Just for your information, I've never seen a
magazine on any mp
camera, from 200' to 1200' capacity, in which the
feed side is driven.
But there are some that are made to be reversible,
such as the Arri
16M, in which the take up drive switches gears when
the camera is
reversed, allowing the feed side to take up.
Which magazine are you working with, English 400
ft.? If so, it
isn't pictured in the ACL-1 manual referred to on
the web site. The
raw stock roll is inserted so that it feeds off in a
clockwise
direction, and the film is simply pushed into the
light trap as far as
it will go.
Although I've never bought film in Europe,
apparently some suppliers
over there offer stock wound emulsion out (or did at
one time.) The
Eclair NPR magazine has two threading routes marked
in the supply
side, one for emulsion in, one for emulsion out.
Eclair followed the
lead of Mitchell, it seems, in designing the
magazines to take up
emulsion out. Mitchell did it to counteract the
curl of the film on
the 35mm emulsions of yore, and carried the idea
over to 16mm, which
was an unnecessary irritation. We always just gave
the takeup belt a
twist on the Mitchell 16 to make it take up emulsion
in.
One good thing Debrie did when they made the English
ACL was to take
up emulsion in. But Eclair, when they took it over
and redesigned it,
went back to the insane emulsion out takeup of the
NPR, so you could
enjoy the frustration of dumping a 400' roll of
loose film into your
hand when you unloaded!
Wade K. Ramsey, DP
Dept. of Cinema & Video Production
Bob Jones University
Greenville, SC 29614
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