Our Elmos were starting to get a bit rickety for 16mm movie nights at my college and were replaced with a pair of Eikis with an auto cutover box. The Elmos still served as backups when the Eikis had issues... projectionist life...
Working in a contemporary art museum, we deal with slide projectors all the time. It's actually the perfect profession for someone interested in technology from all eras (which means, by extension, loving this channel). One of the most impressive things I've ever seen is a Nan Goldin exhibition, where there were at least 12 slide projectors connected to a computer to control them all. Six projectors at a time would project their own section of a photo, three wide and two tall, and when the carousel reached the end it would switch to the other six. The amount of alignment and ND filters to make them all run must have been immense, as well as the upkeep of repairing that many machines in 2023. Also, when the show ended and all the machines reset back to the starting position, the rattling of all 12 going back to zero was pretty amazing. I've only had to control a single projector show like this, but the software and accompanying hardware only works on era macs, so it was a bit of a challenge.
I swear, you and Alec from Technology Connections can make videos about something I care NOTHING about and not only make me watch the entire thing but also be entertained the entire time.
Because I'm an old, I did some school presentations on slides. The fanciest one I did involved a tape recording of the presentation's audio and two slide projectors aimed at the same screen and wired to a special control unit. One slide projector held the odd slides while the other held the even slides. When it was time to change slides, the audio recording had special, sub-audible markers inserted that the control unit could detect. It would use those cues to turn off one one projector's bulb while simultaneously turning the other's on. The dark projector would then advance to the next slide in the carousel. The effect was a very smooth and very professional-looking cross-fade between the two slides, using just the thermal inertia of the projectors' bulbs.
Thanks for mentioning the device that controlled 2 projectors. The fade out when the projector bulb was turned off was something special. I don’t think computer dissolves for transitions can match the transition of a real projector bulb being turned on and off.
i have heard a story of someone using 6 to 8 genlocked (slightly offset from one another) projectors *without a video mixer*, just all pointed at the same point on the wall, to do some kind of faux-crossfade. i imagine hearing all those clunks going left-to-right behind you at exactly the same rate every time was a very satisfying experience
Yes , that was the standard way the big multi projector slide shows worked, whether in museum displays or trade shows or other big presentations, before we had less expensive HD video projection.
My dad used to do this sort of stuff. Huge banks of about 16 projectors, could even do some rudimentary animation by flicking between projectors fast enough. Sounded like a goddamned firing range in the projectionists booth.
@AntiPseudo : I was trained by a guy who did those big presentations -- 16 literal frames per second is janky animation, but 24 or more is full-motion video, with slide projectors! Used a programming rig (think video mixer) to control sequence, timing, light intensity. He said his favorite show-off was making the stars twinkle in a night-sky background.
Elmo apparently was such a big name in the school document camera business (and perhaps still are) that teachers at the schools I work for still refer to their non-Elmo document cameras as "Elmos".
the capability to zoom into the slide and genlock+serial control the thing makes me imagine a fly-by-night broadcast studio using this and a frame buffer as their static matte source, clunking through backgrounds and fake-CG elements to shove underneath and above talent with a stack of keyers. every night they have a 125 year old savant paint the weather onto a copy of the local map directly onto the tiny slides.
+1. Before there were computers everywhere in the broadcasting industry (of which I am a worker ;-), I think you could use this with some rudimentary DSK capabilities to put a name on screen, an info or else. Having nothing that could create it electronically, or nothing cheap enough in the least, I could see how this would be practical… during a live show, all graphics (lower thirds, bugs, etc) are often numbered and put in the order they’ll be used, it actually make sense to use a carousel !
@@Vincent-o5p oh for sure! i remember at some point finding an old betacam tape set up like this where every two or three frames was a different graphics element and theyd use a specially calibrated VTR with a framesync and a remote to use them as mattes, kinda like videofloppy! its really funny to imagine a clunky slide projector doing it though.
9:32 you just unlocked so many memories i have of students trying to use a document projector and spending a solid 20 seconds fumbling with the paper trying to get it in the right orientation
16:35 - I volunteered at the local community cable station in the late 80s. One show I worked on was a movie review show, and this was back when studios sent out "EPK" (electronic press kit) packages containing a tape with clips and some 8x10 b&w stills from the movie. To get those stills into the show, you would mount them on a rostrum frame with a dedicated studio camera pointed at the photo, lit in such a way to prevent glare. No digital frame store, you just cut to the still camera feed and swapped in the next photo as you went. That's pretty much what this is doing in a single box, but just with slides. I remember framing up the shot on the stills and then locking down the camera; no fancy camera moves for us.
Sylvania in 1969 sold a console color TV with a built in flying spot scanner and Carousel changer for home use. It did not have any zoom control, and just displayed the 4x3 center portion of the slide. Also, no video output. It did have one advantage in that the low light level from the flying spot tube would not fade the slides. For comparison, automatic repeating projected displays for corporate PR would typically fade slides noticeably within a week.
9:55 I'm sure plenty of people did it on accident, but I know of at least one instance of it being done on purpose. In the early touring days of Pink Floyd they would take two slides, add a drop of oil between them and put them into the same slot and leave it projecting as they played. As the oil heated up from the projector lamp it would move around and create a "psychedelic" effect.
In the mid 60s, the PR department of the college I attended had three projectors in separate side-by-side futuristic rear projector enclosures (20 inch screens), with all three advancing simultaneously with a single control pulse. I installed a punch paper tape reader so that it advanced on each pulse but the individual projectors either did or didn't depending on the corresponding holes in the paper tape. This saved them from making duplicate slides for the times when they wanted the image to stay the same on one of the screens.
