Item ended: Production-Ready fully-stocked Eclair ACL II package (details below)

Production-Ready fully-stocked Eclair ACL II package

$2,550.00
Listing ended Sun, February 5, 12:41 pm EST

39 bids
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Seller bilzelman has 100% + feedback, 28 total feedback on eBay

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Normal 0 0 1 2609 14874 zelman studios 123 29 18266 11.1539 0 0 0 My apologies if you were bidding on this package last week but I made a typographical error in it's title and it was unsearchable. The Camera package remains the same! Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12341450@N04/sets/72157628932996475 Hello. This is the Éclair ACL II, Super16 converted, with the all-important HIGH-POWER motor which goes to 75fps and is crystal-sync at 24 and 25fps, unlike the lower-power motor which many ACL’s on Ebay have. This is an important distinction, since the low-power motors have always had trouble pulling 400’ rolls of film, and almost never could run at 75fps with the 400’ rolls. We are not pro Ebay Sellers. This is our gear, which we bought, spent over a year having serviced, and then used for a commercial that is airing right now (more on that later). But unfortunately, all of it has to go. We’ll be clearly stating any and everything important to know about this auction, and our other Éclair ACL auction, and the lenses we are listing at the same time. No one likes surprises and buyers-remorse, so we’re trying to write this in the same way we’d want an auction description to be written for an item we might be hoping to win. Anything even remotely negative, ugly, non-functional, or needing adjustment will be listed clearly. I’ll try to mention at least a little about every single item included in this package. If I missed something that you see in the pictures, please write. Everything shown in the pictures is included EXCEPT where I specifically and clearly mention it is not included. Again, please send a message if you are unclear about any item. All of the Super 16mm gear for sale was one complete kit and the lenses and accessories all pair together in all of my current sales! Precise list: - Éclair ACL II Super16-converted body (French) with instruction manuals - Orientable Viewfinder (which opens/closes automatically with eye pressure) - Les Bosher 15mm Rail system - Two - 400’ Magazines, Super16 converted (French) - Carl Zeiss 11.5-115mm T3 zoom lens with Follow Focus gears installed, front and rear caps- This is a wonderful lens we have shot many spots with! - PL Mount Adapter w/ Panavision cap - Nikon lens Adapter - Arri B Adapter - Accessory Handgrip with start/stop switch - Top Handle (some ACL’s are missing these, about $150 to replace, + shipping from England) - AZSpectrum Video Assist with instructions - Ugly (but perfectly functional) small/light monitor for Video Assist - Tobin Milliframe Controller with instructions (see earlier notes) - 50mm Carl Zeiss Switar C-mount lens (newest generation!!! - One – Magazine barney/safety harness (see notes) - Magazine caps, and ACL film-plane cover, and C-mount cap. - Large changing bag - Two new Pelican cases with custom cut foam. - A shoulder-pad which doesn’t work very well with this camera (but you can modify it, consider it a freebie)- It does work though. - Large Bescor battery belt (almost new) with trickle-charger. This battery can power the camera and its accessories for several days worth of filming before needing a recharge. Definitely an “overkill” battery. Ok, onward: We chose the ACL for the obvious reasons, it’s light, silent (for sound work), can shoot slow-motion at 75FPS, has very steady footage (even at 75FPS), and most importantly, can mount almost ANY lens, with the right adapter. For those of you who don’t know, the ACL accepts C-mount lenses, but also has a large threaded area outside of that, to which adapters fit. It was made this way to make it the single most flexible camera system available. No other system can do this. They make those adapters for pretty much any major lens type. Included in this auction is the industry-standard PL mount…allowing you to mount any world-class rental lens. Arri-B mount, which is the second-most available type of lens mount. And Nikon, so you can use any Nikon lens made for still-photography, which are cheap and plentiful. The Nikon mount is especially important/useful when you want to rent a really long lens, like the 300mm f2.8 or the ludicrously-massive 600mm f4, to REALLY compress foreground/background. And/or to throw your backgrounds so out of focus that it’s just a big wall of