Filming HO scale trains & car crashes.

[Andrew Kempees]

I do a lot with HO scale trains (1/87). I have a 4x8 table with lights mounted on swing arms along with floor stand floods. Is it better to film at 36FPS or 24fps to get the shake out? The camera is tripod mounted & is a Chinon Pacific 12smr. I also use a electric cable remote control to run it. I have another camera a Chinon 877 that has 48fps. I use that one when I do car accidents & train crashes. Even when I project at 24fps the image does not look right. Any ideas ?

[BolexPlusx]

I've done filming of model trains quite a bit in years past (Got married, got a kid, have barely enough time for film making, never mind model railroads!). My favorites are actually large enough scale trains where I can mount a camera on the train and get some point of view shots of someone riding the train.

What is it about your shots you don't like?

If by "shake" you mean cars rattling from side to side on their trucks, there is a rule of thumb that on cars with screw mounted trucks one screw should be fairly tight to stabilize the carbody, and the other should be fairly loose to allow that truck to pivot over irregularities in the track. The drawback to snap in trucks is that there is no adjustment available to fix this.

Wow!, I participate in a couple of railroad forums and never thought I'd see such a crossover to a filmmaking one!

[Andrew Kempees]

What I mean by shake , is the trees in the background or even the set itself. I use HO because of the vast amount of things on the market. I use alot of Marklin, Bemo, Kibri, on the sets. Most of the footage has a "EURO" look to it. It did however pick up a lot of "Athearn" for the American look. With the new wireless cameras I once saw one mounted in a LGB passenger car complete with people as it traveled around the track.

[BolexPlusx]

Oh!,

What you are describing sounds like a case of the Jitters. This is a phenomenon where the film doesn't move smoothly in the cartridge and as a result the image of each frame doesn't wind up in the same place relative to the sprocket holes throughout the exposure. The result is that the image seems to jump up and down on the screen.

I think cartridges dated March 2004 and after are supposed to be immune to this. How old is your film?

Here is an article about it with examples at the bottom of what it looks like:

http://8mm.filmshooting.com/communit.../jittering.php

Kodachrome is famous for it, but oddly enough the only roll of film I ever had that showed evidence of it was Plus-X.

My only model railroad at the moment is a big loop of LGB out in the yard. I thought I was going to get some really nice footage last winter by digging out the track and filming the train in the snow. I froze my butt picking the ice out of about 3 feet of track, gave up and went back in and layed on the couch and watched the tube (best layed plans.......)

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 30, 2004 09:43 PM: Message edited by: BolexPlusx ]</font>

[Andrew Kempees]

I don't Think its the film itself but rather the vibration caused by the moving train. When there is nothing moving in the shot, like a shot of a switch tower there is no problem. On a side note, a few years back I went to Swiss Camera in New York for some BOLEX rubber eye cups and mounted them on my cameras. Much better !!

[BolexPlusx]

Yeah, there's a saying about whether something is good or not something to the effect of "Is that a Rolex or a Bolex?" Obviously whoever coined this one doesn't know jack about motion pictures. I can get a perfectly functional watch anytime I want to. Given the choice make mine the Bolex every time!

It sounds like you have less a Super-8 problem and more a Model Railroad problem!