Source: Page 67 of White Noise Keywords: "my," "ever," "Lasher's"

From: Martin Hart Subject: Re: John Frankenheimer's GRAND PRIX Cinerama cameras. Date: 22 Jul 2004 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.tech

In article <20040721231502.23846.00002...@mb-m28.aol.com>, djsherl...@aol.company.net says... > Marty, > Do you have any other evidence that there were no 27mm lenses for the PSO > camera other than just a gut feel and the fact that John Steven Lasher did not > have a set? I have to admit it's mostly a gut feel. There are other things that I've discerned from close examination of both Russian Kinopanorama frames and those from Lasher's Bounty film. I haven't pulled all that stuff together into a totally logical thread but I'm working on it. There were changes in the Kinopanorama system, depending on who you listen to, for one thing, it started out being identical to Cinerama in that the camera covered 146 degrees with a 2 degree overlap. The overlap was later widened, actually more than doubled, in order to better blend the panel lines. Intercutting older footage with later footage causes problems. I have a substantial amount of Russian and Spanish technical data on Kinopanorama but I'm a bit rusty in both languages. The Spanish stuff is basically publicity fluff but the Russian material is much more technical and quite interesting. > In the article at > http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_6_3/interview-with-john-lasher-... > t-99.html, John said: > "Through his many contacts in the Russian film industry a PSO-1960 Kinopanorama > sound camera (camera number six), DC- and synch motors, magazines, two sets of > lenses (35mm and 50mm), cables and tripod were located in storage, where they > had remained for some thirty years." I asked Lasher for information on his lenses several times and never got an answer. This is more than he ever told me. > Those lenses correspond to a field of view of 116 and 80 degrees for the two > lenses. 116 degrees is pretty wide, and is comparable to the bugeye Todd-AO. > But there were shots in "Joyful Racing Corners" that seemed to be wider than > 116 degrees. The shot in particular that comes to mind is with the camera > looking at the motorcycle racers as one of them almost comes up to the camera. > It seemed to me to have a very wide angle and dramatic foreshortening like a > wider 146 degree field of view. This conforms precisely to my own impression of the film. In some shots it appears that the focal length of the lenses had to be at least 100mm because the depth of field was insanely shallow and only telephoto lenses could have made such closeups. I recall people speculating as to whether the telephoto stuff might have been converted from 70mm, but it was no laced with grain so my guess it was originally shot three panel. > Okay, it is conceivable that the older SKP-1 camera was used for some of the > shots. But it seems much more likely that the Soviets, when designing the > newer PSO camera, would have included the 27mm focal length in the design if at > all possible. They did it with the SKP-1 camera -- why not with the PSO > camera? Because it was crowded with the prisms? The prisms took the place of > mirrors (it allowed the reflective surfaces to be protected unlike those on > Cinemiracle) and they allowed for the different focal lengths without the need > to adjust the position of the films or lenses. It was a very clever idea, and > if you draw it out accurately you will find that it really can be done. I've never looked into the PSO and if it operated like Cinemiracle rather than Cinerama, there's more reason to believe that a 27mm lens set was not built for it. The distance from film to the lens requires a reverse telephoto design for short lenses much like the Taylor-Hobson lenses built for the Technicolor three-strip camera. Technicolor's shortest lens was 35mm. I'm not all that well versed in lens design, but I'd guess that if making a 35mm focal length lens for Technicolor was tough, making a 27mm set for Kinopanorama would have been even tougher. Besides, I never trusted those Commie bastards anyway. Marty -- http://www.widescreenmuseum.com The American WideScreen Museum

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