widened my gate NIZO S800/Canon1014

[Justin Lovell]

the 1014 xls wasn't too difficult to modify,, but damn.. the nizo s800 is a real headache!.. it has two baby springs to help keep the film more stable inside the gate (beautiful design) but they're a pain in the butt to get back in, i've almost lost the springs 5 times now, and i finally got it setup again..

now all i have to do is screw the gate back in. and i'm goin' to shoot some tests!

ps, the viewfinder on the s800 is REALLY REALLY BAD!!!!!!!!!

can't see anything when its remotely dark, and have to adjust my eye to be able to see the light meter... can't see the image and the lightmeter at the same time easily... geez..

[Santo]

Oh, oh. I just read your post on my other post revealing that's the Nizo S 800 I sold you. http://www.filmshooting.com./scripts/fo ... 7d83bc2d9f This is too funny, but I guess not a surprise.

Holy cow, that only took a day and you went right to work! I hope that comes out okay for you. I wish you have mentioned this to me, I could have told you about the springs, it's been discussed on here a lot. Real tricky to even get the gate to sit properly after that! Man, I hope you don't have any problems with the camera now. I've read a lot of bad things about that with Nizos. The gates are really finicky to re-settle into their seat for some reason and you may experience some problems when you try and shoot. But I've never done a conversion, so I can't say for sure. There's an (in)famous story about a Nizo 6080 that somebody did a gate enlargement to and the trouble he had, but perhaps somebody can provide a link to that. I don't know where it is -- on another board(s).

Also, you might experience severe vignetting on the righthand side of the frame at many focal lengths. As you can see if you picked up a copy of the wide-gate shot on super 8 film SLEEP ALWAYS.

Speaking of which, have you talked to Rick Palidwor about this? You must have read some stuff on him. He's a pretty good guy and him and Mitch Perkins have tons of experience with these things. You can look him up and find an email at: http://www.friendlyfirefilms.com/ I'm sure you're familiar with him if you're doing these modifications, though.

I actually really liked the viewfinder and the shift one makes to see the lightmeter. I guess you get used to it. It was odd at first, but after some familiarity it was very likeable to me for some reason only having the box with the image in my normal view, and if I were setting the exposure to lock it, I could shift down and check it.

[Rick Palidwor]

the viewfinder on the s800 is REALLY REALLY BAD!!!!!!!!!

can't see anything when its remotely dark, and have to adjust my eye to be able to see the light meter... can't see the image and the lightmeter at the same time easily... geez..

I hate (most of) the Nizo viewfinders and I have always thought they were over-rated for this reason, although they have some cool features so I own a few. But I sympathize.

Rick

[greenplastic79]

I just assumed they made it like that so less light would be wasted. Not that I know as much as you folks about it.