8mm Forum: Stuart Warriner's historical widescreen Pan-16 film format

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Topic: Stuart Warriner's historical widescreen Pan-16 film format

Nicholas Kovats
Junior
Posts: 29
From: Canada
Registered: Jun 2011

posted December 16, 2013 08:58 AM

Introducing a rare scan of Stuart Warriner's (UK) amazing widescreen Pan-16 film format from the late 1960's based on the Bolex camera system. This historical 32 year old Kodachrome II footage was shot by Tony Shapps whilst on vacation with his family in Portugal. Both gentleman were instrumental and active in the historic UK Widescreen Association.

Stuart's engineering is remarkable. The frameline and perforations are absolutely steady. What Stuart accomplished was very difficult from an camera engineering perspective. He modified the 16mm gate to replicate the 1/2 pulldown cycle of 8mm using standard single perf 16mm film stock.The universality of his approach was nothing short of brilliant considering the availability of single perf standard 16m film stock globally.

In effect his camera's film transport created two 8mm intermittent pulldowns per single perf 16mm frame height! Two 8mm cycles in the same interval as one complete standard 16mm pulldown cycle. An excellent overview of his efforts are detailed in Guy Edmonds academic paper "Amateur widescreen; or, some forgotten skirmishes in the battle of the gauges, i.e. academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/frames/P&S/Edmonds07.pdf

Guy Edmonds's paper states Pan-16 was designed with an aspect ratio of 1:2.87. However, I calculated a usable aspect ratio closer to the classic Cinemascope format in the range of 1:2.5. This is positioned between Emel's Pan-8 format (1:2.2) and UltraPan8 2.8 (1:2.8). Note that both formats utilize double perf 8mm film stock as opposed to Pan-16's more common standard 16mm film. Stuart originally modified a Siemens 16mm camera but later settled on the Bolex as his conversion of choice. He also modified Specto 500 projectors for Pan-16 and engineered an associated Variable Pitch Compensator (VPC) for these UK manufactured machines. Regrettably, Stuart's engineering notes no longer exist.

The cropped 1:2.5 scan is available for viewing here, i.e.https://vimeo.com/81976714

The full overscan with visible perforartions and frameline are available here, i.e. https://vimeo.com/81960081

I am indebted to Tony Shapps for providing this invaluable film record of small format ultra widescreen history.

Cheers!

Nicholas Kovats
Toronto, Canada

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Osi Osgood
Film God

Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005

posted December 16, 2013 12:56 PM

Neat link there, I enjoyed it. That was so sharp, you could have shot a feature film with it. May not have been 35MM but it certainly looked quite good!

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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

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Nicholas Kovats
Junior
Posts: 29
From: Canada
Registered: Jun 2011

posted December 16, 2013 02:29 PM

Thanks, Osi.

Kodachrome 25 was an exquisite color reversal stock, indeed.

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Paul Adsett
Film God

Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted December 16, 2013 03:00 PM

Why did'nt he just use double 8 roll film, exposed full 16mm across (minus perforations), with the camera modified for a standard 8mm pulldown? Would have been a whole lot easier.

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Nicholas Kovats
Junior
Posts: 29
From: Canada
Registered: Jun 2011

posted December 16, 2013 03:55 PM

Paul: The ultrawide format that utilizes Double 8 roll film is called UltraPan8 2.8. We have built approximately 12 of these Bolex H16/H8 hybrids to date, i.e. https://vimeo.com/81306448

However, Double 8 aka Regular 8mm film stock supplies are not in great supply. One hundred foot rolls of Standard 16mm film stock are still commonplace.

Stuart's historic achievement is highly commendable in achieving a universality of a common film stock.

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Paul Adsett
Film God

Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted December 16, 2013 05:31 PM

Thanks for that info Nick. I have often thought that Eastman Kodak should have designed super 8 as a widescreen format (16:9) from the getgo.

--------------------
The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection,
Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade
Eumig S938 Stereo f1.0 Ektar
Panasonic PT-AE4000U digital pj

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Jean-Louis Seguin
Junior
Posts: 20
From: Montreal Quebec Canada
Registered: Sep 2010

posted December 17, 2013 01:49 PM

In the Edmonds study, it is mentioned that Mr. Warriner did a detailed presentation of his PAN-16 system in the June 1968 issue of Widescreen magazine. Does anyone have this issue in their collection?

Jean-Louis

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Alan Frederick Brookes
Junior
Posts: 1
From: San Francisco, CA, USA
Registered: Oct 2014

posted October 16, 2014 07:21 PM

I was also an active participant in the Widescreen Association and also the Stereoscopic Society, and, together with Don Jeater, was one of the founders of the International Stereoscopic Union.

I knew Stuart Warriner well, and I used Pan-16 with a Bolex H16 camera, converted to Pan-16 by Stuart, to which I attached the Bolex Stereo Attachment, a process first used by the late Don Jeater. I went one further and attached two Delrama Anamorphics to the stereo attachment, giving me widescreen 3D. As far as I know, I was the only one shooting Stereoscopic Pan-16 in Widescreen back in the middle 70s.
[IMG]http://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/showpic.cgi?dir=uploads1102&file=d:\Documents and Settings\Alan F Brookes\Desktop\For email\Alan & Bolex H16.jpg[/IMG]
I visited Stuart Warriner at his workshop in Morecambe several times. He and I were both participants in the annual Widex exhibition, at which Tony Shapps was usually present.
[IMG]http://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/showpic.cgi?dir=uploads1102&file=d:\Documents and Settings\Alan F Brookes\Desktop\For email\sevt0202.jpg[/IMG]
I exhibited two films at Widex75 in Pan-16 Stereoscopic format, "Paris in Depth" and "Isle of Man Railways".

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Brian Fretwell
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1785
From: London, UK
Registered: Jun 2014

posted October 27, 2014 08:09 AM

I saw a demonstration of this at the "Widex" held at Watford Junction many years ago. It was stunning.

The other reason given then for not using double 8 film was that UK Kodak often didn't read the instructions sent with the film and slitted it to 8mm as usual.

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