Many TV stations used slides for things like Station IDs, trouble, promos, and such into the 1990s. Could definitely see one of these in a small market TV station or community access TV
That was the first thing that came to mind when I seen this thing had genlock. Affordable computer graphics in the early 90's looked absolutely terrible. But in that era you could do some arts and crafts, take a photo and have it developed into a slide and have very nice looking overlays for your broadcast. This thing would have fit right into the community tv station where I volunteered in high school.
When I was working at the head office of Bang & Olufsen in the Netherlands they had 21 kodak carousel projectors connected to a reel to reel tape recorder that send out pulses to operate the slide projectors and played the sound for the slide show. there where also machines with cassette tape that could operate the projectors. it was really nice to see a presentation on it with slides overlaying and so on. around 2000 they throw them away. so I started to collect them and had more than 100 different slide projectors, only hold on to the kodak carousels, after a lot of trying I convert them to LED, less heat and some I took out the fan so no noise and you can project 1 slide forever without overheating them. also once I put a lcd screen from a old Casio digital camera, it had a video in on the print, and without the backlight you could project in really big pixels whatever you liked. was nice on parties where from a distance you see an image and close it looks like color chancing tiles. Have a big tele and very wide angle lens for them. this Elmo thing is something very nice.
@@blocktockblock6329 yes they did, as a photographer myself I can not imagine the work that goes in to make 80 slides for 21 projectors. Some where text but most of it was product presentation
I’m actually in a film photography chat with your friend who owns the drum scanner, was really cool seeing those slides posted there and then posted here in one of your videos! (Also they’re an incredible photographer and love their large format work haha) Loved the video, super funky device
The uni I worked at a long time ago had an AV department that did things like cut and mount filmstrip into slides to transition to this "tech". They also used to hand assemble colour OHP slides using hand cut cellophanes. Things have changed so much...
Anyone could use a slide projector, but poverty makes us dream small. Give anyone a projector and random slides, jam, some hookers, and soundtrack to Miami Vice and they'll use the projector. Our poverty makes us all small and boring, it hides we are all maniacs inside, know that and cry and smile. I'm rich and am out of jam
Before the video was halfway I had bought one! As for you not "meeting" anyone interested in projecting slides, you just have. I'm the technical person for a camera club in Toronto, Canada projecting images in our own 180 seat auditorium, and while we don't do slides very often anymore as like everything else we project digitally, we still have slide projectors and carousels. I figure the Elmo along with a DVD burner would be something our members would like to use. My first year as a member of the club someone did a 16-projector slideshow...shame I can't post a photo here of that setup.
OMG I had a couple classrooms that had ELMO document cameras...I can recall that the teacher would usually call it "the Elmo" and elementary schoolers were amused by it sharing a name with the Muppet.
We had an overhead Elmo projector that used transparencies, because our school spent both of their technology grants on... A second football field, and parking for that football field. This was in 2017.
This reminds me of an event we had at school back in 1996. We didn't have those project-to-video thingamagicks, but we used two regular carousel-style projectors - more professional models than what you'd use at home since they also supported fade-in and fade-out-, aligned their image (we even had special test pattern slides to adjust the geometry) and then hooked them up to some PC control interface (the link from the PC to the interface must have been serial at that time, but the interface to the projector must have been something else since the cables were extremely long). We got the show programmed perfectly synchronized to music (if you managed to hit the start button in the PC software and on the DAT player at the same time, that is, the control software did not support audio.) Oh nostalgia... To this day I can hear the music and see how the slides fade in and out. I guess I spent way too much time back in the day getting the programming right. And today it would be so much simpler to get the same result...
Ektachrome is particularly prone to going magenta. The cyan dye fades, leaving red and yellow. There are specific ways to regain cyan, depending on how you want to go about digitizing the slide. I oversee a museum collection full of magenta slides because the photographer preferred local developers, and Kodachrome could only be processed by Kodak directly at the time. So they went Ektachrome.
I scanned mine and my relatives entire slide collection earlier this year using Minolta Diamage Scan IV-scanners. Some slides from the late 60s and early 70s were almost going magenta, but it's suprising how good they can get with digital postprocessing of the white balance. Cheap slides bought in souvenir shops seems to have faded the most.
I worked in a photo lab years ago, and we were the only Walmart for quite a distance that still had scanner capabilities. I was also the only person who knew how to do it for... probably a further distance than that working in a photo lab at the time. The color correction many of them needed -- especially turning either green or magenta -- was incredibly disappointing sometimes, but sometimes you could get a pretty clear photo of someone who's been gone for years, and those were always some of the best and most incredible moments of that job.
@@sydneys207 I have to ask someone to play with them when I want to correct the color, I can't figure out how to get any decent results. It's definitely a skill.
This thing reminded me of the commercials done by a local furniture store owner in my small town in the late 1970s. In the commercials the fellow didn't show us slides of the furniture he was selling. Never. He would introduce himself and then show us slides of photos he had taken while traveling to the various waterfalls, mountains, and scenic places in our area. The projector he used was so cheap that we would see the slide be pulled out and next slide pop in and I assume it was noting more than a second television camera pointed at a projection screen. He apparently was selling himself as a local who would naturally give you the best price for a sofa or a dining room table... so come on down! AND by incredible coincidence, this was in Medford, Oregon in the Rogue Valley @19:47.
