C I N E M A S C O P E

From Roy Salmons (Area 3 Co-ordinator)

I have been doing a bit of experimenting recently, with wide screen slides. Many moons ago I made my own "Cinemascope" lens and tried it out on home movies. It proved that the system worked, although my two element lens didn`t give the utmost quality (what could you expect for three pounds?). So I didn`t go any further along that particular road. The current price of a `squeeze` lens is over œ200 and you use the same lens on the projector to unsqueeze the picture to give the widescreen effect. Rather more than I could justify.

It was while dismantling one of the throwaway panoramic plastic packs that I had the current wave of enthusiasm to try again. If you haven`t examined one of these cameras which come loaded with fifteen (sometimes twelve depending on the make) shots for long prints then I can tell you that they use standard 35mm frame size but chop off the top and bottom thirds with a gate mask. The resulting centre third is blown up to give the now common biggie print - either 3.5 x 10.5 or 4 x 12 inches. Some of these cameras can be reloaded, and, of course they can have black and white or slide film put into them if you are prepared to fiddle.

The inevitably cheap plastic lens on such a beast might not produce results good enough for large screen presentation so the fiddling might not be worth it. BUT - and this is where the story really starts - why not use your own SLR to produce some top quality pictures? There is no need to mask the camera gate, just take full frame slides as normal, but remember to mentally cut off the top and the bottom third when composing your pictures. After processing the slides, pick out the masterpieces and mount them in the special widescreen mounts produced by GePe. The firm does several different formats, but the size that I am about to try is reference number 6806 which gives an aperture of 14mm by 35mm. This gives a pleasant widescreen effect without being to elongated or as if you are looking at the scene through somebody`s letterbox! I will be projecting the results on my standard slide projector. Better quality without the expense; can`t be bad. Only problem now is- where do I get a reasonably priced WIDESCREEN to project on to and impress the family?.

There used to be a firm which sold screen material and spring loaded rollers to mount it on. I made one at the same time that I constructed the lens, but unfortunately left it in the loft of the house that we moved from nearly 20 years ago! (I wonder if its still there?). If there is anyone out there who can provide an address of any firm able to supply reasonably priced screen material, then please drop me a line. Otherwise I might be forced to purloin one of the wife`s sheets. And you know what problems that could lead to.