Film cameras in movies, the fail thread

[zanxion72]

Last weekend, I watched the "IP Man: The Awakening" movie. I am too old to have fun with such movies, but I had to spend some time with the kids and the films they choose. I do not remember much from it, but just one scene. Spot the not...:

 

[Huss]

A real pro doesnt need a lens

 

[zanxion72]

As if the budget got too short for buying cameras with lenses (not to mention that these cameras aren't matching the era of the fim, late 1890 - early 1910). : )))

 

[AgX]

In the "Old Cameras in Old Movies" we already got some idiot set-ups shown, but this one beats them all.


A hint at props people: do not grasp blindfolded into a rummage box.

A hint at DOP's: actually I do not know what to say seen this case...

 

[Chan Tran]

You did a very good frame capture.

 

[Donald Qualls]

Shaking my head...

 

[Ben 4]

Enjoyed seeing this gaffe—thanks for posting!

 

[Tel]

Reminds me of a question put to a friend of mine by his daughter: "What kind of computers did you have when you were a kid?" Sadly, she was in her twenties when she asked. I doubt that more than a tiny minority of this film's viewers noticed anything amiss.

 

[深度麻醉]

Looking at the costume is a reflection of the Republic of China period, when the people may play with 135 cameras, and it is good to have glass film.

 

[Donald Qualls]

"What kind of computers did you have when you were a kid?"

That's when you show the "digital calculator" -- a card with holes for your fingers and (binary) numbers by each hole. Five bits, can store 0-31 values...

 

[Huss]

Who else here used a slide ruler?

 

[MattKing]

Who else here used a slide ruler?

A slide rule? Some.

 

[Tel]

Thankfully, Texas Instruments came out with some sophisticated calculators so I never had to use a slide rule for anything serious. Remember TI?

 

[MattKing]

Thankfully, Texas Instruments came out with some sophisticated calculators so I never had to use a slide rule for anything serious. Remember TI?

They arrived around the same year that I was in grade 12 in high school. They were expensive, and we weren't permitted to use them in class or on exams, because most could not get and/or afford them.

 

[Donald Qualls]

Who else here used a slide ruler?

I learned to use a slide rule in 7th grade, taught my 8th grade teacher (who had been a hospital orderly in the Army, so never did much math) to use one, and in 10th grade (1974-75) could get answers in physics class about as fast as the rich kids with their fancy new calculators. Faster, if their batteries were dead. Our exams (in high school, at least) were structured to want slide rule precision (2-3 digits was good enough) and we had to show our work, which removed most or all of the advantage of calculators. In fact, I did most of the arithmetic for those in my head, used the slide rule mainly for logarithms and trig functions.

 

[AgX]

We still received one at school and learned how to handle them.

But when ridiculing them one should not overlook thuch much, much longer all those fellows in their elitist Bonanzas, Barons or even King Airs etc. still used a flight calculator disc.

Both appliances are best suited for those here who reject battery dependent cameras...

 

[Donald Qualls]

those here who reject battery dependent cameras...

I still have the slide rule I bought in 9th grade (14" log-log decitrig magnesium rule with fully adjustable end frames and cursor), though I haven't used it in earnest in about forty-five years. I use the best calculator emulator I can find for my smartphone (for free): HP41CX. That, however, is a device where a dead battery announces itself well in advance of shutdown, and that routinely needs charging on a daily basis anyway.

A camera (IMO) doesn't really need electronics to work well and produce excellent images. My RB67 certainly doesn't; nor does my Speed Graphic.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Who else here used a slide ruler?

It is a slide rule not a slide ruler and I have one. It is an analog calculating device that uses logarithms. A slide rule calculates mantissas and the use figures out the exponent. No batteries are required.

 

[BobD]

I had a round one. It was cool.

 

[Rayt]

Thankfully, Texas Instruments came out with some sophisticated calculators so I never had to use a slide rule for anything serious. Remember TI?

My brother is only a few years older than me had to use a slide rule and learned programming in college with punch cards. I had a Texas Instrument TI-55 and the computer lab was already set up for CAD/CAM when I got there. We went to the same university. How technology changes over a few years.

 

[grat]

I had a round one. It was cool.

I still have one that my grandfather used. Since it came with the manual, I learned how to use it, but I admit, I never used it seriously.

 

[reddesert]

Virtually all movable light meter reading dials, sliding exposure calculators such as the Jiffy Calculator, and so on, are slide rules, using linear displacement to calculate with logarithms. (For round rules, constant angular displacement.)

I have only seen one spinoff movie related to the "Ip Man" series (referencing the OP). They are a little weird as they're usually set in early-20th-century Hong Kong or mainland China but have a mix of period accuracy and anachronisms. There's also a nationalistic vs foreign occupier context (given the period), but there's plenty of that in other countries' movies as well. Nevertheless. these cameras are unusually far off, even without the missing lens. Maybe it was World Pinhole Day.

 

[Donald Qualls]

Yes, I punched a lot of cards learning Fortran and PL/I on an IBM 360 in the 1978-1980 time frame (we called the machine "the covered wagon", it was already obsolete, if a little less so than the 029 keypunches).

What this has to do with camera fails in movies, however, it's hard to fathom...

 

[Tel]

It didn't occur to me but it's true: slide rule skills were really just preparation for one-handed match-needle metering. Calculating exposure or bellows extension is about the only math application I use these days. Don't even do my own taxes anymore. Somebody makes a bellows-extension calculator, don't they?

 

[Donald Qualls]

There's almost certainly an app for your smart phone that does that. Or a program for the programmable calculator emulation app...