extreme pastel softness. (Definitely use a lens-support for gigantic lenses. The ACL’s adapter mount is strong, but no mount is strong enough for extreme-telephoto lenses). This system has the French body and French mags. All converted to Super16, of course. The Les Bosher 15mm Rail system. Best (and most expensive) rail system made for this camera. Will last forever, and you can buy longer/shorter rails for it still. I’ve not seen an ACL for sale with that rail system on it. Check out the other gear on the Les Bosher website. Zeiss 11.5-115mm T3 zoom lens. This is a converted-to-Super16 Zeiss 10-100mm f2.8. Normally, because of our lengthy experience with many lenses, I’d NEVER use a “converted” zoom, since 95% of the time they suck. They are nearly always old lenses from 30+ years ago that have had MORE glass added to the rear to increase the focal length slightly so as to cover the larger Super16 frame. The only exceptions are the conversions done by Optex and an English company called Abacus. We intercut footage from this lens, with our hyper-expensive newest-generation Zeiss 11-110mm T2.2 zoom (which is being offered currently in another auction), and the results were great especially when shooting stopped down a bit. The glass is in great shape. The outside has lots of normal wear, scratches, nicks, ect. It certainly doesn’t look beautiful on the outside. It’s had Follow-Focus gears professionally installed, and has a useable, but damaged, rubber hood with it, which attaches to this zoom. (the outer-most part of the rubber came off, but it’s still totally useable, it just doesn’t extend out as far as it once did). The glass has a slight cleaning mark but is in overall great shape and we’ve used it for many broadcast productions. NOT INCLUDED: The follow-focus unit is NOT included in this package, sorry about that. We forgot to remove it while taking the pictures. Luckily, for anyone who wants to shoot these days, Follow-Focus units are plentiful and cheap, as opposed to just a handful of years ago. Do a Google search. When we started out, not even a decade ago, you either spent several thousand dollars, or, you rented a FF unit. There are tons of videos on Youtube doing comparisons between the super-affordable models out there. As you can see, some of the covers, caps, and protectors we use for various parts and accessories are home-made, but of course work perfectly well. And again, please understand, anything that we consider potentially/barely to be an issue, I will clearly mention. ALL of the adapters (PL, Nikon, Arri B) have been fine-tuned to this camera, and this camera only. This is an often-overlooked area of adapters, which we learned the hard way while doing tests. Just because you buy an adapter, doesn’t mean it’s going to work. It only takes a fraction of a millimeter in the depth of the lens in the body to produce soft images. The camera body, and almost all the accessories, have been fine-tuned to work with one another by Mr. Paul Scaglione at Visual Products. As with all film gear, which you’ll find out eventually, not even ONE of the adapters was mounting the lenses to the exact depth to ensure completely razor-sharp images. So we paid to have each adapter tuned to this specific camera body. He even attached stickers to the adapters, specifying which camera body (we have another Éclair ACL system in our other auctions) it was tuned for. He told us not to mix them up, since the tolerances for every camera, even the same model ACL, are not the same. That’s something they don’t tell you on Ebay, eh? Early in our careers, we were constantly baffled at how every time we’d try a new camera, it just never looked quite the same as the “world-class” ultra-sharp footage we’d be seeing from other local and international DP’s. As students, no one told us that the costs were not over after you’d bought a camera and lens system, and that you’re going to spend as much, or usually MORE, then what you paid for your camera….on getting them serviced and totally production-ready. There are plenty of used ACL’s all over the place. And some are dirt cheap. But none, and I mean none, have been thoroughly and meticulously serviced and matched-up to the lenses and adapters contained in these two Éclair ACL packages we are forced to sell. These cameras are production ready. This system, and the system in our other auction, are the only two completely-serviced and fine-tuned systems I’ve seen on Ebay. We have spent more on service, then we did buying the camera bodies. The last service alone (of many!) by Mr. Scaglione at Visual Products was $2,000. That was in addition to