CAMERA PROFILE: ARRIFLEX 16S and 16M and Super 16

This illustration shows the Arriflex 16s with 400ft extrernal film magazine, mattebox, and 3 lenses monuted on the turret.

Arriflex 16S/ 16ST

Introduced in 1952 This was the first ARRI 16mm. In many ways the 16 S follows the design paradigm of the Arriflex 35 IIC. Both are designed as MOS cameras. Both use a "bowtie" spinning mirror reflex design. Both use a 3-lens turret accepting ARRI mount lenses (later re-designated ARRI Standard mount when ARRI Bayonet mount was introduced). Both use a straight viewfinder tube in the "door". Some 16S cameras have a viewfinder made by Carl Zeiss Jena, with a non-removable eyepiece. Most 16S cameras have the standard viewfinder with a detatchable eyepiece, like the 35IIC and 16BL.

The 16 S is different in that it has internal capacity for 100ft of film, the lens turret is divergent, the motor is mounted behind the camera allowing for a flat bottom, and the ground glass is mounted near the eyepiece. The 16 S divergent turret is designed to help prevent wide angle prime lenses from seeing the ends of longer primes mounted on the turret. The camera was meant to be used with 3 prime lenses mounted in the same manner as a Bolex.

The 16 SB is the most common variant of the 16 S. The SB has one stainless steel ARRI Bayonet mount and two ARRI Standard mounts. This allows you to mount Bayonet mount lenses, expanding your lens choices, and making the highest-quality 16mm lenses available to the 16 S.

The 16S can accept 400 ft magazines. The magazines use a separate torque motor that can be removed from one magazie and placed on another. There are also very rare 200 foot magazines.

The 16 S was designed as a standard 16mm camera (its design predates the Super-16 format by 20 years). It is not an easy camera to convert to Super-16 because of the design of the gate and mirror. Apparently ARRI made approximately 25 Super 16 Arriflex ST's (with the Bayonet mount turret).

Advantages:

The 16 S is significant in that it was the first 16mm camera to utilize a registration pin. This advance brought the same technique used to ensure perfect registration in 35mm to 16mm, increasing the quality of the results. Every ARRI 16mm camera manufactured since has used a registration pin. The low cost, under US $2000 For a 16 S body, and the wide availability of the cameras, makes it easy to justify the purchase of a 16 S as a second camera, or for personal use. The manufacturing quality of the 16s is every bit as good as the newer ARRI cameras. It is just an older design.

Drawbacks:

One of the drawbacks of the 16 S is that by making the lens mount a moving object, especially with the turret’s flange at an odd angle to the film plane, it is not possible to have perfect flange focal distance calibration. The fact that this was not considered a major design consideration by ARRI engineers is the fact that the ARRI Std. Lens mounts were made out of aluminum. Aluminum is a relatively soft metal, and wearing out enough aluminum to change the flange focal distance was a possibility. In the 50’s when the 16 S was designed 16mm focal length was considered a wide angle and a f2.8 stop was considered very fast. Most shooting was done at 25mm or more and using deep stops. Most focusing was done by eye. Under these conditions, unless the ground glass was off by a significant amount, errors in flange focal distance could be tolerated much more than today. This is not a problem once the camera is converted to some form of "Hard Front". This can be a modification of the 16SB Bayonet turret, which we have done at CinemaTechnic.

Another problem is that the supply of spare parts for the 16 S is extremely limited. Parts are not officially available from ARRI USA, although the service department keeps a few commonly used parts such as the motor drive couplings. Supposedly New York University bought the remaining stock of spare parts in the world to keep their ARRI 16S cameras going forever. It is important to be sure of the condition of any 16 S you consider purchasing. A severely worn camera cannot be economically repaired.

Super-16 Conversion:

NOTE: I have preserved below my previous comments about Super 16 conversion for the 16S, in the interest of historical accuracy. Super 16 conversion for the 16S is NO LONGER AVAILABLE. Please do not e-mail asking if it is availabale. The company that had provided this service for us has gone out of business. They burned many people along the way, including us, and a number of our customers. We had to do substantial corrective work to each of the two cameras that this company converted for us, due to the very sloppy quality of their work. As delivered, the cameras were basically unusable.

Please be very careful about anyone saying they can convert this camera to Super 16. The 16S can be converted, but it requires many new parts to be manufactured and a lot of very difficult machine work. At this point, CinemaTechnic does not plan to introduce our own Super 16 conversion for this camera, due to the extremely high cost of development, and the high cost in labor and materials to convert each camera, which we do not think can be passed on to the customer who has purchased a used camera for an average of $1000.

  • It is possible to convert the 16S to Super 16. A PL Mount. The 16S cameras are excellent choices for Extreme Sports and Action cinematography. The Arri ST and A-Minima cameras are about the same size. Compared to the Aaton A-Minima, both are Super 16, have PL Mounts, and are Mirror Shutter cameras (the Aaton viewfinder is far superior). The advantage of the Arriflex ST Super 16 over the A-Minima is that the Arri ST uses Super 16 film in the standard emulsion-in feed configuration, either on standard metal 100' daylight spools, or on 400' core loads in the Arri ST Magazine. The Aaton A-Minima can only use film wound emulsion out, on special 200 ft plastic daylight loading spools. These loads can only be used on the A-Minima.
Right: Arriflex 16 M shown here with 200ft and 400ft magazines. A rare 1200ft coaxial magazine was also made for the 16 M.

Arriflex 16 M

This camera is essentially a 16 S without internal film capacity. It uses a different 400ft film magazine than the 16 S. If you prefer to shoot with 400ft film loads it can be a good choice as opposed to a 16S. If you do not often shoot 100ft film loads, it may be a better choice.

All 16 S accessories, except magazines and torque motors are compatible with the 16 M. The magazines, although similar to the 16 BL magazines are not compatible with the 16 BL.

CinemaTechnic 16S Service

CinemaTechnic performs maintenance and repairs on the ARRI 16S. Our technician is very familiar with the 16S and has done several complete overhauls. We have also converted 16S cameras to Bayonet mount. We also convert these cameras to a 4-pin XLR power input. For more information see the following pages:

Camera Sevice

Custom Modifications

www.cinematechnic.com

www.cinematechnic.com/resources/arri_16s.html

Last Update 3/12/06

©2001 - 2005 Jorge Diaz-Amador, All Rights Reseved