The Paillard-Bolex B-8VS

Bolex B-8VS

The Canon Cine-Zoom 512 which I wrote about a number of years ago has all the features that one might want in a 2x8mm film camera except compactness. Considering the desire for a compact 8mm camera for travelling, but one quite fully-featured, led me to consider the series of Bolex cameras which began with the Bolex L8 in the early 1940s, through various models and iterations for the next two decades. I wanted a 2x8mm camera, ideally with as many manual features as possible, in particular variable frame rates, and small enough to fit in a camera bag alongside a 35mm folding camera, a medium format folding camera, numerous rolls of film and accessories. The model that I bought to fulfil as many of these stipulations as possible was a Bolex B-8VS. I wanted it for a trip to the Netherlands made just before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic; I had the intention of making some work there on 8mm film and I wrote about this under 'Cameras Obscura' and 'A View of Delft'; I also used the Bolex for the first version of 'Workers Not Leaving The Factory'. I had intentions of writing a post about the camera itself around the time, in 2020, but for one main reason–which I will come back to–I didn't; looking through a number of draft posts, having neglected this blog recently, I thought it worth finishing my write up.

 

The Bolex L, B, C and D series cameras are all built around the same body casting and spring wound motor; the distinguishing feature of the B8 cameras, which followed the L8, was the presence of the dual lens turret. In the years before zoom lenses became common, beyond the more basic, lower-end cameras with fixed lenses, for the convenience of changing focal lengths without having to physically unscrew one lens and replace with another, turrets proliferated. Through the 1950s, dual turret cameras were superseded by triple-lens turrets (which would hold a wide, standard and long at once) until zoom lenses made these obsolete. However, both triple turrets and zoom lenses (which also necessitated reflex viewing) increased the bulk of cameras, which was why the B-8 series appealed; being familiar with fully manual still cameras also drove me to seek out manual ciné cameras. Without lenses the Bolex B body is 128mm high, 54mm wide and 88mm deep, compact but heavy. (The letter suffixes for Bolex cameras–after the single-lens L–run B: twin lens turret; C: single lens; D: triple lens; there was also the model P, still built around the same basic body but with a zoom lens; there was also the H8 camera, based around the 16mm Bolex, and as a result a much larger camera–for most of the information about dates and specifications, this post has relied heavily on the excellent Bolex Collector website).

 

 

The Bolex B-8 was introduced in 1953, and its various iterations were produced for the next decade; the B-8VS (variable shutter) model dates from 1957, with the serial number on mine dating it to the following year (serial numbers are engraved on the tripod mount on the bottom of the camera–on the B-8VS this sits a little proud meaning that the camera does not entirely sit happily on a flat surface); following the B-8VS there was a B-8L model with built-in light meter, a single speed B-8SL and the last model, the B-8LA, an improved B-8L. All feature the same rotating turret which allows for two standard D mount lenses; my camera came with a 13mm f1.9 Yvar lens, a 'standard' focal length for the 8mm format; I already had a 36mm f2.8 Yvar lens from another camera, a long lens to complement the standard. As the lenses are the common screw-in D-mount, it means that there are numerous interchangeable lenses available in a variety of focal lengths and apertures that can be used on the Bolex B-8. 

 

Bolex B-8VS with lower lens removed

The lens in the uppermost position on rotating turret is in taking position; the turret rotates clockwise, with a handy arrow to direct the user, with a sprung detent in the centre which clicks the lenses' positions satisfyingly in place. The lenses' screw thread is designed such that the focus and aperture settings are aligned with the indicating line on the lens body when looking down from the top of the camera (the built-in lightmeter on later models necessitated this positioning being changed so that the lens' settings on those cameras is seen from the side). The standard length Kern-Paillard lens which my camera came with is capable of focusing to 3/4 of a foot, or 23cm–a very close focus which of course produces parallax problems, but these are not insurmountable (the post 'Cameras Obscura' describes my attempts to film a close-up of a camera obscura screen roughly 8cm square). The Kern-Paillard lenses have a clever depth of field indicator built in, named by the manufacturers 'Visifocus': turning the aperture ring displays or hides a set of bright orange dots which can be read off against the distances on the lens. Focus and aperture settings are manual and the separate viewfinder is non-reflex.

Lens detail showing the Visifocus depth of field system

All B-8 cameras take 7.5m/25ft rolls of 2x8mm film, run twice through the camera to shoot each side of the film in succession, developed and spliced together for a 50ft length of film for projection. Loading the B-8 camera, although not as simple as inserting a Super-8 cartridge, is fairly straightforward. After opening the camera, turning the catch on the door from F to O, the film gate's pressure plate is released using a pivoting lever. The fresh roll of film is placed on the upper spindle in the film chamber, threaded through the gate while the pressure plate is open, and wound onto the take up spool on the lower spindle. The camera door cannot be closed and the catch turned to F while the pressure plate is disengaged. 

