Collecting Russian Movie Cameras

I want to hear from some folks here who collect Russian cine cameras in addition to still cameras... I am currently on the fence whether I should expand to movie cameras or not.. I want to know what made you start collecting those as well and what particularly do you like about movie cameras? Basically what is your thing with them?

Vlad

What made me NOT to collect them was mostly space: movie cameras are big % hard to display (as we talked here).
Secondly you just can't have everything, and as I found out how hard it is to get Smenas & Elikons I had to concentrate.

Smena rules

I only have two movie cameras, but I do like them. There is really no more or less reason to collect movie cameras as there is the still cameras. It is more a preference or choice. Movie cameras are usually made to a high standard and the internal mechanisms are usually more complex than most still cameras... they are more clockwork, with motors and gears. They are also beautiful to look at from the outside and some have lens turrets which make them look great.
You could get one such as Neva-2 and see if you like it. If not, and you decide not to collect them, you can just sell it on Ebay.

Regards, Bill

Many of our beloved Russian optics could be used on the RED ONE, the current revolutionary digital cinema camera, and since most are manual lenses with many aperture blades,high contrast and resolution,they could perform very well on this camera.What you need is only a simple mount adaptor.:-) I think many high qulaity Russian cine optics could also be modefied for this camera too. New Russian cine primes cost about 5,000 euro each.

Thank you all for your insight, this is what i wanted to hear - pro and con arguments, I need to hear the ones I have not thought of yet, so it can help me make the decision. I am really tempted because of the "more gears" factor that Bill brought up but then I am also unsure whether these will look good displayed and how hard they will be to display (Juhani's point).. Probably my main hesitation is that I like also to play with my cameras in terms of picking one at random and going to go shoot some photos, but with Movie cameras these will more or less be just shelf pieces and that was kind of puts me off... mmm.. still on the fence... need to hear more arguments

Zhang I'm definitely not going into large 35mm cameras, I think I will have to get a bigger house for those for sure .

Vlad

Any historical significances? Like first camera to do blah blah.. or first camera to use blah blah technology?

Vlad

With movie cameras, you could pick one at random and go off and make an 8mm short film ... cinema verte style! Then you can have it made into a digital file and put it on youtube!

Regards, Bill

I used to work on Arriflex 16mm and I saw a Russian 16 that looked like a carbon copy of it, The only problem about collecting them is the price would be prohibitive for me being a retiree. I'd like to see if the works are the same and did it have a registration pin like the Arriflex which gave super steady framing.

Interesting idea Bill, I have heard of companies splicing a 35mm into 8mm so it's higher quality and they will also digitize it for you...

Vlad