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Topic: Print Quality

Elena N. Solovyova
Film Handler

Posts: 44
From: Voronezh, Russia
Registered: Feb 2003

posted 01-30-2004 03:38 AM

It's really convinient to have a binoculars. You can split this device into two mini-telescopes to share them across two booths.

As for complaining customers (concerning soft-focus films) -- it is always useful to defocus the lens slightly before the start of presentation and shift the focus ring up to the "dead focus" mark during the first trailer. It prevents a lot of people from complaining -- at least they know that there is someone in the booth.

[Razz]

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Manny Knowles
"What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???"

Posts: 4247
From: Bloomington, IN, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 01-30-2004 10:02 AM

I have to chime in here and disagree with a couple of things:

1. I would never allow a customer to operate the equipment in any way. I just don't believe in that kind of thing.

2. Defocusing the image in order to "telegraph" a message to the audience is just wrong. I would never INTENTIONALLY throw the image out of focus, even if it is "just a trailer."

These ideas seem like "games" to me. It's a waste of time/energy.

If you are confident that the image has been correctly focused then there is nothing more you can do. Anyone who is bothered by the image should request a refund.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 01-30-2004 10:13 AM

In an ideal world, granted. But managers don't like giving out refunds, and if there's nothing wrong with your presentation they shouldn't have to.

Agreed entirely on letting customers twiddle the focus knob, though. If their hand slipped and had an argument with some sprocket teeth the possibilities for legal action would not be nice. I had a long-running difference of opinion with a former employer over its 'Kids' Club' marketing gimmick of allowing children to come up to the box and start the film on their birthday. Although, thanks to automation, we could set it up so it simply was a case of pressing one button, their parents physically had to lift them up to do it. If someone had slipped while the machine was running or managed to snarl up the film path, I wouldn't have liked to be involved in the recriminations afterwards.

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Travis Hubrig
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 175
From: Minot ND, USA
Registered: May 2003

posted 01-30-2004 01:47 PM

Does anyone have the Screen Scope mounted on their XL's?
The parts manual has them listed as part P-2481...
(Page 25-26 in the Simplex XL manual)
If you have them have you used them? They seem like almost a novelty. It would be a good idea, but would only get used in a drive-in or large auditorium.
The mounting brackets are on mine, it would be fun to have one and play with.

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Dominic Espinosa
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1172
From: California, U.S.A.
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 01-30-2004 02:47 PM

Oh yeah. Focus is fun.
My personal favorite is "how hard is it to focus a film?"
Well, let's see...This movie is mostly dark shots and it's a dv conversion...you try it and let me know how it goes.

IMHO the best startup for a picture is as follows...Depending on the hours on the current bulb and how it strikes I start the lamphouse one to five minutes before showtime (if the bulb is very old and hard to strike of course) and leave the manual dowser on the lamphouse closed. When showtime rolls around hit start, let the automation do it's thang and open the douser again.
Since most of the time I don't have time to stand there and watch 12 minutes of trailers I'll focus at the end of the first trailer and come back to focus on the opening credits. After that slight adjustments may need to be made but by now the equipment is warmed up and the focus is at least very close.

When the credits roll I'll recheck it on them, but most of the time they seem to be slightly off from the rest of them feature.
With a little tweaking the picture should look great the rest of the day without having to drastically change it later.

Durring the film if there's a focus issue the best i've found to focus on are as follows:
Peoples faces/eyes (I too have always thought Morgan Freeman was hard to focus)
Sand or stucco wall
And anything with sharp lines that happens to be well lit in the foreground.

And in my oppinion again, focusing is something you're born with...I've never been able to teach some people with perfect vision to focus yet others get it immediately.

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Carl Martin
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1424
From: Oakland, CA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 01-30-2004 07:29 PM

about leaving the lamp on with the hand douser closed.

i know it's common to do this for 20 minutes in changeover booths and some places just leave them on all day, but is there ever a possibility of damage from this?

one of our lamphouses (um, have to check on make & model) has a sticker warning against doing this for more than 5 minutes. i don't know how the sticker got there but it's professionally made, not just sharpie on a name tag. (although it does say "dowser" which is where i got that spelling.)

carl

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Gordon McLeod
Film God

Posts: 9532
From: Toronto Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 99

posted 01-30-2004 07:41 PM

The only lamphouse the douser was an issue I ran across was the Kneisley's as it was too thin also the Lumex running at 2K often had the two vanes fuse togather

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Dominic Espinosa
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1172
From: California, U.S.A.
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 01-30-2004 08:14 PM

The only benefit I could see leaving the lamp on all day is that it doesn't have to restrike every show tart, but I'm not sure that that really causes less wear and tear than using up to an hour or more of bulb time waiting between shows. That just doesn't sound smart to me at all.
And there's most likely more issues with having that puppy on all day, in a house that's running six shows a day even on an a film that's 1:55:00 long with a 15 minute break between shows you'd have that bulb on at least 84.3 hours per day. I know that sounds like a small ammount but I'd assume that consistent opperation would "wear out" the bulb much faster.

anywho, there's my 2...again [Wink]

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Jack Ondracek
Film God

Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002

posted 01-30-2004 10:42 PM

quote:
i know it's common to do this for 20 minutes in changeover booths and some places just leave them on all day, but is there ever a possibility of damage from this?

