There are 26 IMAX film camera in the world today . At IMAX HQ , I got to take on with 4 of them ( and take plenty of photographs for you ) .
The photographic camera workshop is an court to IMAX ’s most appealing attributes , their mechanical , analogue craft . In unretentive , it ’s a pigsty fill up with solder and screwing and clamps and lots of random components that seem misplace without their linguistic context in a complex car . It was a consoling place to hang out , as Mike Hendriks , camera artificer , casually spun jillion of clam in equipment around for my perusal .
The bodies are constructed of Mg ( sometimes aluminum , but it tends to be too slight ) . The lenses are Carl Zeiss , but IMAX split the methamphetamine hydrochloride from the lens body to establish their own optics from semi - lolly .
MKII LW
This is IMAX ’s “ lightweight ” camera as well as one of their long standing intent . Here it ’s loaded with a magazine that holds but 500 feet of film ( or about one and a one-half proceedings of shooting ) . Believe it or not , in this 46 pound constellation , the MKII made it to the top of Mount Everest . That poor , poor Sherpa .
MSM 9802
The MSM is a general purpose 2D television camera . It ’s a larger evolution of the MKII plan ( loaded with a 1000 infantry cartridge clip here ) , with a more elegant internal design and advance electronics like telecasting production . You may sleep with it as the camera that shot the renowned Dark Knight Tumbler sequence … before it was destroyed by a stunt vehicle . Mike Hendriks had to remedy the system as it ’s but one of four such cameras in the world . ( I overheard that while it ’s insured for $ 500,000 , mend number in at well under half that . )
3D-15 Solido
Now this was my favorite camera . walk up to the wolf for the first time , I unwisely assume that the two oculus - like pieces of chalk comprised a very comfortable view finder . I felt a number gooselike when I take that the Solido is a two - lensed 3D photographic camera . The reason I mat up like stick around my eyes in there was that the spread between the lenses by choice mimics the human perspective . Two luxuriously mobile shutters twisting on the inside , earmark for precise photo of not one but two simultaneous reel of film . I was capable to rotate the camera around for shots on the table , but there ’s no way I was arise the thing . It librate in at 215 pound when loaded with just 1000 foot of movie , and 329 pound when adulterate with 2500 .
Hendricks was tolerant enough to fire up the Solido , form disperse eagle , for me to film . It sounded like a stitching machine on PCP as the sinewy motors kicked on expose 24 anatomy of IMAX picture show a 2d , times the two reels of film in the system . Tragically , my $ 1000 HD camcorder malfunctioned and the footage did n’t lay aside , wasting hundreds in film livestock . It was a low moment for me ( and JVC ) .
3D-30
This second 3D camera looks less impressive on the outside , but technically , it ’s pulling off a passably astounding deception . While the Solido shoots 3D on two reels of plastic film , exposed simultaneously , the 3D-30 shoots 3D on one reel of film , with two side - by - side frame exposed simultaneously . So it moves film through its internal ear of gear double as quickly , burning through 1000 metrical unit of cinema in just a minute and a one-half . And the film comes out unwatchable , with the frame capturing a left - correctly - left - right - left - right position . So the pic is digitise to regroup the shots later on . ( It ’s well-off than abridge out each systema skeletale and hand - parsing the images into two reels . )
The 3D-30 , named after the 30 perforation of film expose at once , was the same 3D camera take into space to film the late Hubble repairs . For that , IMAX furnish NASA with a special 5000 foot reel container stored in the shuttle ’s loading bay ( about 7.5 minute of arc of film ) . Because there is no recharge IMAX film in space .
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