Developed by the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière and presented to the public in 1895, the cinematograph was a hand-cranked machine that allowed capturing images, developing the film and then also projecting it onto a screen. It was portable (weighed less than 5 kg) and used no electricity. This versatility was one of the features that helped define it as the zero point of cinema, even among so many other similar devices that emerged at the time. The Kinetoscope, invented by the American Thomas Edison, for example, allowed only one person to watch the moving images through a small viewer on the device.
YOUR GREAT GRANDFATHER’S CAMERA
Equipment was simple but very efficient
1. The cinematograph was leaning on a tripod to ensure stability during shooting. It didn’t have a viewfinder. Framing was done shortly before the moment of recording, with the device open and the cameraman looking directly through the small window (the objective).
two. At top smaller box virgin film rolls were allocated, 35 mm wide and 17 m long (measurements that would later become the industry standard). Holes on the sides demarcated the frames and engaged the film on pins driven by the crank.
3. In addition to “pulling” the film into the system, exposing it to sensitivity to incoming light, the hand crank it also operated a rotating “fan” that temporarily covered this opening, serving as a kind of shutter.
4. Rhythm was essential: every second, the cameraman had to complete two turns of the crank. This ensured that, for exactly 16 frames, the film had the necessary exposure time to register the image. There, the mechanism collected the film in another compartment, dark and protected. (It was also possible to copy a film, running the negative in parallel with a blank film).
5. The film used by the Lumière was very sensitive to light, which made both the capture and development processes very fast. So it was possible to shoot and show a movie on the same day! To the projection, the cinematograph was open and underwent a very simple readaptation.
6. The developed film was returned to the top box. The small aperture lens used for recording was replaced by a larger one, which enlarged the images. One light source, positioned behind the open machine, it sent the images to the white screen. Then, it was enough to turn the same crank at the same rhythm as the record.