The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

May 1954 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN 87 Camera Facilities Limited conceals more than it reveals, for at their Great Windmill Street workshops everything from buying, selling and hiring cine and still cameras to designing equipment for studios and labs goes on. And running it is the ever-smiling Chairman of A.C.T.'s Technical Committee, George Hill, and his younger partner, Sam Martin, who served recently as a lab member on the Executive. Both started their careers at Newman-Sinclair, George joining the firm in 1910; with designer Arthur S. Newman, George Hill made the first N-S automatic camera in 1926, and worked on the forerunner of all automatic cameras, the Baby Pathe. At the end of the twenties George Hill was introduced by Harold Holt of Wembley to Professor Alberini, whose wide screen camera worked on exactly the same principle as the modern "Lazy 8": the 35mm. neg travelled horizontally through a curved gate, giving a 76mm. picture extending over ten sprocket holes (see illustration), and this was optically printed on to a standard positive. The only difference was that George had to work on a shoe-string with his Italian colleague. In 1932 the studios claimed George, and for a number of years he was in charge of the Camera Department at Shepherds Bush. Sam Martin, meanwhile, went to the experimental workshops of Zeiss Ikon in Berners Street, and later on to research into optical measuring instruments. In 1945 he joined George again at the Gainsborough Studios at the Bush, and a few years after these were closed they teamed up as Camera Facilities. Their workshop breathes the spirit of the early geniuses of cinematography: a light-weight camera dolly 2ft. 6in. wide, which they both designed and built, leans up against a wall near a 16mm. reduction printer; on the bench a device for an Olivetti typewriter alongside a gadget just made to order to fit a 16mm. Kodak camera on to a 35mm. tripod; in the office an adaptor that can be fitted to a normal moviola in half an hour to enable it to run 16mm. film, and on the desk a small optical view-finder with variable aperture that helps tell you what lens to use. Under one of the benches is the prototype of the Dudley 3-D attachment, which could convert any camera to taking stereoscopic pictures. Easily manipulated, the feature of this system was that the two images appeared side by side in the space of a normal frame. Not only did George and Sam make this and install the projection equipment for this system in cinemas, but they tested it under newsreel conditions by filming the Boat Race. Their accountant confirmed that, like all true inventors, they lost money ! But what may have been lost in those experiments, they have made up for in giving studio and documentary units a quick camera service, and in making up special equipment. Very often other technicians have ideas for gadgets ; Camera Facilities interpret these in mechanical terms and manufacture them. Such give-and-take is all part of the service and many a young camera assistant has come along to their Soho " University " and had some problem that worried him ironed out. Just now, apart from routine jobs of helping service location units with cameras and equipment, they are working on a revolutionary new breed of camera — but that is rather secret at the moment! In nearly all of the numerous concerns that keep the wheels of our industry turning A.C.T. members are employed; in some they are at the top, helping to keep alive a trade that is itself a service to the community. Let us pay tribute to all behind the bright lights in the studios and the dark-rooms in the labs that contribute to the functioning of our trade. Wide Screen Piccadilly in 1928. Photographed by George Hill on Prof. Alberini's early invention, using 35mm. stock; the image on the negative was sideways and covered ten sprocket holes, and was optically printed into normal frame.