Didn't know it was 16mm, but I knew that it wasn't 110 film, which comes in a cassette-like drop-in cartridge in which the film starts out in one light-proof compartment at one end and is drawn negative by negative over to the light-proof compartment at the other end.

When you see him pull the film out of it, you can tell that it's rolls of film needing to be loaded and removed properly to avoid exposing the whole roll to uselessness.

So I thought it was some sort of compact 35mm, which makes less sense from a physical point of view, but just didn't think about that. 16mm does make more sense.

@BobPeters61 said:

Didn't know it was 16mm, but I knew that it wasn't 110 film, which comes in a cassette-like drop-in cartridge in which the film starts out in one light-proof compartment at one end and is drawn negative by negative over to the light-proof compartment at the other end.

When you see him pull the film out of it, you can tell that it's rolls of film needing to be loaded and removed properly to avoid exposing the whole roll to uselessness.

Yes, and we never see Kolchak painstakingly rolling the little crank back to rewind the film in order to remove it properly. That would be a very boring scene.

@mad-pac said:

Yes, and we never see Kolchak painstakingly rolling the little crank back to rewind the film in order to remove it properly. That would be a very boring scene.

Actually, in Chopper when he convinced the police captain that he had forgotten to load the camera that way, they did show a rushed-through, very abbreviated version of him cranking back the film before pulling it. They just rushed through that part to avoid a very boring scene. And in Primal Scream, when the other police captain smashed his camera, we saw a little spool on the end of the film that spilled out to be exposed and ruined along with its latent images. An "instamatic" cartridge would either have fallen out intact, only exposing one frame or been broken to have pieces of it showing rather than a spool.

@BobPeters61 said:

@mad-pac said:

Yes, and we never see Kolchak painstakingly rolling the little crank back to rewind the film in order to remove it properly. That would be a very boring scene.

Actually, in Chopper when he convinced the police captain that he had forgotten to load the camera that way, they did show a rushed-through, very abbreviated version of him cranking back the film before pulling it. They just rushed through that part to avoid a very boring scene. And in Primal Scream, when the other police captain smashed his camera, we saw a little spool on the end of the film that spilled out to be exposed and ruined along with its latent images. An "instamatic" cartridge would either have fallen out intact, only exposing one frame or been broken to have pieces of it showing rather than a spool.

Congratulations on the first count. I hadn't noticed that and even thought he really had forgotten to put film in the canera. But they showed emough of him rewinding the crank. As for the second count, I watched it several times again and paused the image, and it still seems to me all we see is a small silvery part of the camera, and the black flash unit under the captain's shoe. I bet they didn't even use a real camera and it was a dummy with no film.

It's interesting to know that after his camera was broken, Kolchak bought yet another Rollei 16 for the following episode. And he didn't charge the police much. He wrote a voucher for 125 dollars, while a new model sold for $179.50 when the canera was launched in the US a couple years before. So, Kolchak was not being greedy. But that must've been a steep amount for a camera, as the captain found it amusing Kolchak was expecting to be reimbursed for 125 bucks. Not that it made any difference in the end, since the captain simply threw the voucher away.

Very interesting, I'm afraid i have nothing to add.
I tended to use disposables when i was a kid and rarely even take photos on my phone now.

@mad-pac said:

As for the second count, I watched it several times again and paused the image, and it still seems to me all we see is a small silvery part of the camera, and the black flash unit under the captain's shoe. I bet they didn't even use a real camera and it was a dummy with no film.

Yeah, guess I gave myself a false memory of what I would have expected to see. I hate it when I do that?

It's interesting to know that after his camera was broken, Kolchak bought yet another Rollei 16 for the following episode. And he didn't charge the police much. He wrote a voucher for 125 dollars, while a new model sold for $179.50 when the canera was launched in the US a couple years before. So, Kolchak was not being greedy. But that must've been a steep amount for a camera, as the captain found it amusing Kolchak was expecting to be reimbursed for 125 bucks. Not that it made any difference in the end, since the captain simply threw the voucher away.

