Bach Auricon Pro600

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Ian Korejwo

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Hello there, my name is Ian and I recently came into possession of a bach auricon pro600 camera adapted for magnasound along with its power supply and I have been looking around for a manual on how its used as I am fairly curtain it works but there are some peices missing.

I am just missing the microphone and the cord that goes from the powersupply to the camera and the cord that goes from the wall to the power supply

I think If I had a manual I think I could get it up and running by replacing a few things that are missing.

I have looked at owheeysound and while it is a good source of info its not the best for parts and structure.

If anyone knows where i could find a manual or has one that can tell me what i am missing as i can upload pictures of what i have.

Any information would be wonderful.
 

Dan Fromm

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Rant! Rave! Curse!

OP, ask Google to look for instruction "bach auricon". I think the second hit is what you want.

Why bother people by asking when you can look for yourself?
 

AgX

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I do not feel botherd as I learned of a camera unknown to me.
 

Kino

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Hello there, my name is Ian and I recently came into possession of a bach auricon pro600 camera adapted for magnasound along with its power supply and I have been looking around for a manual on how its used as I am fairly curtain it works but there are some peices missing.

I am just missing the microphone and the cord that goes from the powersupply to the camera and the cord that goes from the wall to the power supply

I think If I had a manual I think I could get it up and running by replacing a few things that are missing.

I have looked at owheeysound and while it is a good source of info its not the best for parts and structure.

If anyone knows where i could find a manual or has one that can tell me what i am missing as i can upload pictures of what i have.

Any information would be wonderful.

It would help if you could post a photo of what you have, but it sounds like you are missing the sound amp.

You can't get magstripe from Kodak anymore, unfortunately...

Post a picture of the interior of the camera as well, if you would.
 
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Ian Korejwo

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Lee Rust thank you for the links the first one is especially useful as if i am looking at this right it would appear I have the portable supply.

AGX I am glad your not bothered and would like to say, Hello there!

RauschenOderKorn thank you for the welcome I hope to stick around awhile maybe learn some stuff I didnt know about some of the other cameras I have as well.

Kino I will gladly post some pictures in the next couple hours once I get home. So keep an eye tonight or take a look tomorrow


Dan Fromm, there are a few answers to your question.
1. Because there is a big community of people out here that have far more specific knowledge then I could probably find in hours of search, especially in the camera repair and modification section. Where people talk about repairing and modifying cameras.
2. What if someone in the future looks up this info and comes across this thread. Well now they have a huge head start.
3. Maybe there are a few people who have more information like maybe there is a tube of some kind or a flaw in the circuitry that they wouldnt put in most publications that only people experienced with whatever camera it is would know about.

At the end of the day like you i'm a camera enthusiast and I want to talk to other people who have the same interests and if i learn a few things along the way thats great because I can then teach other people what I learned.
 

Kino

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Is this everything you have? Are there any other cords you didn't show?

The camera itself should have an AC plug to run straight from mains AC, but it is a 3 prong Canon-style plug, not a typical female AC plug.

I am very familiar with your power supply; it was designed to supply AC from a huge bank of DC batteries and is quite obsolete. I highly recommend you keep this power supply as a display item and never try to use it. It took DC and with a vibrating reed converter, made Alternating Current. You had to ride the frequency response of the AC output CONSTANTLY throughout the discharge of the battery bank. I still have nightmares about trying to keep one of these in tune enough to shoot stuff in the field! Yeech!

You are missing the lens shade/blimp on the front of the camera; not a big deal, but it helps suppress the camera noise while shooting sound.

The Pro 1200 manual is a good start, but there are differences.

I have owned every single model of the Auricon family and they are great cameras, but they are very accessory intensive.

It is a complex system; read up!
 

Kino

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OK ,sorry I didn't see the additional photos at first...

You have a model that never had or has had stripped-out the optical sound recording valve that is shown in the threading diagram. I suspect since it was a TV newsfilm camera, it was ordered without the light valve for recording an optical track.

EDIT: But you DO have the filmmagnetic sound recording head for sound on film magstripe; not that it will do you any good as the stock is no longer made. You can remove this from the path without any consequences when shooting film without magstripe.

