What is the best reflex Regular 8mm camera?

[cameratech]

Hi Nicholas,
I've been exploring the wonderful world of Regular 8 cameras in some depth lately, pulled many of them apart.

These are the 8mm reflex cameras with interchangeable mounts I've come across so far:
Ercsam Camex Reflex - wonderfully engineered, many features, the only one besides H8 to allow timed single exposures. Has it's own mount, large range of Angenieux and Berthiot zooms and primes. Shuttle mirror.
Beaulieu MR8, TR8 (turret version) - another beautiful French design, guillotine mirror, D mount.
Pentaflex 8 - monstrous East German camera, very well engineered, spinning half-moon mirror, huge viewfinder image. Has its own bayonet mount, zoom and prime set by Zeiss Jena. Mine even came with a bellows matte box.
Bolex H8 series - you know about those.

There's also the Agfa Movex Reflex which comes with it's own zoom and a prime, and the first Leicina with interchangeable Dygon primes (I forget the mount type), but I haven't had a chance to check them out yet. And that's about it, I think. Maybe there's a Russian model?

As far as I know all the other reflex Regular 8s have fixed zooms with a prism before the iris.

There are a few D mount turret cameras with a critical focusing viewer that you can swing the lens in front of (like the non-reflex Bolexes) - the best one was by Arco, came with f1.4 lenses supplied by Zunow. The little Bell and Howell turret Filmos have it too, but the mount is peculiar, finer thread than D mount and a different flange depth. Fantastic cameras though, rock steady even at 64 fps.

Anyway, as you've discovered, the biggest obstacle to converting any of these to your format will be the shutter coverage and the viewfinder. You can possibly widen the gate on some of them to maybe a 1.78 aspect ratio, but doubling the width is a bridge too far I think. Your best bet as a smaller alternative to a Bolex is to find a small 16mm camera that can have an 8mm movement installed without too much hassle. But you'll probably have to give up on the reflex viewing.

A potential candidate could be the Siemens C series cameras from the 30s and 40s. There was an 8mm and a 16mm version that used the same housing and movement design - very well made, even has a registration pin of sorts. The lens is fixed but could probably be replaced with a C mount without too much trouble. And you'd need to add something like a Bolex Octameter viewfinder. I just shot a roll of tri x on the 8mm version, great little camera!

Hope all that was of some use to you, good luck with it!

[Nicholas Kovats]

Hi cameratech.

I appreciate the detailed listings. However these wonderful reflex cameras are not readily available nor are their parts. Hence my attraction to the scale of R8mm Bolex manufacturing, parts availability and sheer number of users. It was amazing to come across the existence of a Bolex R8mm specialist.

I suspect my original query was to illicit responses regarding an alternative to off the shelf parts and transport interchangeability of the Bolex. But the actual field appears to be quite narrow or non-existent. I suspect conversion of a small tiny 16mm camera for R8mm transport has greater possibilites than the reverse. But with attendant complexity and cost.

I have been advised that conversion of the popular Eclair ACL 16mm camera is possible but that is a different UP8 design goal.

By the way my addition of the UP8 format to the "List of Film Formats" Wikipedia page has been removed by an over-zealous editor. I quote, i.e.

" Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to add soapboxing, promotional or advertising material to Wikipedia, you may be blocked from editing. The Bushranger One ping only 02:54, 14 October 2011 (UTC)"