Rochester. It has brushes at 90 degrees to each other rather than opposite; I can't recall ever seeing such a thing before. Sadly, one of the wires is broken off so far inside I can't fix it. The D has a Delco, again Rochester.
Also, I now have my own Kodascope A, which has been sympathetically refurbished and QI converted by Colin Loffler. I did have one some years ago, but it needed work so I sold it on to someone I thought more likely to do it. But they are fascinating things - great lots of gears inside. Only the first one is the original Model A with small lamphouse - the rest are the Mark 2.
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This is more like it. An unusually-coloured 8mm Eumig P26, with all sorts of complicated twiddly bits - gorgeous. I've said elsewhere that Ampro kept the same basic mech from silent to sound; here is the visible proof. Assuming you know the sound one, of course. The black Eumig is a PIII - rare on 9.5. And finally a couple of 16mm cameras.
Some 9.5 machines.
In fact, this lot are all Cinegels, tho' I don't know what they all are and I suspect pic 4 mite be an 8mm interloper. Pic 1 is a 220 and pic 3 is a Royale sound (dual 9.5/16 with only a pre-amp in the base)), tho lots of them say Royale.
Yet more 9.5. A Rex, which is a badged version of the Eumig Super; a Sadar Handy; aHeurtier, which is cheating a bit as it is Std 8, 9.5 and 16: the stunning Pathé Europ and Princess.