Hey, Dude. I'm an AV guy from the 80's and 90's (and now, actually. I've come full circle, I guess). People that used these and (non video slide projectors) might have their slides made up using software like Harvard Graphics (if they wanted to show more than just photos.) They would then get the slides printed up using a photographic service or a device they had might have had. I used them at hotel events by law firms, financial institutions, etc. I worked at a university where They had a couple to transfer old slides to video. Nice video!
My family were big slideshow people, my grandparents had a ton of panaview slides which eventually were donated, but the family slides all kept and digitized. They were essentially narrative devices to show context when you re-live old memories of trips in family slide shows. Think of them as title screens & still B-Roll well before home film & video cameras & recording & playback.
If you can get your hands on a camera from a friend, or you have one laying around, you can make a solid scanner without major issues. Light source, slide jig, camera jig. If you know someone with a 3D printer, you can find things easily on Thingiverse/other similar services. I'd offer to build it for you if I thought you might live near me.
You are the only person who could possibly make a 45 min video about a slide show projector that's worth watching! Congrats! A few things: 1) PAL/50Hz CRT TVs have longer after glow, making them not more flickery than NTSC/60Hz CRT TVs. (Unfortunately this wasn't always the case for computer monitors - there were plenty of painfully flickery monitors for the Amiga in Europe 1½) This makes switched off PAL/50Hz CRT TVs a decent surface to project super-8 movies onto while pointing a video camera at it, as it does some deflicker. Setting the super 8 projector to 24fps (and just sucking up that 16fps movies would run 50% fast) makes it almost completely flicker fre. 2) Computer controlled slide show projectors were a thing even before/without any electronic video signals. I.E. you would just have a bunch of projectors and a computer to control them, where I think the most common would be a purpose-built "computer" but it could be any general purpose computer. I actually find it surprising that this was a thing with your device as the major selling point for slide shows over video was the higher contrast range 3) Although carousels did exist in Europe, they were certainly more uncommon. The common thing was thing that moved linearly, usually with space for 40 slides although some could contain 50 slides. 40 matched decently to the 36 slides on the longer of the two standard length film rolls. Computer controlled "professional" slide show things used carousels though. In case you are interested in it, I could scan some pages in a 1980's A/V and pro sound/light stage equipment and whatnot catalogue that has a small section about computer controlled slide shows. Reply to this comment and I'll send you a mail about it. 4) Anyone wanting to convert one of these to higher definition video would likely at least save money by just buying a regular slide projector and simply replace the light bulb with a way weaker one, and replace the lens and whatnot with a camera. As a bonus you wouldn't feel bad about modifying a piece of ancient A/V history. 5) The mechanism for the actual slide changer was most likely well proven since many years, and thus the plastic parts would last forever. Even consumer grade projectors seems to have used heavy/solid parts, perhaps due to it was a one-time buy for most people and cost didn't match that much, in combination with few parts that could drive the production cost. Also I think the solenoid engaged when the motor hasn't spun up, so there is no hard yank on the plastic parts, which likely makes them last longer. Of course there is no stress on the plastic when it disengages the mechanism. 6) I would think that people using these with computer control took pride in arranging the slides in a way that needed as little "skipping" as possible. Compare with configuring Cisco router, it's a bit more complicated than it has to do which ensures that casual outsiders will not achieve as good result as an "expert" and said "experts" get a feeling of accomplishment when finished. It's also the same as what's actually pre made meals but sold as "spice mix" or "cookie dough mix" or whatnot, where you add a few basic items that requires no skill to do, but makes you feel like you have cooked your own meal rather than just heated a pre cooked meal. 7) Love your vids. Keep up the good work!
I’ve always found slide projectors neat. I was born and raised in the 90s and never really encountered them. I’d start groaning if you brought out an overhead projector though (unless you have that sweet transparent calculator). It made really creative use of transparent LCD displays. All the numbers were transparent too so you could see them on the projection
I remember the era in which they were selling flat panel LCDs that you could lay onto an overhead projector in order to present to the group from a laptop. It was expensive but it was a lot more portable so long as you were certain there would be an overhead projector present in the room where you were going to be, and that was a pretty strong assumption in academia or business in the 1990s.
@@AlRoderick i was given one by my school i put a bright white high power LED i stole from my dads expensive flash light in it and took an old broken laptop and ripped out the backlight and turned it into my own movie projector i did not get spankings and we watched movies outside on the side of the house
My elementary school had one of these guys! It was used maybe once a year, in the massive auditorium, to show anti-drug slides. Oh and it was hooked into a massive 3 lens projector.
When I was in highschool in the mid-to-late 2010's, my school was transitioning from those older document projectors to "smart boards". I've seen both, but anyway... IIRC, math teachers would make the most use out of them. Most of them would have transparent documents w/ typed black text for lessons. The surface was like that of a dry-erase white board, so that they could easily write on them and erase their marks without skipping a beat. Simple, yet elegant. Worked pretty well.
w/in 5 seconds of this intro, I'd already wanted to buy you a beer (soda w/e) and talk shop. Genuinely apprentice the time & effort you're putting forth on these projects.
Used one of these along with a video toaster back in the early 90s to make a documentary in school on the Seven Years War and the British North America Act. Encyclopedia reference images and artworks related to the subject were on slides with the text works. Certainly wasn't the school that owned the equipment or reference materials though, it was owned by a media company that did in fact make documentary films.
Bud, you got me interested in the history of scaners when I never thought about them up til that point. I'm here for whatever your tisim latches onto because you think it's neat.
Slide projectors were very common in TV stations and production studios. They were used for everything from titles and credits that were chroma keyed over video to that over-the-shoulder box for news. They eventually were replaced with digital still store systems like the Quantel Paintbox. Most TV stations probably used some really expensive RCA projector bought back in the 1960s but production studios would find this useful. The color adjustment was used with titles to make them more colorful.