other/previous mods/tweaks to the motors, viewfinder system, magazines, video assist ($1,500 just for that), and having all the adapters adjusted to ensure proper mounting depth. Overall, when you factor all the shipping costs as well, a bit more than $5,000 was spent on our two systems AFTER we bought them, just to get everything completely production ready, and as a result they performed as they should have. No one likes surprises. But of course, the saying still applies: “Our business is built on tests”, said a renowned DP I had the pleasure of exchanging a few emails with. Even after spending a shocking amount on service, we still, of course, performed tests prior to production on our commercial. Carl Zeiss Switar 50mm f1.4 RX lens. It’s in mint condition. This has been modified to work with non-Bolex cameras. As you might, or might not know, RX Bolex lenses wont yield totally sharp images on a non-bolex reflex camera when shot wide open…unless you have them modified. This is the most current “Pre-Set” type, meaning you can set one lever to your chosen F-stop, then use the other lever to open the lens up all the way for focusing and composition. Then when ready to start shooting, without needing to look at the lens, you simply turn that second lever and it will stop at your chosen F-stop. Very handy. We did shoot tests, and I must STRONGLY warn you, the depth-of-field with this lens, when shot wide-open, is brutally and overwhelmingly tiny. If you want to completely throw your background out of focus, or rack focus between two subjects in a 2-shot, this is the lens. Literally, if the subject’s eyelashes are in focus, their ears are not. This is not a lens for handheld work, unless you are stopping the lens down past f5.6 or more. But for a tight shot of someone’s eyes, or detail shots, this lens would be fantastic with the way the background is completely gone. Keep in mind this is Super16 we are talking about, so this lens equals what a 100mm lens would look like on a 35mm camera. And of course, at f1.4, there isn’t anything faster then that, with the exception of a Zeiss Superspeed (see our other auction for one of those). We are also including a full set of C-mount extension tubes with this system, in case you need to shoot closer then this lens’s already close focusing allows. With those, you can put your subject less then one quarter of an inch from the lens, for extreme macro work. Both of these come with a Bolex case. The tubes come with instructions, and the 50mm comes with a rear cap. Tobin Milliframe Controller. A pretty expensive device. With this, you can set any frame rate to the thousandth of a frame. Like 23.97 or 29.97, or 48fps (i.e. for filming a music video in which the band performs to their song played back at 2x speed, thus giving you slow-motion, but with the performers lip-sync perfectly intact after editing). We tested this thoroughly, and it’s working/looking like new. NOTE: Unfortunately, it does NOT work at all speeds with our ACL. It’s not a problem with the Milliframe controller, I already had it tested by Mr. Tobin himself. And it’s not our camera either. Apparently the ACL cameras need a modification to work with the Milliframe controller at high speeds. At the moment, the Milliframe Controller can be used to set speeds which are on the low end. If I recall, anything under around 30fps can be accurately controlled. Which is good if you want to experiment with ultra-slow speeds, like 6 or 8 FPS. But if you want to use the Milliframe controller at speeds between 30 and 75FPS with complete thousandth-of-a-frame accuracy, you will need to have it modified. Strangely and interestingly, Mr. Scaglione at Visual Productions informed me that the person who can do that modification, is the same person at AZSpectrum, who sold us and installed our Video Assist. Apparently, he is a master of camera motors too. But again, we never needed this. The ACL already does crystal speeds of 24 and 25fps. And does slow and super-fast speeds as well, albeit not crystal-controlled. We shot 75fps in a few commercials, and the footage was great. Good luck getting that specific flavor of slow-motion with a DSLR or any other “digital” camera. Also, we had magazine barney/harnesses made. This auction has one, and our other ACL auction has the other. As anyone who has used an ACL knows, one problem with the magazines is that if you hit the top of the rear portion of the magazine hard enough, it can fall right off the body. Many have complained about this, but what can be done? Well, THIS can be done. Though it’s rare to have it happen, and it takes a decent amount of force to