Bolex B-8VS opened for loading

One interesting feature to note is the fact that the two spindles inside the camera are undifferentiated in terms of which side of the spool they will accept: 2x8mm spools are designed with three tabs on one side and four on the other so as to make it impossible to insert them into a camera the wrong way around: some cameras have corresponding teeth at the bottom of each spindle, some only on the take up spindle; the Bolex B-8 has a sprung section on the take up spindle only which holds the take up spool by friction. The footage counter on the rear of the camera is reset on opening the camera; unlike some cameras which use a lever arm on the supply side spool to determine how much footage has been shot, the Bolex B-8's counter must simply be registering the rotations of the take up spool. The camera does require some winding of the motor to load; the winding key ratchets, meaning that the motor can be quickly wound by rocking the key backwards and forwards rather than making complete turns.

Bolex B-8VS with pressure plate opened for threading

Away from the lens, all the other user controls are on the right hand side of camera body. The shutter speed dial has seven speeds from 8 frames per second, through 12, 16 (picked out in red as the standard fps setting), 24, 32, 48, 64; the latter four generally used as slow-motion speeds, with 8 and 12fps intended more for use in low light with the availability of emulsions at the time rather than speeding up motion. The top dial is used to adjust the viewfinder's angle of view, with settings for 12,5mm, 25mm and 36m: for wide angle lenses there was an adapter which slipped over the front of the viewfinder. The shutter release is a lever that wraps around the corner of the body with a serrated grip; below this is a dial to lock the shutter, which will lock in both closed or open positions; above this is a cable release socket with a sliding cover: the first open position is for normal running of the shutter; the top position indicated by a second notch is for single-frame operation. The B-8VS also has a dial to set the variable shutter. This has three semi-circle icons at the front of the dial: one filled in silver, one half-filled, and one black, followed by an arrow and a letter S. On the other side of the dial, there are settings of 35 and 70 which align with the full silver dial and half-filled respectively: these refer to effective shutter speeds, the full open shutter (the silver semi-circle) giving an effective speed of 1/35th of a second, the half-filled circle a 70th. Possibly the 'S' stands for 'shut' with the shutter fully closed. 

User controls on the side of the Bolex B-8VS

When I bought the camera, the possibility of adjusting the shutter angle seemed to be a useful additional control, useful for creating in camera fades to black, or for using a wider aperture in brighter light for example, or a faster film in brighter conditions. However, I found the variable shutter dial on my camera very stiff to turn, and would not turn to the fully-open setting at all; turning it to the half open setting would somehow jam the shutter and the film would not run through the camera. As a result I shot the film with the dial half-way between this setting and the closed symbol, not really understanding at the time what these icons meant and what the numerals referred to. As a result, I found my films shot on the trip to the Netherlands around three stops underexposed; I developed one roll first to find it underexposed, then did numerous tests before getting an acceptable if high contrast image by greatly extending the development time on the second roll of Kodak Double-X that I had shot; with a roll of very old Orwo UP21 film from the early 1980s, I extended the development time, flashed the whole roll to pre-expose it in an attempt to raise shadow detail and then toned it with selenium toner as an exercise in intensifying the negative. This was only partially successful, as can be seen in the post 'A View of Delft' and in the short clip below. 

 

 

Once I had realised that this was a problem, I could adjust the camera when shooting to take into account the partially-closed shutter: the easiest way to do so would be open the aperture by three stops, or simply downrating the film when metering. This was the approach I made for 'Workers Not Leaving The Factory', although that had its own problems thanks to using unperforated film in the camera. I had previously used single-perforated 16mm Double-X film in the Bolex when testing exposure and development times: the Bolex B8 only engages the perforations on one side of the film, but having shot a short length of single perforation film, I thought I might as well try to flip the film and pass it through the camera a second time, and the pull-down claw obviously had enough friction to advance the film. The left hand side of the print below from the film shows fairly regularly spaced marks on the left, unperforated side of the film; the perforated side has the frames bunched up and overlapping.

 

Print from single-perforated 16mm Double-X film, shot with the Bolex B-8VS

I used the fact that I could put unperforated film through the camera when making 'Workers Not Leaving The Factory', using lengths of medium format Ilford FP4 Plus cut to 16mm wide in order to shoot the site of the Ilford factory in Ilford on Ilford film, which was partially successful. Shortly after shooting this film, the camera's spring-wound motor stopped working properly. Using it prior to this, when the motor was fully wound, part-way through its run, there would be an audible 'clunk' (which could also be felt); I suspect that there was a kink in the spring, possibly due to it being stored for years, maybe even decades, with the spring motor partially wound. It feels as though the spring no longer winds past this kink, with the result it only runs for eight or nine seconds–and the speed as it runs sounds irregular as well. Perhaps using unperforated film had some effect, although one feels that this shouldn't really affect the motor. As a result, the camera has stayed on a shelf (or indeed, inside a drawer) since. It may well be worth disassembling to investigate–for which I may have held off from writing this post that the time–but this hasn't been something I've been keen to do so far, having acquired other 8mm cameras since to take the place of the Bolex B-8VS.

Sources/References
Bolex B-8VS on Bolex Collector 
Bolex B-8VS in the Science Museum 
Bolex B-8 on Vintage Cameras (French) 
Bolex B-8VS with triple turret coversion on Deutsches Kamera Museum (German)