Also used during technical difficulties. The master control would switch to the feed of one of those boxes while figuring out the problem. The muted colors and very still image of those slides always puzzled me as a kid.
The RS-232 control was for A/V automation systems such a Crestron. You could control multiple devices from one controller and have all of the projectors, monitors, VTRs, etc racked up and mounted permanently.
I recently opened a boxed MS Office from the 16-bit era, and it came with an ad for a company that would take your PowerPoint presentation and literally print slides for you, so you could project them in a carousel. It really cemented the whole “slide deck” metaphor in the same way learning about typesetting and graphic design taught me the origins of “copy/paste” and “clip art” and all that.
Hi! Carousel and regular slide projectors are still used in a bunch of art projects, as well as overhead projectors (the latter because you can do live interactions with materials to generate and project interesting shapes). Any projector can also be used to project interesting stuff onto people when you do, for example, studio photography. They're great for loads of creative endeavours!
We did not take 1000 photos. We had rolls with a certain number of shots, so we had to carefully think about whether a certain moment or scenery was worth a shot on your film. Good ole days when photos meant more. I preferred it over taking 1000 photos and then never looking at them again❤. Great video dude!
Well, it depends on your intentions and budget. A casual photographer probably wouldn't, but a serious amateur or pro, who commonly *did* take a dozen shots or more of anything they felt was worth shooting at all, very possibly would use that much on a multi-day trip. 1000 photos is only about 28 rolls at 36 exposures each; I have half that much film sitting in a bag in my closet from a road trip I took in 2004, all shot on a fully manual Minolta SRT-102 from the mid 70s. If we'd stopped a couple more places I'm sure I'd have had well over 20.
you are committed! I might have done that had I been able to afford that much film. Developing all of the rolls cost money too. I could develop my own black and white in a lab at high school, but not color film. I did find thousands of slides my dad had developed by Dale laboratories back in the day I want to eventually do something with. Thanks again for the video and the engagement!
I care about slide projectors 😂 I love collecting random sets of slides and it’s always fun to project them to see what you got. I love photography, particularly old stuff like slides and viewmaster reels.
Slide projectors were very common back in the day when you wanted to share vacation or event photos with friends and family, from what I've been told by customers a few jobs back. They were very much a social thing!
Love how this man at the beginning was trying to convince me not to click off while I was sold when I saw some dumb looking slide projecter in the thumbnail and new we was in for a treat.
0:02 I smiled in an ‘aww, cute! Every library would have needed one!’ Then I LAUGHED when I saw 46 minutes. Well done, I want something long, interesting and funny (in the right ways!) :D
*waves paw* here, I cared about projection back in the day! I was still a bit too young back when I got a decent camera and when slides were still a thing but I planned one of these fancy dual projector setups for fade over effects with audio track... but that never went past the planning stage. The key to not bore your audience is to *remove* up to 9 of 10 of the pictures you made on your vacation. It's usually the "20 times the same thing only slightly different" that gets people to run away from home slide shows, I think.
There were many “dissolve controllers” that were used with multiple slide projectors pointed at the same screen well before this device. In addition to simple dissolves some had effects even simple animations by rapidly turning the lamps on and off in multiple slide projectors pointed at a screen. These controllers were connected to remote port to control the projectors. Using multiple of these Elmo’s and a video mixer could be used to convert one of these complex shows to video.
Yeah slide projectors!!!!!!! I did a thing where I cut squares out of cardboard, pasted on print outs of constellations, then poked holes in the appropriate spots. then because I didn't have a carousel I hand fed them through the machine reflecting off of a mirror on to the ceiling. The kids were amazed and I ended up explaining how a projector worked. I actually have three units now. And some of them are the really nice industrial ones that have been passed down from the school system to the extension office to me. I also bought a weird composite / S video only input Sharp digital LCD projector that stands vertically. ( I used one once and got to thinking I wonder what they're going for an eBay "stupid idea" although I did managed to find myself the commercial version with a gray plastic instead of black and BNC terminals ). And I don't know why but I feel like I want to break the universe at least once by attaching this slide carousel camera system to up convert everything to composite and then send it off to the projector. Yes I think I'm crazy yes I think I'm crazy. I hope one of those things shows up at my Goodwill.
Well, its got RGB, NTSC, Y/C, and Genlock, so I'm guessing Broadcast Telecine chain for keying slides into a video switcher for a news broadcast would be the number one use case.
I enjoyed this video very much. When I was in my last years of high school in the late 80s and early 90s , there was a production company that would come to the school and give a multimedia presentation using several of these patched into each other as well as one of those big ass CRT projectors . The shows highlighted events from the past summer , showing clips of summer blockbusters , music videos and current events of the year . If memory serves , it was a 3 screen presentation with the CRT projector in the middle and still images to the sides that would cross fade as well as play off of the video being shown , extending it with effects to the sides . I wish I knew the name of the production company that put these shows on . I have looked online for more info but there doesn't seem to be much out there . Would love to hear from others my age who remember these shows . They were the highlight of my school year . Very polished and professional productions with very skilled technicians.
Beside the already mentioned broadcast and classroom use, it would also be a nice addition to a video conference system back in the day. With the serial input, it could even be controlled through the conference systems main unit. The focus, zoom and iris were often adjustable on the main camera in those systems anyway, so the necessary control buttons (or automatic circuitry) would already be present. 18:33 The focus function would also be useful to compensate for varying film/camera distance with different types (thicknesses) of slide frames, or cases where the film is buckled in the frame. The zoom function is of course also handy when viewing slides on smaller film formats like the 16mm pocket camera film (110-format) or APS.
