Shutter Catastrophie!

[Brad Miller]

.....they were originally designed to work double for faster light cutoff and a little bit higher light efficiency.

Yeah, at the cost of creating a horizontal hot spot in the image. The ones with the "V" notch in them also create a literal hot spot in the middle of the picture. No thanks.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Yeah, at the cost of creating a horizontal hot spot in the image. The ones with the "V" notch in them also create a literal hot spot in the middle of the picture. No thanks.

It isn't just the projector. It's everything combined. Shutter, Lamphouse, Screen, lenses, throw angle, seating configuration. Curved screens do much better for light distribution. The V notch is only there for timing purposes in conjunction with the pin behind the sight glass. All factory and Wolk made shutters had them.

[Ryan Gallagher]

It isn't just the projector. It's everything combined. Shutter, Lamphouse, Screen, lenses, throw angle, seating configuration. Curved screens do much better for light distribution. The V notch is only there for timing purposes in conjunction with the pin behind the sight glass. All factory and Wolk made shutters had them.

I believe we are talking about two different V-Notches? The timing v shaped notch on the rim is on all Century shutters I've seen. Brad doesn't like the bat-wing style shutters, which he is referring to as V-Notched I believe.

My impression of that leading edge "v-notch" bat-wing style is to offer an alternative to "vanilla" double shutters that impinge on the image first in the corners on one side before they come completely into frame and meet in the middle, kinda a "pac-man" action. The bat-wing/v-notch design in my mind creates an opening and closing flat-ish diamond shape instead. Kinda a 4 blade iris effect. Perhaps offering a touch more light by design too by elongating the open timing?

In other threads many have cited the bat-wing double setup as enhancing a noticeable flicker, and don't like them for that reason.

Bat-wing. V-Notched. Diamond Double Shutters? Surely these things had a real name. I don't know it.

[Jim Cassedy]

I just wanted to follow up on the shutter situation: On Saturday, I came in and pulled out
both shutters, and spent some time carefully bending them back into shape. As long as
I had the whole shutter compartment open, I took the opportunity to clean out all of the
accumulated film-crud that seems to collect in there, so it looks really clean now.
I didn't have much time to test on Saturday, but when I put everything back together,
using the usual re-assembly procedure to roughly set the timing, I was quite surprised
and pleased that the image looked 'almost' perfectly in time when I ran an RP-40 loop.
I can't find my actual SMPTE 'shutter ghost' film, but I do have a couple of hundred feet
of black leader with white frame-lines and so I looped some of that & threaded it mid-
frame and only had to make a very minor timing adjustment. If I can't find my actual
SMPTE 'travel ghost' film, I know I have another SMPTE pattern which was intended
for setting up a Telecine, and it basically has a white grid pattern against a black back
ground so that should work too. Next I'll need to see how some 70mm looks, since I
think getting the shutter set right will be more critical. I'm still going to try & source
some new parts- - but at least I know I can be back on screen for my next 35mm
show later this week.

I'm still not sure what's been happening with my picture uploads, but I'll try two more:

I cleaned all the film-crud out of the shutter housing It's nice
& clean in here now! I'm tempted to clean out the machine too.
ShutterClean.jpg

Here's the straightened shutters after re-installing them
ShuttersReplaced.jpg

[Brad Miller]

Are you by chance uploading these from an iphone in that Apple-default heic format?

[Ryan Gallagher]

Those last two worked for me.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I believe we are talking about two different V-Notches? The timing v shaped notch on the rim is on all Century shutters I've seen. Brad doesn't like the bat-wing style shutters, which he is referring to as V-Notched I believe.

My impression of that leading edge "v-notch" bat-wing style is to offer an alternative to "vanilla" double shutters that impinge on the image first in the corners on one side before they come completely into frame and meet in the middle, kinda a "pac-man" action. The bat-wing/v-notch design in my mind creates an opening and closing flat-ish diamond shape instead. Kinda a 4 blade iris effect. Perhaps offering a touch more light by design too by elongating the open timing?

In other threads many have cited the bat-wing double setup as enhancing a noticeable flicker, and don't like them for that reason.

Bat-wing. V-Notched. Diamond Double Shutters? Surely these things had a real name. I don't know it.

Exactly! I always used bow tie shutters on Century's. Not those goofy bat shaped things. And Cinematographers using their own light meters confirmed the light is more eve with them. All the JJ's I've ever come in contact with had double bow tie type shutters. I have no idea when the goofy bat shaped ones appeared, or whose idea that was. But as I mentioned there are also a handful of other variable factors as well to achieving even screen light...

[Jim Cassedy]

Are you by chance uploading these from an iphone in that Apple-default heic format?

No, Brad. That's what's so surprising to me that those photos didn't
work. The missing pix followed the same 'workflow' path of just about
every other photo I've ever posted. They originate in a Samsung Android
phone as jpegs. I almost never compose or post to FT directly from my
phone, so they usually get sent, via e-mail, to one of my other computers,
where I may crop or annotate with text, or arrows, etc, and then upload
them (still as jpegs) to FT. Almost all of my posts in since around 2019
have been composed on either one my Mac laptops, or my iMac, and
I've never had any of the photos 'disappear'. It was just strange!

[Brad Miller]

That is very odd. Are you able to edit the post and try re-uploading them? If not, if you can email me the photos, I'll try uploading them here.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Pics worked for me also this time around.