User manual BELL & HOWELL 1707 PARTS CATALOG

[. . . ] Concentrating on the most important detail in the scene, focus the lens by rotating its front ring until the colour fringes disappear (paragraph 73J. 5 Adjust the zoom setting, if necessary, until the scene in the viewfinder is composed as you wish it to appear on the screen. Wait until the aperture scale in the viewfinder stops moving, then pull the trigger all the way in to shoot your scene. (If red stripes or a red patch are opposite the horizontal line when the aperture scale comes to rest, the light is too dim or bright, as explained in paragraph 75. [. . . ] At such extreme magnifications, small changes in your aiming of the camera will be greatly enlarged on the screen. Moreover, small movements towards or away from the subject will affect the focus. Wherever practicable, therefore, mount the camera on a firm tripod or some equally rigid support when filming a macro shot. If you are filming a subject that moves slowly, you can prevent it from going out of focus by readjusting the zoom ring as soon as you begin to see colour fringes in the viewfinder. If the subject has any depth, of course, there will always be fringes around those parts which are closer and further away than the distance to which the camera is focused. Just eliminate the fringes from whatever you want the audience to concentrate on and do not worry about their appearance elsewhere in the scene. For example, in the shot of a bee gathering honey it is the bee you want in focus, not the petals. Find some vertical detail in the bee and eliminate the fringes from that. (Now and again, you may come across a subject which has no vertical details sufficiently sharp-edged to give a clear image of the coloured fringes. Pick a horizontal detail, or any other reasonably straight line, and twist the camera while focusing so that it believes it is looking at a vertical line. If you want perfect exposures from some part of the scene, and not just good average exposure for the scene as a whole, the manual exposure control can be used to over-ride the automatic control as explained in paragraph 24. When the camera is on a tripod (paragraph 31), it can be started and stopped by remote control. Remote operation - and the best because it removes any risk of shaking the camera - is to plug the special Bell & Howell remote control accessory into socket R. Then pull the camera trigger fully in and, before releasing it, lock it in the running position by pressing the small black button on the left side of the pistol grip. Alternatively, press the switch and slide it down towards ON to lock it, sliding it upwards again to end the scene. The button on the grip can also be used, without the remote control accessory, to keep the trigger locked in the running position when you want to film yourself. Set the ON/OFF switch to ON, pull the trigger fully in to start the camera and then press the button. A third method of remote control is to screw a flexible cable release (obtainable from any good photo dealer) into the socket in the front of the trigger. With the ON/OFF switch at ON, the camera will run when the plunger of the cable release is pressed in. With the 1707 you can enjoy one of the most satisfying kinds of film making, single-frame animation. At its simplest, it enables you to trace a route on a map or build up a title letter by letter. At the other extreme, there are animated puppets and cartoons or "time lapse" studies to speed up slow movements. [. . . ] When filming with artifical lighting, the switch b should be in the forward position except when fluorescent light is being used (paragraph 91. bear in mind that all movielights operate at an extremely high temperature. At close ranges the radiant heat from the beam can ignite highly flammable materials and possibly scorch other materials. There is also a possibility, though it is very slight, that the movielight bulb may explode and eject hot fragments towards the scene you are filming. [. . . ]