Ah, ELMO. When I was in late elementary school we were transitioning from overhead projectors to doc cams. Of course, as 9-10 year olds we all made a big deal over the name because the only other Elmo we had heard of was on Sesame Street. But man was it so much better than overhead projectors. Even before I got glasses I couldn’t see what those things projected. The Elmo doc cams were big and slow at first, but by the time I got into college they were so much smaller. This was a fun look into what they did before moving into education!
The BBC (and doubtless other broadcasters) used slides scanned in this way in their interstitial announcements between programmes. The art department would mount images from the programme, title cards or times of broadcast an an image of the channel identity (BBC1 or BBC2) and photograph it, and develop to a slide. These could be loaded in a number of these carousel scanners and cut or mixed between. Also used by television news for 'over-the-shoulder' inset images of a person or story.
Power cycling over a short-term is perfectly fine for a light bulb, what kills a bulb is coming back from cold. Think about all the Marquee signs and traffic lights that blink for years on end, the bulbs do blow out but not really faster than one that was just on.
@@pablorai769 41 minute mark has him operate the machine while partially disassembled. There's nothing in between the lamp and the lame duck end of the machine, and it's very much not illuminated while it's transitioning. It is actually just turning off, not using a shutter.
I have an old scsi Canoscan 2700F for scanning 35mm, 110, slides etc., it will also handle 35mm movie frames. It is now very old tech but the scan quality is still good. I enjoy the arrogance of keeping the thing going, especially when it still has a use. It is perfect for archiving snapshots and identifying 'the 1 in 100 frame worth the extra work.' I got the drivers working with Windows 7 (with scuzi) and it is still dragged-out about once a year to digitise someone's old photo films. .... Oh yes... Another fascinating video. Thank you.
I sort of went to school. All I did was volunteer at their FM radio station and that taught me more than the average electronics tech. Ever play with a 15,000 watt transmitter? Been watching your videos for years and it seems time to broadcast beyond TH-cam.
Hello! I'm a film shooter and shoot/DIY reverse my BW film to BW slides for projection - scanning being the afterthought. That huge and pixel-free image is amazing to withess. You don't view cinema in brightly lit rooms. You don't project digital image under sunlight. Similarly - you don't do slide projection in bright ambient light and thus are amazed.
Out of curiosity, what film do you use to make the B&W slides? I've tried this with Tri-X before (photograph negative with a slide duplicator onto Tri-X, then process, making a positive), but the base is not clear, so the slides come out looking grey. Who makes clear-base B&W film now?
@@Alpha8713 you probably need to rethink this :) Any film can be processed as a BW Slide and it's the BW Reversal chemical process that turns your film out of the camera into positives for projection/scanning/whatnot. I've tried many films, C-41 and E-6 included. Can provide my Flickr link if interested to see the results
Saw this (probably exactly this model) thing on TV production. Or, to be even more specific, four of them, on a documentary series production set up somewhere in early to mid 1990s then used until at least mid 2010s. With four of them, blank synchronizer and computer controlling all that stuff, you can do a crap load more. For example, the problem with iris and dynamic range could be entirely corrected with two of them set up for different parts of image, and a control computer switching video source WITHIN given half-frame, on a given scanline. So you can, depending on situation, transmit odd lines from one and even from another unit, getting something in between, or use one device for top part of a frame and other for the bottom half, switching on a specific scanline. All without digital video. With four of them you can do that AND smooth fade transition. And, as an icing on a cake, with 486DX and an FPU (config on side) even crazier crap was possible by utilizing mid-scanline switching (literal Atari 2600-style beam riding), like new image transition appearing from the side/top without fade, or in a complex pattern fill, or as a wave - computer would intercept and mix images from all four of them in any given shape or way. Another usage of beam-riding would be any kind of PiP or overlaying part of one slide on another. Ex-employee who made that program was a magician probably. The unit was sent to scrap metal only after HDTV switch in our country.
i desperately need a 16mm film projector to watch an ABBA music video i own on film! i got it as a gift (i’m a huge ABBA fan). i think slide projectors are pretty cool, and if your friend is up for showing those scans publicly, i’d love to see more!
dude u got shots from the mt st helen eruption. dam thats awesome. i had fam up there during the eruption.. not sure what the time frame on it is though.
I completely forgot about Elmo document cameras! I remember they were introduced in our school district when I was in kindergarten and I still saw some of them being used when I was in high school!
Yes, I know the spring is under compression, not tension. I have no idea why I said tension.
compression is also a form of tension, is it not?
@@raafmaatYep, tension has no vector. Compression opposes expansion or rarefaction for gases.
20 lashes 😂
@@aeonjoey3d Why so tense? I mean, why so compressed?
How dare you
Worked at a school: the ELMO projectors were always outdated because goddamn those things DO NOT DIE.
Doesn't shock me. Not much to die in them.
Our Elmos were starting to get a bit rickety for 16mm movie nights at my college and were replaced with a pair of Eikis with an auto cutover box. The Elmos still served as backups when the Eikis had issues...
projectionist life...
I remember lugging them around to classrooms in college in the 90s.
I like your name 🌈 @@CantankerousDave
Working in a contemporary art museum, we deal with slide projectors all the time. It's actually the perfect profession for someone interested in technology from all eras (which means, by extension, loving this channel). One of the most impressive things I've ever seen is a Nan Goldin exhibition, where there were at least 12 slide projectors connected to a computer to control them all. Six projectors at a time would project their own section of a photo, three wide and two tall, and when the carousel reached the end it would switch to the other six. The amount of alignment and ND filters to make them all run must have been immense, as well as the upkeep of repairing that many machines in 2023. Also, when the show ended and all the machines reset back to the starting position, the rattling of all 12 going back to zero was pretty amazing.
