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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Kinoton/Philips Dia Anbaugerät (slide attachment, I think)
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 01-03-2005 03:45 AM
This is on Ebay at the moment, Here
From the word 'dia' in the descriptiion I think it's something to turn your Philps projector into a slde lantern, but I can't see how it is supposed to work. The thing on the right looks like a lens holder, but it's rather small, and a long way from the rest of the works, even for the sort fo focal length lkely to be needed for projecting slides. There seems to be a 45 degree mirror to reflect the light through the slide holder, and a mounting bracket on the end of the long rod; did it mount with the rod running down the front of the projector column? If so, it would seem to be projecting onto the floor. If the long rod was pointing forwards then it would would be through the front wall of the box, and into the auditorium. Any ideas?
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Hugh McCullough
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 147
From: Old Coulsdon, Surrey, UK
Registered: Jan 2003
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posted 01-03-2005 06:44 AM
I remember working with a similar device at the, now demolished, ABC cinema at Eltham, London (birthplace of Bob Hope) in the late 1960s.
It was bolted to the non operating side of a Peerless carbon arc.
A hole was cut in the arc door, and the 'slide projector' bolted on. Light from the arc was reflected by the 45 deg mirror, then through a condenser lens, and onto the slide, and then through the lens and sideways enlarged porthole.
The resulting image was rather dark especially at the edges. You can say it worked, but only just. I believe it was made by Premiere.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 01-03-2005 08:20 AM
Thanks for inserting the picture Brad; sorry, I forgot to do it.
John, any chance of posting a picture of this thing?
Hugh, given the design of the thing, the mounting position you suggest would make sense. What machines did you have there? I think ABC had got rid of most of their original Ross ones before that. I know they were installing single Philips machines with platters in the '70s, I saw Streatham after it was converted in about '73. I think they used Westars in between at some places. This thing looks the right colour to be Philips/Kinoton, but I'm not sure you could mount it on a column type machine; wouldn't the column be in the way? Did this just use stray light that found its way out of the side of the lamphouse, or did you put in a small 45 degree mirror? I think you'd need a hole in the centre for the positive to pass through to do this. If these were standard size slides, I would guess that you would probably be using a lens of about 200-250mm. That seems to be a very small lens holder.
Were you still regularly using slides at that time, or was it disused, and you just tried it out? I would have thought that there were very few ciinemas still using them then. What had been my local cinema still had a slide lantern when I first visited it in 1963, but it had been disused for many years, if not decades, even then. The News Theatre at Victoria Station used slides to announce train arrivals and departures; I think this continued after the War, but they no longer did so when I first went there. I don't remember the date, but I saw a Laurel and Hardy film, I'd never heard of them before, and it was announced in the paper that Stan Laurel had died the very next day. No doubt somebody will remember when that was. I went back there just once more, on their closing night; I asked for a visit to the projection box, but they wouldn't let anybody up until they had removed the nitrate newsreel from their opening year which they had been showing. I had to collect my mother from another station, and couldn't wait.
The last place I saw slides being used was at the State, Grays, after it closed, and the auditorium was basically used as a fire escape route from the club which operated in the foyer area. They still gave occasional organ concerts, and showed slides using the upper unit of the Brenograph. This stopped some years ago, when the club went out of business.
I really can't imagine that many of these things were ever sold.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 01-05-2005 02:28 PM
quote: Scott Norwood
Is there a mechanical advance mechanism, or do the slides need to be changed by hand (like on a Brenograph)? If the latter, how does one crossfade or at least black out the screen when changing slides?
The Philips attachment looks like it only takes one slide. The traditional cinema slide lantern usually had a sliding holder for two slides; you slide it over to put a slide in place, then removed the previous slide from the other side of the holder, and replaced it with the next one, like an overgrown version of the Aldis Tutor 500/1000/2 slide projectors that just about all British schools had. Kershaw also made one rather similar to the Tutor 1000; any British members remember that one? It had a focusing knob, and handle in the same dark red plastic that was used on the Kalee 21, 20, 18 etc. (For those who don't know, Kershaw made the Kalee projectors).
