Kinemo 3

This third article is to show how these films have survived.

The previous article noted that narrow guage films for private home use were generally produced on safety film. But Kinemo used the 17.5 mm system (basically 35mm film split down the center) that required a special projector, and was soon superseded when Kodak popularised 16mm and Pathé 9.5 mm. In many cases in film history, archives have had to re-photograph old films frame by frame to preserve them for modern audiences.

We have to be extremely grateful to Brian K, who did this for the three Kinemo films.

Below are the links for these films. In time to come, if these links cease to work, a search on the internet should reveal where the three films are to be found.

Imperial Valley

https://youtu.be/-zIClU8TQtM                                                               

                                             

The Great Pyramid

https://youtu.be/S2snV8SyQVU

Palestine       

https://youtu.be/onCebb9bg6Q

And here a few pictures of how the original films looked when found.

And finally, here is how Brian, in his own words, described the process of restoration.

Kinemo motion picture projector, ready for operation

The film is threaded under the upper sprocket, through the film gate and behind the lower sprocket, then under the take up reel.  The lamp housing holds a high intensity light bulb.  This is turned on.  Focus is achieved by moving the Focus Adjustment Bar fore- and aft with a slight vertical motion as well.  This moves the entire lens assembly in the chrome-plated tube.  Turning the crank twice per second operates the projector at 16 frames per second, the standard speed for silent films prior to the sound era (1927).

 Close up of the Maltese Cross Shutter, lens and operating crank.

Digitizing setup of the projector.

The lens, shutter and lamp lousing are removed.  A pencil has been taped to the “flywheel” to facilitate easy turning of the flywheel.  Each turn of the flywheel advances the film one frame.  This is much easier to control than by using the crank on the other side of the projector, which moves the film 8 frames per turn.  After each rotation of the flywheel, a single photograph is taken.  The frames are assembled in Sony Vegas (video and audio mixing) software; each photograph is given two video frames (1/15 second), which is just a little slower than the proper playback speed of 16 frames per second.  The camera has three close up lenses (+1, +2 and +4) at the end of the lens and two extension tubes (36 mm and 20 mm) between the lens and the camera.  This helps to get a closer look at the small film, but even so, it only fills about 1/6 of the frame’s area.  More enlargement of the image size adds to optical issues (chromatic aberration), but the Canon 5 DS R camera has a 50.6 megapixel sensor, so not much detail is lost.  The digitized image has more pixels than a Canon 30D, with its smaller sensor, has.  This camera has a 128 GB SDHC card in it, as well as a 32 GB CF card.  Even so, it takes four sets of these cards to record all 6200 images on a typical roll of film.  Once one is filled, it is “dumped” to a computer, erased, and reused.  Exposures are made in both “raw” and “large .jpg” formats in the camera.