I've only had to control a single projector show like this, but the software and accompanying hardware only works on era macs, so it was a bit of a challenge.
The moment you turned it around to reveal a row of BNC connectors I went from "Meh" to opening an ebay tab in less than a second.
I swear, you and Alec from Technology Connections can make videos about something I care NOTHING about and not only make me watch the entire thing but also be entertained the entire time.
I need that cross over episode.
@@Deadbolt4992me too
I think the makeup Alec uses to be Cathode Ray Dude is amazing. But why?
Same! I know more about heat pumps and dishwashers than I ever thought I would!
@@Deadbolt4992 I found out about CRD's channel because Alec recommended it in a community post, so I guess that's something.
Did- did I just watch a 45+ minute video about a slide projector? I have no idea how you make these videos so interesting Dude, but damn it, you do.
Because I'm an old, I did some school presentations on slides. The fanciest one I did involved a tape recording of the presentation's audio and two slide projectors aimed at the same screen and wired to a special control unit. One slide projector held the odd slides while the other held the even slides. When it was time to change slides, the audio recording had special, sub-audible markers inserted that the control unit could detect. It would use those cues to turn off one one projector's bulb while simultaneously turning the other's on. The dark projector would then advance to the next slide in the carousel. The effect was a very smooth and very professional-looking cross-fade between the two slides, using just the thermal inertia of the projectors' bulbs.
Also as an old who was a big fan of the Amiga, I know all about genlocking.
Thanks for mentioning the device that controlled 2 projectors. The fade out when the projector bulb was turned off was something special. I don’t think computer dissolves for transitions can match the transition of a real projector bulb being turned on and off.
i have heard a story of someone using 6 to 8 genlocked (slightly offset from one another) projectors *without a video mixer*, just all pointed at the same point on the wall, to do some kind of faux-crossfade. i imagine hearing all those clunks going left-to-right behind you at exactly the same rate every time was a very satisfying experience
Yes , that was the standard way the big multi projector slide shows worked, whether in museum displays or trade shows or other big presentations, before we had less expensive HD video projection.
@@StevenBradford There even were projectors with twin lenses that could load two slides and fade between them for a seamless slide show.
@@andreasu.3546 Yes, I own one, a rollei, that I found at a thrift store several years ago, for $25.
My dad used to do this sort of stuff. Huge banks of about 16 projectors, could even do some rudimentary animation by flicking between projectors fast enough. Sounded like a goddamned firing range in the projectionists booth.
@AntiPseudo : I was trained by a guy who did those big presentations -- 16 literal frames per second is janky animation, but 24 or more is full-motion video, with slide projectors! Used a programming rig (think video mixer) to control sequence, timing, light intensity. He said his favorite show-off was making the stars twinkle in a night-sky background.
"Wait, wait, I know it's a slide projector but don't leave!"
_Skelator pointing "Jokes on you, I'm into that shit!"_
Elmo apparently was such a big name in the school document camera business (and perhaps still are) that teachers at the schools I work for still refer to their non-Elmo document cameras as "Elmos".
the capability to zoom into the slide and genlock+serial control the thing makes me imagine a fly-by-night broadcast studio using this and a frame buffer as their static matte source, clunking through backgrounds and fake-CG elements to shove underneath and above talent with a stack of keyers. every night they have a 125 year old savant paint the weather onto a copy of the local map directly onto the tiny slides.
+1. Before there were computers everywhere in the broadcasting industry (of which I am a worker ;-), I think you could use this with some rudimentary DSK capabilities to put a name on screen, an info or else. Having nothing that could create it electronically, or nothing cheap enough in the least, I could see how this would be practical… during a live show, all graphics (lower thirds, bugs, etc) are often numbered and put in the order they’ll be used, it actually make sense to use a carousel !
@@Vincent-o5p oh for sure! i remember at some point finding an old betacam tape set up like this where every two or three frames was a different graphics element and theyd use a specially calibrated VTR with a framesync and a remote to use them as mattes, kinda like videofloppy! its really funny to imagine a clunky slide projector doing it though.
Do we still get a full elevator orchestra playing sped up Vaporwave?
It’s me! I am into slide projectors! I still get slides made, it’s a whole event to look at them with friends. Love this
Let me get this straight. You have them made? Like you don't shoot slide film, you get slides...made? How does that work?
@@funkmon yeah there are services that do it. It’s just a bit of fun!
im jealous you have enough friends willing to watch your slides
@@Snails69 well they’re in them! It’s not just a bunch of photos of me! Lol
@@wilsonkilmer9776 lol nice! i meant in terms of people's schedules lining up, didnt mean to imply the slides were boring
9:32 you just unlocked so many memories i have of students trying to use a document projector and spending a solid 20 seconds fumbling with the paper trying to get it in the right orientation
16:35 - I volunteered at the local community cable station in the late 80s. One show I worked on was a movie review show, and this was back when studios sent out "EPK" (electronic press kit) packages containing a tape with clips and some 8x10 b&w stills from the movie. To get those stills into the show, you would mount them on a rostrum frame with a dedicated studio camera pointed at the photo, lit in such a way to prevent glare. No digital frame store, you just cut to the still camera feed and swapped in the next photo as you went. That's pretty much what this is doing in a single box, but just with slides. I remember framing up the shot on the stills and then locking down the camera; no fancy camera moves for us.
