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<p style=”text-align: left;”>I always wanted one of those for years as I’m a huge fan of silents and basically always wanted to make silent movies, and I especially wanted to create London After Midnight with real 1920s cameras.</p>
I know they’re super expensive and super ancient and hard to come by these days but any advice for someone like me looking for an ancient camera from the silent film era and the pros and cons and do and don’ts?
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I’m not an expert but i suppose that, even if you could find a real camera from that era still working (and, quoting Indiana Jones, it should be in a museum, ah ah!) , the problem would be finding a film stock for it.
From what i’m reading you could adapt some type of modern film to some models of camera, so It seems that It’s possible in theory.
Or you could use a different approach, a bit like what they did with The Lighthouse to create a vintage look.
You can run modern 35mm film stock through a 1920s camera, the standard hasn’t changed. Steve Gainer, ASC recently did an ASC Master Class where he filmed an actor on two 1920s cameras, I think one was a Pathe Professional from the late teens! He used Kodak Double-X emulsion. Coppola’s “Dracula” used silent era cameras for a scene when Dracula arrives in London, with modern color stocks — the footage looked so “normal” that they ended up duping it a few times to look grainier, like an Autochrome image.
The camera has to be in good working order. They aren’t easy to frame and focus on, no reflex viewing, tiny lenses, etc. You often pre-focused through a viewing tube looking at the gate with a piece of frosted gel in there, like a groundglass (you used to be able to focus through the film itself before they had anti-halation backings.) The mags are tiny, you need short loads. By the 1920s though you had Mitchells and Bell & Howell cameras that took 400′ loads. Talk to Steve Gainer, who runs the ASC Museum.
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