Some higher-powered lamphouses (like, 4K+) might have issues with this practice, since a lot of the air intake comes through the snood. I think it's one of the reasons my Ultra 80 runs warmer than I like... the added heat filter blocks off the front and there are NO other air input ports other than the blower on top. The Super Lume-X is built the same way, but because it has no heat filter, there's lots of air coming in through the front (as well as what the little blower provides. Strong's older X-60 series lamphouses had some openings in the back, but, like the Lume-X boxes, there was nothing to restrict airflow in through the snood. Big Sky's 4k+ pedestal box has vent ports all over the place, so heat filter or shutter positioning makes no real difference at all.

If the lamphouse design doesn't depend on the shutter being open most of the time, I wouldn't think you'd have a problem.

quote:
The only benefit I could see leaving the lamp on all day is that it doesn't have to restrike every show (s)tart, but I'm not sure that that really causes less wear and tear than using up to an hour or more of bulb time waiting between shows. That just doesn't sound smart to me at all.

The debate here about the effect of striking lamps for each and every show reminds me of many spirited discussions in years past over how much extra life you'd get out of a radio tube by leaving at least the filaments on all the time.

Personally, I've never found that either practice makes much difference on a xenon bulb AS LONG as you are not trying to set records for most hours. If the bulb is replaced within a reasonable percentage over warranty, I've generally found that the number of strikes I normally put on it doesn't matter much one way or the other.

What DOES make a difference is how the bulb behaves in the first minute or so after you start it up... especially when it's heading toward the end of its usable life. A horizontal bulb that's perfectly good for the bulk of a presentation can look downright awful while it "warms up" and stabliizes. If for no other reason than that, I'll leave a lamp on... especially over short intermissions. Some here have also commented that it can take some time for a bulb to reach its normal color temperature, lending another reason to leave it on.

If the break is a long one, Yah... I'll turn the lamp off, but on an older bulb, I'll fire it back up a couple of minutes early... with the shutter closed, to let it settle in. Then all's good.

But then, that's just me. Do a thread search on this subject & you'll probably find hundreds of opinions in several threads about this one issue.

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Chris Byrne
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 102
From: Kirwan, Australia
Registered: Jan 2003

posted 01-30-2004 11:07 PM

quote:
I had a long-running difference of opinion with a former employer over its 'Kids' Club' marketing gimmick of allowing children to come up to the box and start the film on their birthday.

I learnt the hard way with this. A manager gave a group of school kids the 'tour' after one of their visits. This one kid was running amok, running around like a cat on a hot tin roof. It all came to a head when he took out the platter take up arm on a film playing to a full house. Needless to say - never again!

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Sam D. Chavez
Film God

Posts: 2153
From: Martinez, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 01-30-2004 11:13 PM

I had a focus problem on my last operators job back in the days of "Close Encounters". I had four screens in one building and one Cinerama style house in another building four minutes away.

Invariably, the lens would drift predictably in focus over the first 10 minutes.

Since I could not spend a lot of time in the big house, I had to devise a way to set the lens out of focus a calibrated amount and let it drift into focus. Worked every time, but it was one of the compromises that ultimately drove me out of the booth and into theatre service.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 01-31-2004 05:59 AM

quote:
one of our lamphouses (um, have to check on make & model) has a sticker warning against doing this for more than 5 minutes.

Does that sticker really refer to the hand douser or is it talking about the changeover shutter? If the latter, five minutes would be too long for comfort, I'd have thought. I once got sidetracked by a 'phone call immediately after a changeover and when I got back, the changeover shutter on the outgoing machine already had a slight dent in it, because I'd forgotten to close the hand douser before answering the 'phone. This was on a DP-70 with a 2.5k lamp, and I can't have been gone more than 90 seconds or so.

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Ron Keillor
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 166
From: Vancouver, B.C. Canada
Registered: Jul 2003

posted 01-31-2004 02:26 PM

"douser" or "dowser"
Richardson's Blue Book (Quigley Publications) 1935 uses "dowser".
Chambers Dictionary gives " douse or dowse ... to put out, extinguish ( esp in the slang douse the glim to put out the light) -- n. douser a shutter for cutting off light in a cinema projector".
So to me both spellings are okay.
The American sources (Websters and New American) both seem to limit dowser to one who uses a forked stick to find water.
This comment added to forestall argument on the subject.

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 01-31-2004 02:49 PM

Regarding leaving the lamp on all day:

Some theatre sound systems will make a "bzzt" sound in the auditorium speakers when the xenon is struck. Apparently this is usually the result of a poor installation. Unless/until the problem is fixed, it's probably a good idea to leave both projector lamps on if it is a changeover booth, regardless of the bulb life issues. There's nothing more annoying to the audience than hearing a "bzzt" sound in the middle of a quiet scene.

I always leave both lamps on when running small (2000') reels and have never had a problem, though I've never run small reels with anything larger than a 2000w xenon.

Regarding focus:

Does anyone else _hate_ the "Focus Features" logo which starts out of focus? It's especially annoying when it's the first thing to hit the screen after a lens change (where one would normally want to touch up the focus). Two thumbs down to whoever designed that one.

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Gordon McLeod
Film God

Posts: 9532
From: Toronto Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 99

posted 01-31-2004 04:17 PM

Most film lab screening rooms leave there lamps lit all day and all my twin machine booths I install are instructed that unless running large reels lamps stay lit

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