Roll your own : Worth it?

[oldasdirt]

I was thinking about those reloadable Russian Kacema carts and wondering if anyone here has any experience with them.Are there any stability issues?Breathing in the gate?Dust and such?Cost in terms of bulk stock with the advantage being you would have more options in raw stock choices.Anyone do this regularly?

It has also been a pet project dream of mine (don't ask why,haven't even decided if I want to pursue any of this)to possible mag stripe some raw stock in a darkroom and hand load some old Agfa sound carts.Anyone have experience with sound stripers?Do any models add the balence stripe or do multiple formats?I'm considering attempting it for 16mm as well for use in an old Auricon or CP 16.

[Alex]

How about if I suggest another mission you may want to consider pursuing. If you remove the sound head area in an existing super-8 camera, does that give you enough room to insert a small digital audio recording device that would turn on and off whenever the camera started and stopped filming?

[oldasdirt]

That's an excellent idea.I've often thought about the possibility of putting in a type of digital optical track which would use an LED to record on the side where a mag stripe would be.Then you would have to have plug in modifications for projectors and telecines.Perhaps a digital recording device that would record on a type of memory stick and maybe something that would optically record some sort of sync refference or time code.Either way,it would have an effect on the whole process.Intriguing idea,Alex.Think I'll post it on some more sites and see if I can generate some interest among techies who could make it happen.