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The best place to start is Ebay, they regularly turn up there about once a month.
Depends on size, condition and whether it was used recently. The #10's are the most popular and range between $US 1500 - 3000 but good users can go for more. A restored #16 sold last year on ebay for $US 10,000
Kodak still makes film for them, 8" Verichrome Pan B&W negative and 10" Vericolor III Color negative. The Cat number for 8" Verichrome Pan is146 9493, if you quote this number at any Kodak Professional dealer they can get it for you, anywhere in the world.
Another way of getting film is to use aerial film from any of the major film suppliers. There are two widths sold, either 5" or 9 1/2" wide and they come in rolls of 125 or 250 feet. All you have to do is cut it to the width and length required for your camera, tape on a leader and roll it onto a spool. This is what I do for my camera and the big advantage is you can put as little or as much as you want on the roll depending on how you plan to use it. The Kodak Cirkut rolls are 5 feet long which can be too short for some jobs.
The third way is to get a film manufacturer to do a special run for you, Kodak will do it but require a minumum order of around $10,000 worth. Smaller companies like Ilford and Forte will do much smaller orders, around 5 rolls minimum.
VERY! because they're 80 to 100 years old they're well past their best but even so, when they were new they were difficult to use, old timers who used them will tell you little tricks they used to get a good shot. With my camera it always shoots better if it's given a warm up first, I run the mechanism a few times and listen to the sound it makes, after you've heard it running a few times you can tell when it's running smoothly.
There's more to it than just the camera, you have to learn a whole system, cutting and rolling film, using the camera, processing the film and then printing it. All these parts of the system are unique to Cirkuts so be prepared for a long and steep learning curve.
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picture by Roland Idaczyk |
Arvid Olson trained under Jim Lipari who was involved with Cirkut repairs and modifications for many years, he has Jim's old lathe and can cut gears and do general repairs.
Arvid Olson,arvideo@freeq.com 2102 North Cotner Blvd. Lincoln, Nebraska 68505. ph. 402-464-8740
Ron Klein,panorama@gci.net in Alaska can cut gears for your camera and also give good advise on problems with it, Ron is a very helpful guy!
Stanley Stern,stan@cirkutpanorama.com can cut gears for your Cirkut
There are a number of ways, I process mine in deep trays with 5 litres of D76 stock which i replenish for each neg, remember you're dealing with a neg equivalent to 6 - 8, 8x10's or the same number of 35mm rolls. This method has to be done in the dark but I use inspection on every one of my negs which helps to fine tune them.
You can also process them in a long Paterson spiral tank, modify one of the spirals to take your width of film and process like an ordinary roll of film, easy!
Aerial processors are around that will do the job, they are motorised and wind the film from one spool to another then back again while sitting in a tank of developer. They aren't light proof and have to be used in the dark.
There are roller transport processors around that will do it, most of these were made for porcessing long aerial film rolls.
A lab with a dip and dunk machine should be able to process it, all they do is loop the film up and down a few times so it doesn't hang too low, they do this with 220 film.
Easy, contact printing is the only way. Lay your printing paper on a piece of glass, lay the neg on top, then another piece of glass and turn on your lightsource. The traditional method is in a contact printer where the lightsource is underneath but two pieces of glass work just as well. The advantage of a contact printer is speed, so they're better used when large numbers of prints are made.
The lightsource can be as simple as row of bulbs on the ceiling controlled by a dimmer and timer. Or you can do as I do and use an enlarger, I take the lens out and use pieces of lunch paper to reduce light output, with a colour enlarger you also have control over contrast with VC papers.
If you don't have enough height in your darkroom to get light spread to cover the neg you can point the enlarger head at the ceiling and bounce the light onto the neg. Another way is to hang two small enlarger heads from the ceiling to even out light spread.
A few ways, you can see saw them through deep trays, just like the negs, I used to do this before I bought a processor. Long trays are another way but they take up a lot of bench space and chemistry.
The way I process mine now is in a roller transport processor. You feed it in dry at one end and it comes out dry at the other, can't beat it for speed. A lot of my panoramas are longer than the total roller system in the processor so as the finished print comes out, the unprocessed end is still feeding in!
Yes, as long as it covers the film width you can, this means a 5x7 lens will cover 8" wide film.
One thing that has to be done is the correct gearing has to be used for a focal length and focus distance, if you don't, film speed and camera rotation wont be synchronised and objects in the image will be the wrong shape.
To find the correct gearing you have to measure specific distances on your camera, feed the info into the gear program on this site and it'll give you the gear numbers you need. If you don't have the gears with your camera any good machine shop can make them, the Diametral Pitch is 32 and pressure angle is 14 1/2 degrees, the tooth numder you get from the program will determine it's diameter.
First measure your camera, if you look at the program it asks for specific measurements from your camera, put these numbers into the program and run it. The subject distance is the focus distance you will use on the camera.
You also need to know the exact focal length of the lens you're using down to one decimal place. The number on the lens isn't close enough, it can be plus or minus 1 millimetre, try those numbers in the program and you'll see how far out it can be. An optical bench is the best way to measure it.
Kodak supplied three gears for each focal length, they were an infinity gear, a 50 foot and a 25 foot gear and the gears ran in a sequence like, 51 52 53, the 53 would be the infinity gear, 52 is 50 feet and 51 is 25 feet.
So select your infinity gear from the program then others if you need them. What some guys do is only use an infinity gear for each lens because they photograph far off subjects like landscapes. Others doing group shots focus closer than 25 feet so may use a 15 or 20 foot gear from the program.