There is a Pan Cinor Zoom lens rear element screwed into the lens mount; was the rest of the lens with the camera?

The three pin canon plug next to the XLR plug sticking out of the camera body is the AC plug port. You will need to locate a proper AC cord to run the camera from AC Mains power.
 
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Kino

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I am pretty sure I have a manual on the Pro 600 around here somewhere, but God only knows where. I'll try to dig it out. I also have original price guides from the 1970's and a bunch of schematics and operation guidelines for these cameras SOMEWHERE...

Let me look around this week...
 

AgX

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A cine field-camera designed to take AC. What an idea...
 

btaylor

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A cine field-camera designed to take AC. What an idea...
Seems nutty now, doesn’t it. The Auricon used the 60Hz to maintain enough speed accuracy for sound recording. The Auricon movement was very steady and quiet, it was the center of a whole bunch of highly portable magnetic sound-on-film conversions once crystal sync was invented to replace the mains signal. It was so popular Kodak even created VIdeo News Film to use in them. Years ago I had a CP16R conversion. Not as elegant as a sync camera like an Arri or Eclair, but it got the job done.
 

Kino

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A cine field-camera designed to take AC. What an idea...

Originally designed for studio, sound on film productions of educational films but pressed into service by TV stations because of the mag/optical recording capabilities.
 

AgX

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Yes, using the mains frequency as reference is common in technics. This still would be fine for most appliances used stationary in the house.

For a cine camera already within a building it means being limited by a mains cable. And off the mains, it not only meant the hassle of an additional DC-AC converter and a transformer, but also in this case, as Kino hinted at, trouble at stabilizing the frequency of that converter, which leads the idea of inherit image frequency ad absurdum.
 

Kino

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There’s the possibility to convert to COMOPT from COMMAG.
It means to replace the “Filmagnetic” unit by the “Modulite” galvanometer.
https://archive.org/details/TNM_Auricon_Pro-600_Special_sound_camera_16mm_dou_20170908_0279/page/n3

If not up to direct sound recording, you could at least produce your own sound negatives for combined prints.

Auricon made a stand-alone sound recording camera with no image port just for that purpose. However, as Europan indicated, most institutions simply plugged the c mount lens port and used an existing camera with the comopt module installed to make it a optical sound recorder. Depending on the valve in the camera (IF you had one!), you could get either a Variable area or Variable Density track.

If you ever find an unfaded color reversal print with a magenta-colored track, this was probably shot with an Auricon or Maurer sound on film camera. However, the Maurer also could make a multi, unilateral track based upon the German Tobias Klangfilm patents...

It's a major rabbit hole to go down...
 
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Ian Korejwo

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WOW
ok so If I am reading this stuff right.
The optical sound amp is gone entirely along with the circuitry to use it.
The lens on the front is missing the rest of it, which would explain why there is just a screw ring on it just floating there. and if i am right i can take this lens off though it seems to be pretty firmly stuck in place right now i may need some anti-rust maybe or I may need some extra elbow grease.
I am missing the mains power cord which is a canon style 3 prong. I will look around for it I am sure at least one is out there.

Yah that's everything i got with it, just the camera, the no doubt 30 year old film inside of it and the portable power pack.
Now as for the power pack, I am an amateur electronics engineer which basically means i tinker around a lot. so when you say that inside it was a vibrating reed convertor good god i can only imagine how hard it would be to use such a thing and can see what you mean by nightmares.

Now I have another question. for the optical sound amp which I am assuming also required its own external amplifier. since it was stripped out of the camera would that mean it is impossible to put it back in if I found one. Or say i tried to make one.

I also had a few questions about some other stuff on the camera. In some of these pictures there is a piece mounted on top of it where I have nothing but what I guess would be poles for a carry strap. and in some of these books it shows a larger box on top with a carry strap there is this just an extra high piece to make carrying easier or does it serve a purpose.

On the back there is a cap over what, if I am understanding correctly is a lens mount for a side lens that would go parallel to the lens that is there in order to properly focus the image. however i don't need it because i can just get a c-mount dog leg lens.
 

