New Camera, New Challenges

The 8mm director reflex camera I ordered through ecrater.com arrived safe and sound on Monday afternoon. The French-made lens, an Angenieux, was in great shape. The electronic wide-angle to telephoto zoom buttons (electric motor-driven or manually-operated—a rare camera feature for the early 1960's) needed new batteries. The light meter wasn't responding to differing light levels, and because this camera has an electronic auto-exposure feature, the film will never expose correctly: It will be either over- or under-exposed. I thought I had made a bad purchase as I falsely believed the AA batteries I'd replaced for the zoom would take care of the light meter as well. My heart sank.

Then... I looked at the bottom of the camera and saw a release bottun, I pushed it and a hidden door above the lens flipped down to reveal a label that said my Zoomatic requires yet another battery to power the electronic eye (automatic exposure control). So my friend Justin and I tracked down what seemed to be the last 1.5 V Everlast E1 battery in the Denver area at Batteries Plus in Aurora.

The battery cost about $4.00, but the guys at the store told me that if the battery is ever discontinnued, they might be able to build the battery from scratch. These guys are incredible. I think they could build a battery to power Marty McFly's DeLorean—sure beats a food processor, no? Anyway, I highly recommend the sales people at Batteries Plus at 995 S. Abilene St. in Aurora for any difficult-to-find batteries.

I had to track down an instruction manual online, and it ran me about $23.00 including shipping. What I received on Monday may very well be the Bell & Howell 424 Director Reflex. If the instruction manual is wrong, I can send it back for a refund. I just hope it's the right one, and that I don't have to keep exchanging to find the right manual. Bell & Howell never put their model number on the camera body or inside the magazine. This makes it challenging. The manual, however, does list the number on the front cover.

Also, some cameras took magazines that loaded into the camera rather than the spools a camera user would have to manually load. The way to tell the difference on Bell& Howell Zoomatic cameras as to whether they take a magazine or are spool-fed is a simple marking under the lens that looks like this:

Magazine 8mm
Zoomatic

or

Magazine 8mm
Zoomatic Eye

Any models simply marked "Zoomatic" or "Zoomatic Eye" are spool-fed. Magazines are no longer produced, and if you run across a camera that is designed for them, please know that it will make a nice fence post topper, ankle weight for running (although in this case you'll need two cameras), or something nice for your shelf. You cannot use these magazine cameras anymore to shoot moving pictures.

I'll add more tech info as it comes up. I'll be setting up shop in case 33 at the Denver Brass Armadillo on Sunday, September 5th. I am very excited to let people know that 8mm movie making is not dead.

Josh