make it happen, who would want the potential of that happening during a hand-held shot? It’s doubtful you’d be able to make it happen without purposely punching downward on the back-end of the magazine, but it was still too much of a worry for us. So we had this custom harness made for it. You zip it up around the magazine, then attach the strap to the top handle. Simple! Even if you were able to make the magazine fall off, it wont come crashing to the ground. Plus, it makes the whisper-quiet Éclair ACL even more quiet, not that it really needed it. From what I recall, and I might not be remembering correctly, it needed a slight trim near the part which will be touching the camera body. But…all you’ll need to do is cut off a bit of the cloth at the opening. Or, it might work now. I’m not sure, as we didn’t get to test that before everything got packed for shipping. It has a quick-release on the strap. So just attach its end to the top handle on the camera, adjust the strap length, and you are protected in case anything comes down with force onto the back of the mag. One of the commercials we recently shot with our two Eclairs is currently airing on PBS and NBC. Ebay wont let us post our website addresses, so do a search for Bil Zelman (only one “L” in Bil) and see the Weseley Palms commercial, which was shot on our two systems and two zooms. (We even used some Nikon lenses, via the adapter included in this auction, for some of the shots in that commercial.) And lastly, the Video Assist is made/installed by AZSpectrum in New York. We purchased it right after our commercial, and now we are forced to liquidate. So it’s virtually brand-new. We found a rather cheap small monitor for it, which has a standard tripod-screw attachment area on the bottom, which we rigged up to use with any standard 12v battery belt or block. It isn’t pretty, but it works. The ACL’s top handle has a threaded hole on top which you can simply buy a double-screw-mount accessory for (from any camera store), and mount it there. Or, you can buy one of the many super-cheap accessory arms from the sellers on Ebay in China and India, to mount the Video Assist monitor wherever you like. The Video Assist has a standard BNC video output, which you can cheaply convert to the RCA input of our not-so-great monitor for a buck or two at any RadioShack. We might already have the BNC to RCA adapter on there, but everything is already packed for shipping, and I can’t recall. So just assume it isn’t there, and if it is, bonus. So that’s it for this auction description. If you have any questions, please write. And don’t hesitate to write/call after the sale. With all the work we had done over the last many years, we learned who is to be trusted…as far as techs…and who isn’t. You assume that the guys you read about on the many forums, who have “decades” of experience, are the ones you should be sending your cameras/lenses to. Well, sometimes yes, sometimes NO NO NO! We’ve dealt with a lot of them over the last many years. Which is why I cannot possibly recommend Duclos Lenses any more strongly (for lens work), as well as Visual Products (for camera repairs/modifications). I’ll be doing a copy/paste of some of this info in a few of our other current auctions, so I wont have to type all this again. Though anyone looking at this auction already knows this, I’ll say it anyway…Why shoot film? A more important question might be…Why on earth would you shoot digital? Film projects and commercial assignments are taken far more seriously by producers, agencies, and art directors then those shot with even the most current and expensive digital (i.e. “video”) cameras. And this has not changed. This isn’t info relevant a decade ago, five years ago, or even last year. Why on earth would anyone shoot film? Go ask Darren Aronofsky why he chose film for his last two films. And not just film, but Super16 film! Both Black Swan and The Wrestler were shot on 35mm films little brother, Super16. Why do Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino still shoot film over digital? And don’t forget Academy Award nominated DP’s like Matthew Libatique and Darius Khondji. What medium do they prefer still to this day? “You shoot digital to save money, not because it looks better then film.” And for the winner of our auction: Use them well, they have been meticulously fine-tuned to be production-ready, unlike pretty much EVERY other 16mm camera or camera system sold on Ebay. Good luck, and go shoot some excellent images! Once you’ve got the right tools, it becomes considerably easier. Also- I will only ship to Paypal verified addresses. Thanks!