Sylvania in 1969 sold a console color TV with a built in flying spot scanner and Carousel changer for home use. It did not have any zoom control, and just displayed the 4x3 center portion of the slide. Also, no video output. It did have one advantage in that the low light level from the flying spot tube would not fade the slides.
For comparison, automatic repeating projected displays for corporate PR would typically fade slides noticeably within a week.
That would have been really expensive.
9:55 I'm sure plenty of people did it on accident, but I know of at least one instance of it being done on purpose. In the early touring days of Pink Floyd they would take two slides, add a drop of oil between them and put them into the same slot and leave it projecting as they played. As the oil heated up from the projector lamp it would move around and create a "psychedelic" effect.
In the mid 60s, the PR department of the college I attended had three projectors in separate side-by-side futuristic rear projector enclosures (20 inch screens), with all three advancing simultaneously with a single control pulse. I installed a punch paper tape reader so that it advanced on each pulse but the individual projectors either did or didn't depending on the corresponding holes in the paper tape. This saved them from making duplicate slides for the times when they wanted the image to stay the same on one of the screens.
Many TV stations used slides for things like Station IDs, trouble, promos, and such into the 1990s. Could definitely see one of these in a small market TV station or community access TV
That was the first thing that came to mind when I seen this thing had genlock. Affordable computer graphics in the early 90's looked absolutely terrible. But in that era you could do some arts and crafts, take a photo and have it developed into a slide and have very nice looking overlays for your broadcast. This thing would have fit right into the community tv station where I volunteered in high school.
When I was working at the head office of Bang & Olufsen in the Netherlands they had 21 kodak carousel projectors connected to a reel to reel tape recorder that send out pulses to operate the slide projectors and played the sound for the slide show. there where also machines with cassette tape that could operate the projectors. it was really nice to see a presentation on it with slides overlaying and so on. around 2000 they throw them away. so I started to collect them and had more than 100 different slide projectors, only hold on to the kodak carousels, after a lot of trying I convert them to LED, less heat and some I took out the fan so no noise and you can project 1 slide forever without overheating them. also once I put a lcd screen from a old Casio digital camera, it had a video in on the print, and without the backlight you could project in really big pixels whatever you liked. was nice on parties where from a distance you see an image and close it looks like color chancing tiles. Have a big tele and very wide angle lens for them. this Elmo thing is something very nice.
did they ever use them for signage?
@@blocktockblock6329 yes they did, as a photographer myself I can not imagine the work that goes in to make 80 slides for 21 projectors. Some where text but most of it was product presentation
I’m actually in a film photography chat with your friend who owns the drum scanner, was really cool seeing those slides posted there and then posted here in one of your videos! (Also they’re an incredible photographer and love their large format work haha)
Loved the video, super funky device
After going to the effort to build that, seems surprising they didn't make it able to take a film strip, and invert to display a negative
The uni I worked at a long time ago had an AV department that did things like cut and mount filmstrip into slides to transition to this "tech". They also used to hand assemble colour OHP slides using hand cut cellophanes. Things have changed so much...
41:49 I've realized that I've never even thought about the difference between a gear and a cog. Thanks for letting me know
A cog is like a gear, but with pegs instead of teeth. I think what CRD is describing at 42:00 is a ratchet with a solenoid-actuated pawl.
46 minutes of CRD reviewing a strange, obscure device that I have no use for? LETS GOOOO
Anyone could use a slide projector, but poverty makes us dream small. Give anyone a projector and random slides, jam, some hookers, and soundtrack to Miami Vice and they'll use the projector. Our poverty makes us all small and boring, it hides we are all maniacs inside, know that and cry and smile. I'm rich and am out of jam
Before the video was halfway I had bought one! As for you not "meeting" anyone interested in projecting slides, you just have. I'm the technical person for a camera club in Toronto, Canada projecting images in our own 180 seat auditorium, and while we don't do slides very often anymore as like everything else we project digitally, we still have slide projectors and carousels. I figure the Elmo along with a DVD burner would be something our members would like to use. My first year as a member of the club someone did a 16-projector slideshow...shame I can't post a photo here of that setup.
Hi maybe we should be friends lol😂 I love photography, especially old stuff and love collecting slides, projectors, viewmaster reels etc
I really appreciate the shots/angles you got while filming the inside of the machine - everything's very clear.
OMG I had a couple classrooms that had ELMO document cameras...I can recall that the teacher would usually call it "the Elmo" and elementary schoolers were amused by it sharing a name with the Muppet.
We had an overhead Elmo projector that used transparencies, because our school spent both of their technology grants on... A second football field, and parking for that football field. This was in 2017.
Which Elmo came first?
COOKIES...!😅
I was one of them
Elmo is German for God's Helmet. Helm, to Elm-o... St Erasmus also was known as St Elmo... also known as Her ass much. Those wacky ancestors .
This reminds me of an event we had at school back in 1996. We didn't have those project-to-video thingamagicks, but we used two regular carousel-style projectors - more professional models than what you'd use at home since they also supported fade-in and fade-out-, aligned their image (we even had special test pattern slides to adjust the geometry) and then hooked them up to some PC control interface (the link from the PC to the interface must have been serial at that time, but the interface to the projector must have been something else since the cables were extremely long). We got the show programmed perfectly synchronized to music (if you managed to hit the start button in the PC software and on the DAT player at the same time, that is, the control software did not support audio.)
Oh nostalgia... To this day I can hear the music and see how the slides fade in and out. I guess I spent way too much time back in the day getting the programming right. And today it would be so much simpler to get the same result...