Kino

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ok so If I am reading this stuff right.
The optical sound amp is gone entirely along with the circuitry to use it.

It was probably never there in the first place, but I COULD be installed if you locate another, but the alignment process is not trivial... These cameras could be ordered with out any sort of sound device, with mag sound, with optical sound or with both.

The lens on the front is missing the rest of it, which would explain why there is just a screw ring on it just floating there. and if i am right i can take this lens off though it seems to be pretty firmly stuck in place right now i may need some anti-rust maybe or I may need some extra elbow grease.

Never force anything on a camera. Look carefully around the mount for a set screw. Since the "dog-leg" viewfinder lenses could be oriented for many types of cameras, they had to be adjustable and once leveled, locked into place to keep them from rotating. Bet there is a set screw and if you start cranking on it, you'll spring the lens mount out of alignment.

I am missing the mains power cord which is a canon style 3 prong. I will look around for it I am sure at least one is out there.
Canon plugs were used a lot on the 1950's and are fairly easy to find. You'll need the schematic to keep from hooking it up incorrectly and frying the electronics.

Yah that's everything i got with it, just the camera, the no doubt 30 year old film inside of it and the portable power pack.
Now as for the power pack, I am an amateur electronics engineer which basically means i tinker around a lot. so when you say that inside it was a vibrating reed convertor good god i can only imagine how hard it would be to use such a thing and can see what you mean by nightmares.

It was a rite of passage for the assistant cameraman...

Now I have another question. for the optical sound amp which I am assuming also required its own external amplifier. since it was stripped out of the camera would that mean it is impossible to put it back in if I found one. Or say i tried to make one.

First of all, the sound amp is external; that's the link I posted to the Ebay auction. It is strictly for magnetic sound; to drive the mag head inside the filmmagnetic recording bracket inside the camera.
Second, the optical amp is entirely different and also external. The (missing) optical galvo is incredibly touchy hardware. The chance of you making a successful copy would be NIL, none, nada. Forget it.

I also had a few questions about some other stuff on the camera. In some of these pictures there is a piece mounted on top of it where I have nothing but what I guess would be poles for a carry strap. and in some of these books it shows a larger box on top with a carry strap there is this just an extra high piece to make carrying easier or does it serve a purpose.

There was a carrying strap, so this is what you are probably missing on top. The extended torque motor housing covered the take up motor for 600 foot magazines; you only have a 400 mag on your camera (I think, hard to tell).

On the back there is a cap over what, if I am understanding correctly is a lens mount for a side lens that would go parallel to the lens that is there in order to properly focus the image. however i don't need it because i can just get a c-mount dog leg lens.

Again, these cameras could be ordered with many options, or they could be left off to save money. That port covering would have housed an internal telescope viewer. The tube would have extended to the film gate area where an internal prism could be slid into position to divert the image to this telescope for focusing and framing. This was called an internal rack-over system, as opposed to the external rack-over system like you see on 35mm Mitchell motion picture cameras. This option would not have been practical or useful to a newsfilm user and was omitted along with the optical sound amp when the camera was ordered from the factory. Your camera could be as new as the 1970's; they were made for many years...
 
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Lee Rust

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I've never seen one of these cameras in person, but judging from the catalog illustrations, your unit is missing the original viewfinder on the left side, probably because it was fitted with a zoom lens that had its own dog-leg reflex finder. If you wanted to equip your Pro 600 for optical sound you would need to locate a suitable galvanometer+lamp assembly and the associated battery power supply. Not an impossible task, but it would take some internet digging or the acquisition of a 'parts' camera. Schematics for the optical sound battery supply are available, so you even could build one yourself or invent your own design. It's just a question of how far you want to go down that rabbit hole Kino mentioned.

The camera's DC to AC power supply uses a rotary converter (DC motor-driven alternator). The vibrating reeds on the meter face indicate AC output frequency, but they don't actually generate it. I'm sure the power supply needs a sizable battery, so as an alternative you could just rig up some adaptors and plug the camera into a wall socket to see how it runs

As for the box on top, it appears to be the housing for the film reel drive motor.
 
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