Some cinema slide lanterns were bi-unial, you would disolve from one lantern to the other mechanically, then change the slide in the lantern you had just disolved from. Some slide lanterns had a douser like a film projector, but some didn't, and you had to either cap the lens, or just strike the arc when you wanted a slide on screen. I remember reading somewhere that in one of the railway station news theatres an old tin lid had been used to cap the lens.
Slides were used for two purposes, for announcements, like the train times I mentioned, or Hugh's car numbers. I've also heard of them being used near ports to call for a crew to return to their ship, ready to sail. I've never seen this done; I thought it finished long ago, possibly soon after WWII, which is why I was quite surprised to hear Hugh say he was still doing it in the '60s. For this purpose you would probably only want to use one slide.
The other use was for 'decorative' slides, sometimes shown on the tabs before the film, while the organist was playing; I have seen this done in recent times, but it's not very common now. For this you probably would want to show a number of slides, so a sliding holder, and/or a biunial lantern would be useful.
quote: Scott Norwood
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't quite understand why anyone would want to use a $30k+ film projector to do something that a $500 slide projector probably does better. (OK, it shows medium-format slides and maybe the image is brighter with the arc lamp, but the whole concept just seems really bizarre.)
Are you comparing it to a modern 2" square projector, like a Carousel? If so, I think you'd get a brighter image, unless you had a xenon projector. (I once even saw a carbon arc conversion of a Kodak Carousel). I've never seen 35mm slides used in a cinema for advertising; as others here have referred to from time to time. Every cinema Where I've seen, or shown, advertising it was on 35mm film, from either Pearl & Dean, or Carlton (formally Rank Screen Advertising), never slides. I have seen 35mm slides used in cinemas to accompany lectures, a use which goes back to the days of the old travelling 'Magic Lanternist', though less used in recent years than it used to be since the advent of the Powerpoint presentation. It's still quite common though.
If you are comparing the attachment to other ways of showing the old large glass slides on a full cinema screen, or tabs, the main advantage would seem to be a saving of space, compared to installing either a normal slide lantern, or a Brenograph. Either of these machines, with space to operate it, would take almost as much space as a film projector. Being on the 'non-operating' side, if you fitted the attachment to the right hand projector it could be reached by a single projectionist, standing between the projectors; take down the slide, then turn round and start the feature on the left hand projector without having to walk to another machine. Projection boxes in early cinemas tended to be very small, some were only about 2 x 2.5m, so this attachment might be useful there, but the ones shown seem to be rather too modern for that. Some very early projectors were dual purpose, either a film, or slide, mechanism could be slid into place. The big '30s 'super cinemas' seem to have made considerable use of slide lanterns, Brenographs and spots, but they tended to have much larger projection boxes, the Lowe's Jersey is the biggest I've seen, but the Odeon Leicester Square isn't far short, and more projectionists on duty to operate everything, so an atachment would be less of an advantage there.
The attachment would probably also be cheaper than a slide lantern, and certainly much cheaper than a Brenograph. I can't remember the price, but it's listed in the Brenkert catalogue in the manuals section. It was a very expensive bit of kit in its time.
I have operated a Brenograph a couple of times; it's a great machine, very versatile, but I wouldn't choose one if all I wanted to do was project a few slides, unless I wanted to do something like have the image move across the stage. The simple lenses in the Brenograph do not produce a very good quality image, not very sharp, and tend to show colour fringing. It's more like projecting a gobo with a profile spot. Reflecting the beam off two mirrors doesn't help either, especially nowadays, with the silvering on the mirrors tending to be well past its best on most examples. The Brenograph is also simply overkill, if all you want to do is project slides. If you really insist on having singalong shows it will project the 'bouncing ball' over the song words though. ![[puke]](graemlins/puke.gif)
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