The Victor Animatograph Corporation was a maker of projection equipment founded in 1910 in Davenport, Iowa by Swedish-born American inventor Alexander F. Victor.
The firm introduced its first 16 mm camera and movie projector on August 12, 1923, [1] the same year Eastman Kodak introduced the Cine-Kodak and Kodascope. Victor advertised through his entire career thereafter that he had marketed the first 16mm equipment, but his claim was incorrect by several weeks, since the Cine-Kodak had been introduced in July, substantially earlier than Victor's August marketing date. Victor's first 16mm camera was a hand-cranked rectangular aluminum box designed for the additional film economy of cranking only 14 frames per second instead of the standard sixteen. A later version of this first Victor was driven by an electric motor. Neither camera sold in large numbers, but Victor followed in 1927 with a more successful camera modeled on the Bell & Howell Filmo. Victor offered many models of 16mm projectors, most with only minor variations, but prior to military contracts won during World War II, all were made and sold in very small numbers, from 20 units to usually no more than a couple of thousand units. The company was a large producer of lantern slides using their "Featherweight" method- a one piece glass positive with a durable emulsion framed by a cardboard mat.
16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film ; other common film gauges include 8 mm and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical film-making, or for low-budget motion pictures. It also existed as a popular amateur or home movie-making format for several decades, alongside 8 mm film and later Super 8 film. Eastman Kodak released the first 16 mm "outfit" in 1923, consisting of a camera, projector, tripod, screen and splicer, for US$335. RCA-Victor introduced a 16 mm sound movie projector in 1932, and developed an optical sound-on-film 16 mm camera, released in 1935.
8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the film strip is eight millimetres (0.31 in) wide. It exists in two main versions – the original standard 8 mm film, also known as regular 8 mm, and Super 8. Although both standard 8 mm and Super 8 are 8 mm wide, Super 8 has a larger image area because of its smaller and more widely spaced perforations.
Super 8 mm film is a motion-picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement over the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format.
135 film, more popularly referred to as 35 mm film or 35 mm, is a format of photographic film used for still photography. It is a film with a film gauge of 35 mm (1.4 in) loaded into a standardized type of magazine – also referred to as a cassette or cartridge – for use in 135 film cameras. The engineering standard for this film is controlled by ISO 1007 titled '135-size film and magazine'.
127 is a roll film format for still photography introduced by Kodak in 1912.
A movie camera is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either onto film stock or an image sensor, in order to produce a moving image to display on a screen. In contrast to the still camera, which captures a single image at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images by way of an intermittent mechanism or by electronic means; each image is a frame of film or video. The frames are projected through a movie projector or a video projector at a specific frame rate to show the moving picture. When projected at a high enough frame rate, the persistence of vision allows the eyes and brain of the viewer to merge the separate frames into a continuous moving picture.
Subminiature photography is photographic technologies and techniques working with film material smaller in size than 35mm film, such as 16mm, 9.5mm, 17mm, or 17.5mm films. It is distinct from photomicrography, photographing microscopic subjects with a camera which is not particularly small.
In photography, reversal film or slide film is a type of photographic film that produces a positive image on a transparent base. Instead of negatives and prints, reversal film is processed to produce transparencies or diapositives. Reversal film is produced in various sizes, from 35 mm to roll film to 8×10 inch sheet film.
A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying motion picture film by projecting it onto a screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras. Modern movie projectors are specially built video projectors.
Bell and Howell LLC is a U.S.-based services organization and former manufacturer of cameras, lenses, and motion picture machinery, founded in 1907 by two projectionists, and originally headquartered in Wheeling, Illinois. The company is now headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, and currently sells production mail equipment, buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) smart locker and kiosk solutions, and provides maintenance services for automated, industrial equipment in enterprise-level companies. Since 2010, the Bell + Howell brand name has been extensively licensed for a diverse range of consumer electronics products.
Mitchell Camera Corporation was a motion picture camera manufacturing company established in Los Angeles in 1919. It was a primary supplier of newsreel and movie cameras for decades, until its closure in 1979.
Filmo is a series of 16 mm and 8 mm movie equipment made by the Bell & Howell Company. The line included cameras, projectors and accessories.
28 mm film was introduced by the Pathé Film Company in 1912 under the name Pathé Kok. Geared toward the home market, 28 mm utilized diacetate film stock rather than the flammable nitrate commonly used in 35 mm. The film gauge was deliberately chosen such that it would be uneconomical to slit 35 mm nitrate film.
A film chain or film island is a television – professional video camera with one or more projectors aligned into the photographic lens of the camera. With two or more projectors a system of front-surface mirrors that can pop-up are used in a multiplexer. These mirrors switch different projectors into the camera lens. The camera could be fed live to air for broadcasting through a vision mixer or recorded to a VTR for post-production or later broadcast. In most TV use this has been replaced by a telecine.
Standard 8 mm film, also known as Regular 8 mm film, Double 8 mm film, or simply as Standard-8, Regular-8 or Double-8 is an 8 mm film format originally developed by the Eastman Kodak company and released onto the market in 1932.
Auricon cameras were 16 mm film Single System sound-on-film motion picture cameras manufactured in the 1940s through the early 1980s. Auricon cameras are notable because they record sound directly onto an optical or magnetic track on the same film as the image is photographed on, thus eliminating the need for a separate audio recorder. The camera preceded ENG video cameras as the main AV tool of television news gathering due to its portability–and relatively quick production turn-around–where processed negative film image could be broadcast by electronically creating a positive image. Additionally, the Auricon found studio use as a 'kinescope' camera of live video off of a TV screen, but only on early pre-NTSC line-locked monochrome systems.
Kodascope is a name created by Eastman Kodak Company for the projector it placed on the market in 1923 as part of the first 16mm motion picture equipment. The original Kodascope was part of an outfit that included the Cine-Kodak camera, tripod, Kodascope projector, projection screen, and film splicer, all of which sold together for $335. By 1924, Victor Animatograph Corporation and Bell and Howell had placed 16mm projectors on the market, so Kodak eliminated the requirement to purchase the equipment as a complete outfit and sold the projector separately. Kodascope was retained as the primary marketing name for 16mm projectors throughout their production life at Kodak.
The Ciné-Kodak was the first 16mm camera, introduced in 1923 by the Eastman Kodak Company. It was intended to be used for home movie making.
The Kodak Cine Special 16mm Cameras (CKS) are a family of precision, versatile, spring-wound 16mm silent movie cameras produced by Eastman Kodak from the 1930s to the 1960s, and intended for advanced consumers and industry professionals. While its rectangular format was typical of earlier Kodak 16 mm cameras, the CKS 'box' was formed by two joined sections: the spring motor half with the user controls, winding cranks, and gear work to the shutter. The other half was a film magazine which docked to the motor. This allowed the cinematographer to pre-load multiple magazines of film for quick interchange of film.