That is interesting. I guess he wanted something better than an instamatic but wasn't up to a 35mm of the time, which usually required some knowledge of aperture settings, exposure speeds, etc. FWIW, in 1974 dollars, over a hundred bucks was a really fancy price tag for a camera. A new car cost less than $4,000.00 back then.

@cloister56 said:

Very interesting, I'm afraid i have nothing to add.
I tended to use disposables when i was a kid and rarely even take photos on my phone now.

I love photography and filming. That is only rivalled by my love for "steampunk" mechanisms. On my recent trip I told you guys about, I took dozens of pictures of Northeastern Brazil on my 7" tablet. You can all check that on my Facebook page. The only thing I regret is that modern phone cameras don't have any physical buttons, knobs, cranks and levers you can operate. It's all digital, all plastic, all fragile and with no remarkable design features.

@BobPeters61 said:

@mad-pac said:

Yeah, guess I gave myself a false memory of what I would have expected to see. I hate it when I do that?

Yeah, I hate it when that happens.

It's interesting to know that after his camera was broken, Kolchak bought yet another Rollei 16 for the following episode. And he didn't charge the police much. He wrote a voucher for 125 dollars, while a new model sold for $179.50 when the canera was launched in the US a couple years before. So, Kolchak was not being greedy. But that must've been a steep amount for a camera, as the captain found it amusing Kolchak was expecting to be reimbursed for 125 bucks. Not that it made any difference in the end, since the captain simply threw the voucher away.

That is interesting. I guess he wanted something better than an instamatic but wasn't up to a 35mm of the time, which usually required some knowledge of aperture settings, exposure speeds, etc. FWIW, in 1974 dollars, over a hundred bucks was a really fancy price tag for a camera. A new car cost less than $4,000.00 back then.

That wouldn't make much sense, since the Rollei 16 had dials and buttons to adjust subject distance in feet and meters, diaphragm aperture, exposure, luminosity, flash intensity, ASA and DIN (if I'm not forgetting anything) and you had to have the knowledge to even start. I assume the Rollei 16 would provide a cheaper solution as far as professional cameras went; besides it was compact enough for a reporter on the run from monsters!

But, really, really, I think the writers chose the 16 because it was quaint and exotic. The Rollei 16 used a proprietary film format specific for that make and model, so I'm sure Vincenzo would grumble each time he had to have his office boy, say Jimmy Nielsen, running supply errands in different stores to find Kolchak's special film (when his top reporter didn't require even more special film types, like infrared one) pay extra for the film instead of using the ubiquitous 110 or 35mm formats photographers could find everywhere. It was a very stupid move from Rollei to adopt a camera whose film the market leader back then, Kodak, didn't support. I bet in the 1980s and 1990s, while all the video reporters carried JVC VHS-C camcorders, Kolchak used a Sony Betamax.

I agree $125 would have sounded a lot, but then you shouldn't step on other people's belongings if you don't know how much they cost. By the way, FWIW? "From What I... Wonder"? Didn't you mean FYI?

I think Kolchak should've used a Kodak model from the get-go, because then we would be able to say "Kolchak's Kodak."

@mad-pac said:

That wouldn't make much sense, since the Rollei 16 had dials and buttons to adjust subject distance in feet and meters, diaphragm aperture, exposure, luminosity, flash intensity, ASA and DIN (if I'm not forgetting anything) and you had to have the knowledge to even start. I assume the Rollei 16 would provide a cheaper solution as far as professional cameras went; besides it was compact enough for a reporter on the run from monsters!

Not familiar with it myself, but then I would guess he wanted a professional class camera with a more compact design than a 35mm of the time.

I agree $125 would have sounded a lot, but then you shouldn't step on other people's belongings if you don't know how much they cost. By the way, FWIW? "From What I... Wonder"? Didn't you mean FYI?

"For What It's Worth"

I think Kolchak should've used a Kodak model from the get-go, because then we would be able to say "Kolchak's Kodak."

Sounds good to me.