Movies for TV - Early Television Foundation

60
FUNDAMENTALS
of the panel or for winding film backwards or forwards through
the camera for special effects by placing it on the eight-frame shaft
above it.
just
The speed control is the knurled knob found immediately
above the shutter control. This latter deserves a fairly thorough
description. Some makers label this control a dissolving shutter;
the Eastman Kodak Company calls it a variable shutter; but no
matter what it is called, it performs the same function. Moving
the lever from closed to open position alters the number of degrees
that the shutter is open and controls the length of exposure (al-
ways remembering that the speed
of the shutter movement is
fixed by the twenty-four frame per second requirement of televi-
sion) . The
normal position is "open." It sometimes happens that the
light is so strong in an exterior shot that overexposure will result,
even if the lens is stopped down to the smallest aperture available.
In this case, the shutter may be adjusted to decrease the time that
it is open and thus shorten the exposure : the speed of the film will,
of course, remain the same no matter what is done with the
shutter. If the control is set at one-quarter open, it is equivalent
to two lens stops smaller; one-half open is equal to one smaller
focus with
stop. In the same way, if the subject is desired in sharp
a soft background, the shutter can be set to a smaller opening:
this requires a larger lens-opening if the amount of light is main-
tained the same. Increasing the lens aperture will reduce the depth
of field which will put the background out of focus. On the other
hand, if fast-moving objects close to the camera have to be photographed
and the light is good, the shutter can be set to one-half
or even one-quarter open and with a fast lens any tendency of the
object to blur will be reduced. (Of course these things can be done
with any camera having an adjustable shutter.)
Standard, double-perforated
1 6 mm film is used in this camera
and, as is the case with all the cameras described here, either black
and white or color film can be used. There are two methods of
composing the picture. One way is to use the eye-level finder
which consists of two lenses set in the form of a sight along the
top of the camera; it automatically corrects for parallax. The