Yes, I own two Mekel Super-8 Cameras.

Yes, one was serviced while I waited. It was a terrific experience hanging out with the owner of Visual Instrumentation a few years back as he serviced the camera and sort of did it for free. However, not to be a dimwit and ruin it for others I showed my gratitude by purchasing their proprietary 28 lead acid battery, (it cost a LOT of money). During the day I visited Visual Instrumentation people were calling from the National Auto Safety Institute, NASA, Boeing and some other extremely well known place, I considered it an honor that he spent half a day with me AND serviced one of the two cameras. That was the day he looked up his paper work and determined that 110 Mekels had been made.

My experience with the cameras has been limited. It turned out that the power cord had a loose connection in it and that made me wonder if perhaps I was threading the film wrong. The first footage that I shot I also shared with the head of Filmshooting.com, Andreas, it came out interesting, it was of a spinning wooden wind chime (without the chime).

There was some sideways shifting of the image during transfer to video on a couple of takes. The sideways shifting could have just been me in an awkward crouching position, too high off the ground to kneel, but not low enough so that I could lay on the ground either.

There is also a shot of slow motion camera footage (100 FPS) in Small Format's DVD edition of their film festival contest. It is on the same DVD as the one that featured the first Filmshooting.com group project. It's one of the last shots on my film, which I think I called "Goodbye Kodachrome, hello Yechtachrome". (This was before I had seen Ektachrome 100d), My folks are throwing a blue beach ball back in forth at 100 Frames per second.

I wished the camera had an orientable viewfinder in it however that is not a dealbreaker by any means. I really want to do some additional slow motion shooting in the very near future.

In the meantime, Visual Instrumentation would love to get a Super-8 mekel back for their own camera museum. So if it turns out there is one that is not working maybe one can get some products and services in trade.

<font color="#FFFF00" size="1">[ March 15, 2008 02:38 PM: Message edited by: Alex ]</font>