Developments in Motion-Picture Camera Design and Technology — A Ten Year Update

Abstract

Technology and its history is the all consuming avocation and advocation of all serious engineers, this one included. And the history of the technology in the motion-picture industry has an added dimension of glamor that makes it all the more exciting. — To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the SMPTE, I've been asked to do an update on an article on the history of the motion picture camera (that was co-authored by myself, E. C. Manderfeld and George A. Mitchell) originally published in the 50th Anniversary Issue of the SMPTE Journal (July 1967). While I wrote the original article from the vantage point of Vice President of Engineering for Mitchell Camera Corp. — one of the premier professional motion-picture camera companies that traces its beginnings to the start of the motion-picture industry early in this century — I now write from the vantage point of President of Cinema Products Corp., the company that I founded only eight years ago. Now, as then, I will attempt to approach my subject in an unbiased and objective manner. — In that first article, I dwelt exclusively on the large-screen formats and equipment therefor. I feel it is appropriate, and indicative of the technological progress made in the development of film stocks, that this article deal not only with new developments in 35mm equipment but also with the enormous strides in technology that have occurred in the 16mm field. I will draw the line there, however, and save for my next paper any discussion on super-8 camera equipment as it relates to professional cinematography. — This has been a decade of amazing progress and growth in the development of new professional motion-picture camera equipment. As we have found, technology advances in a geometric progression rather than arithmetic, and this has been no less true in the professional motion-picture equipment field.