Random photos, comics, etc.

[Leo Enticknap]

Last year, waiting to check in at an unremarkable chain hotel in Caldwell, ID, a couple with thick South London accents were ahead of me in line. After they had completed the formalities and been given their room entry cards, one of them asked the lady behind the desk: "Oh, errr ... we're outta fags. Do you know where we can get some fags round 'ere?" She looked totally bewildered. I couldn't resist adding to the fun, and so replied, "You should find plenty in the 7-11 just across the street." They thanked me and made a beeline for the front door. The check-in clerk then asked me, "I'm sorry, but is there anything, like, gay about 7-11?" At that point I explained, resulting in a nervous giggle.

I hope the couple needing their tobacco fix realized that smoking was almost certainly not allowed in their hotel room, but that was their problem, not mine.

[Jim Cassedy]

Anybody who was around in the 60's - 70's or 80's/90's probably, at some point, owned
a "KODAK INSTAMATIC™ camera. The 126 cartridge loading camera was one of the
most successful consumer film formats of all time, before being phased out in 1999.

But there is still a large group of die-hard amateur photographers who like to
experiment and 'play around' around with 126 format cameras. With patience and
a darkroom, it is possible to re-load old 126 Instamatic film cartridges with 35mm film,
which is pretty much the same size as 126. 126 film had one single perforation along
the top edge, which was used not only toadvance the film, but in many cameras it also
cocked the shutter and moved a frame counter on cameras that had them.
When using 35mm film, the bottom row of perfs falls into the picture area, and the
multiple perfs on the top row don't cleanly mesh with the 'claw' in the camera.
But some resourceful experimenter figured out a way to modify an old 35mm
tape splicer to punch a single hole in a strp of 35mm unperforated film that, when
loaded into an Instamatic cartridge, will make the camera perform just like 'real'
126 film. It requires removing all but one of the perf-pins and registration pins on
the splicer, and also removing the cutting blades. (Which is probably a good
idea since they're not needed, and it eliminates the possibility of the user slicing
a knuckle of fingertip, since everything needs to be done in the dark.)

This photo shows all the pins that need to be removed
.126_Perforator.jpg

If you're curious, you can read more about it
HERE> https://emulsive.org/articles/guides...ilm-perforator

[Leo Enticknap]

Where would you buy unperforated, raw 35mm from? Photography stores (back in the day before Amazon became a thing) stocked 100ft or 200ft rolls of perforated 35mm for loading into 135 canisters via bulk loaders, but I can't remember unperforated stock ever being available for amateurs to buy. It must have been produced, because that's what microfilm essentially is, though.

BTW, based on the CIR splicer and Jack Roe tape, I'm guessing that the author of this article is British. I haven't seen either in any booth since emigrating to California.

As a child of the '70s, my first photography was on 126. While the only film you could get from supermarkets and general stores was C41 color negative, there was a specialist photography store near my home that also sold b/w (Verichrome Pan) and Kodachrome 64 in the format. Showing square slides at family gatherings always attracted comments.

[Leo Enticknap]

Not taken on 126 film, even though it's almost a square pic...

image.png

No mystery as to why this DSS220 was spontaneously shutting itself down! The fans were so clogged that two had stopped rotating, and one had totally burned out. Apparently it had been running continuously since its installation in 2012, and had likely never been shut down until it did so involuntarily a few days ago.

This pic was taken after an initial blast with the Datavac. When I opened the lid of the case, there was a think layer of dust and goo, such that it was impossible to see what color the motherboard is. I wish I'd taken the photo then for shock value, but it didn't occur to me until I was about to go to work on the fans and heatsink.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Not taken on 126 film, even though it's almost a square pic...

image.png

No mystery as to why this DSS220 was spontaneously shutting itself down! The fans were so clogged that two had stopped rotating, and one had totally burned out. Apparently it had been running continuously since its installation in 2012, and had likely never been shut down until it did so involuntarily a few days ago.

This pic was taken after an initial blast with the Datavac. When I opened the lid of the case, there was a think layer of dust and goo, such that it was impossible to see what color the motherboard is. I wish I'd taken the photo then for shock value, but it didn't occur to me until I was about to go to work on the fans and heatsink.

Was this at a certain room we both know of? That booth never got shut down and dust was an issue...

[Leo Enticknap]

I don't think so: it's in a Bel-Air Circuit residence theater.

[Leo Enticknap]

In reference to the power outages that sent all of Spain and Portugal dark for a day, and many parts of it for a lot longer:


image.png

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

I don't think so: it's in a Bel-Air Circuit residence theater.

Thought it may have still been one I did, but I don't recall doing any 220's, just 200's. Might have been a replacement for one my old 200's though, been so long since I worked the Bel Aire circuit.

