Quick document of rostrum/roroscope camera set up.
This adapted Oxberry camera, presumably from an old rostrum camera has had a new stepper motor added which is under digital programme control. It uses a Nikon F lens mount and I’m shooting lots with a Nikon F 60mm macro lens. It is DUAL gauge and I have gates and sprocket drives for 16 and 35mm. As it turn out 16mm uses an A4 pucnhed paper and 35mm uses A3. In the days on rostrum film animation things were done in field sizes so Im currently working out the best way to achieve best setup for main field sizes in these formats. The barcode picture is for value 0 which will expose intot hthe soundtrack area on 16mm and Im trying to make some optical sound experiments using this way of generating sound from mumbers.
The artwork area can be lit with LED lights or two Arri 2K floods depending on what film you use or want to do. If other lenses are put on and the camera is moved back a large area becomes available to shoot.
The motor is very programmable. You can shoot single frames, multiple frames by assigning a number to the button. You can enter a number manually to shoot. It opens to H mode or ‘half’ so you can rotoscope a piece of film in the gate, infact you must do this to focus. You can also have set time B mode for long exposures. It records frame numbers accurately and goes forwards and backwards. The speed is adjustable but I tend to run quick wedge test with light metered for the stock and see which F stop looks best. ((MUST ADD EMERGENCY STOP!!))
All in All I am super happy with this build, it is a very versatile tool for making images, esp from flat artwork and I cant wait to shoot some 3D stuff I have been collecting from around the wild areas where I live.