[Frank Cox]

915dcc70ee48013d98d7005056a9545d.jpg
..........

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Not taken on 126 film, even though it's almost a square pic...

image.png

No mystery as to why this DSS220 was spontaneously shutting itself down! The fans were so clogged that two had stopped rotating, and one had totally burned out. Apparently it had been running continuously since its installation in 2012, and had likely never been shut down until it did so involuntarily a few days ago.

This pic was taken after an initial blast with the Datavac. When I opened the lid of the case, there was a think layer of dust and goo, such that it was impossible to see what color the motherboard is. I wish I'd taken the photo then for shock value, but it didn't occur to me until I was about to go to work on the fans and heatsink.

I used to see this dust buildup in QSC Cinema Amplifiers of all models in theaters in Nevada and Southern Utah. The dust would literally clog the heatsinks in about 5 years time causing the amplifiers to cycle off and back on. Nothing like spending a day removing amps, cleaning them out, reinstalling them, checking levels, etc.

[Leo Enticknap]

I recently had to do a rack full of MX1500s that had gotten so bad that the theater owner was complaining of a burning smell coming from the rack. It was just dust/goo/crud that had been sucked into the amps over a 25-year period, and incredibly, they were all absolutely fine after a thorough internal clean and some DeOxit on the gain pots. Despite the age of the amps and that the B-chain hadn't been touched likely since the place converted to digital (at which point the audio system wasn't replaced: they added a Doremi D to A to the existing CP65), I only needed to make very slight adjustments to get everything to reference.

image.png

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Some times Ithink it's better to have replacable filters on the rack itself, so Customers can change their own filters. But no one wanted to pay for them. instead they got stuck paying Technician time to come clean out amplifiers and power supplies on site at 20X the price.

[Jim Cassedy]

It's no secret that the smell of freshly popped corn in the lobby stimulates sales
of same. I'm not sure who first realized this fact, but it was known as far back as
January 1918, when this article appeared in POPULAR MECHANICS:

PopcornFanPM011918.jpg

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Yep! That's very true Jim... one customer used to exhaust his poppers outside over the entry doors. Said he also had gobs of people come in just wanting to buy the popcorn. I also had customers that didn't vent their poppers. At one location if they left the booth door open, the first projector in line sucked all the grease in. When we installed his first Series 1 Christie, and I went back six months later, the CP2000 lamphouse sucked it all in... So much so that it was dripping off some parts of the lamphouse. Tearing that all down.and cleaning it took half a day. Luckily, the grease did not get in to the integrator or light engine.

[Leo Enticknap]

I was once sent to an 8-plex owned by a small chain that was a long way (as in, hundreds of miles) from their other sites and main offices, and in a pretty remote location in general. This was a one time emergency call, and not one of our service contracts or regular customers. There were DP2K-15Cs and 20Cs for all the screens. In the center of the single gallery booth, next to the staircase that provided access to it, was the shaft for a dumb waiter that had been used to move film prints up and down back in the 35mm days. The elevator car, mechanism, and doors had been removed, and all that remained was the empty shaft.

The bottom end of the shaft opened out into the back of the concessions stand, right next to the popper, which explained the overpowering smell of popcorn in the booth. It also explained why I simply couldn't pull out the Enigma board that had failed from the projector's card cage. I had to lever it with a screwdriver, because the faceplate had become sealed solid to its mating surfaces on the card cage with popcorn oily goo. Even the outer fairing was a struggle to pull off. Pretty much every single surface in that booth felt slightly sticky or tacky. After using the TMS computer's keyboard to find out the IP addresses of everything, there were yellow marks on my fingers, and I could see my fingerprints on the keys. The projectors' lenses had an additional coating on them that wasn't put there by any optical factory either, which must have significantly affected the light level and color balance.

I needed a large, chunky pair of pliers on the tab to get the card cage air filter out. After doing so, I discovered that the layer of goo on the outward facing side was so bad that even after two hours of full immersion in a sink of warm water and dish soap (I didn't have any baking soda with me, which is what Barco recommend is used to clean those filters), barely any progress had been made on softening and loosening it. I suspect that the Enigma board died because it had overheated and cooked.

I recommended in my service call report that the entire booth needed a deep clean, including all the projectors and every other device that moved air through it, or else it was a question of when rather than if further equipment failures would follow. My impression was that no planned maintenance had been done for many years previously beyond lamp replacements (and even then, some of the lamps were hundreds of hours overdue for replacement, unless whoever replaced them had failed to record it in the software). That call was an object lesson on just how much damage popcorn oil in the atmosphere can cause if it gets into the booth.