Heh...Love the use of the infamous "USAF Missile Guidance Explanation".
Ektachrome is particularly prone to going magenta. The cyan dye fades, leaving red and yellow. There are specific ways to regain cyan, depending on how you want to go about digitizing the slide. I oversee a museum collection full of magenta slides because the photographer preferred local developers, and Kodachrome could only be processed by Kodak directly at the time. So they went Ektachrome.
Would a cyan light source help?
I scanned mine and my relatives entire slide collection earlier this year using Minolta Diamage Scan IV-scanners. Some slides from the late 60s and early 70s were almost going magenta, but it's suprising how good they can get with digital postprocessing of the white balance. Cheap slides bought in souvenir shops seems to have faded the most.
I worked in a photo lab years ago, and we were the only Walmart for quite a distance that still had scanner capabilities. I was also the only person who knew how to do it for... probably a further distance than that working in a photo lab at the time.
The color correction many of them needed -- especially turning either green or magenta -- was incredibly disappointing sometimes, but sometimes you could get a pretty clear photo of someone who's been gone for years, and those were always some of the best and most incredible moments of that job.
@@renakunisaki I have seen that used, I presume a programmable LED panel was used to tune the color and then used as a backlight for a scan.
@@sydneys207 I have to ask someone to play with them when I want to correct the color, I can't figure out how to get any decent results. It's definitely a skill.
This thing reminded me of the commercials done by a local furniture store owner in my small town in the late 1970s. In the commercials the fellow didn't show us slides of the furniture he was selling. Never. He would introduce himself and then show us slides of photos he had taken while traveling to the various waterfalls, mountains, and scenic places in our area. The projector he used was so cheap that we would see the slide be pulled out and next slide pop in and I assume it was noting more than a second television camera pointed at a projection screen. He apparently was selling himself as a local who would naturally give you the best price for a sofa or a dining room table... so come on down!
AND by incredible coincidence, this was in Medford, Oregon in the Rogue Valley @19:47.
They were also used by camera shops to bulk-convert customers' slides for a fee.
Hey, Dude. I'm an AV guy from the 80's and 90's (and now, actually. I've come full circle, I guess). People that used these and (non video slide projectors) might have their slides made up using software like Harvard Graphics (if they wanted to show more than just photos.) They would then get the slides printed up using a photographic service or a device they had might have had.
I used them at hotel events by law firms, financial institutions, etc. I worked at a university where They had a couple to transfer old slides to video.
Nice video!
My family were big slideshow people, my grandparents had a ton of panaview slides which eventually were donated, but the family slides all kept and digitized. They were essentially narrative devices to show context when you re-live old memories of trips in family slide shows. Think of them as title screens & still B-Roll well before home film & video cameras & recording & playback.
I'm only a few minutes into this and I already want one.
My dad left behind a MOUNTAIN of 35mm slides, and scanning them is going to cost a fortune.
If you can get your hands on a camera from a friend, or you have one laying around, you can make a solid scanner without major issues. Light source, slide jig, camera jig.
If you know someone with a 3D printer, you can find things easily on Thingiverse/other similar services.
I'd offer to build it for you if I thought you might live near me.
I am manifesting one of these for you to show up on the platform of your choice.
There is coolscan 5000 with feeder on my local Craig's list.ATM. Otherwise look at new pacific image devices.
i could watch this man review paint swatches and i'd still watch :)
Really been enjoying the benchtop videos lately. Keep up the great work, Gravis!
You are the only person who could possibly make a 45 min video about a slide show projector that's worth watching! Congrats!
A few things:
1) PAL/50Hz CRT TVs have longer after glow, making them not more flickery than NTSC/60Hz CRT TVs. (Unfortunately this wasn't always the case for computer monitors - there were plenty of painfully flickery monitors for the Amiga in Europe
1½) This makes switched off PAL/50Hz CRT TVs a decent surface to project super-8 movies onto while pointing a video camera at it, as it does some deflicker. Setting the super 8 projector to 24fps (and just sucking up that 16fps movies would run 50% fast) makes it almost completely flicker fre.
2) Computer controlled slide show projectors were a thing even before/without any electronic video signals. I.E. you would just have a bunch of projectors and a computer to control them, where I think the most common would be a purpose-built "computer" but it could be any general purpose computer. I actually find it surprising that this was a thing with your device as the major selling point for slide shows over video was the higher contrast range
3) Although carousels did exist in Europe, they were certainly more uncommon. The common thing was thing that moved linearly, usually with space for 40 slides although some could contain 50 slides. 40 matched decently to the 36 slides on the longer of the two standard length film rolls. Computer controlled "professional" slide show things used carousels though.
In case you are interested in it, I could scan some pages in a 1980's A/V and pro sound/light stage equipment and whatnot catalogue that has a small section about computer controlled slide shows. Reply to this comment and I'll send you a mail about it.
4) Anyone wanting to convert one of these to higher definition video would likely at least save money by just buying a regular slide projector and simply replace the light bulb with a way weaker one, and replace the lens and whatnot with a camera. As a bonus you wouldn't feel bad about modifying a piece of ancient A/V history.
5) The mechanism for the actual slide changer was most likely well proven since many years, and thus the plastic parts would last forever. Even consumer grade projectors seems to have used heavy/solid parts, perhaps due to it was a one-time buy for most people and cost didn't match that much, in combination with few parts that could drive the production cost. Also I think the solenoid engaged when the motor hasn't spun up, so there is no hard yank on the plastic parts, which likely makes them last longer. Of course there is no stress on the plastic when it disengages the mechanism.
6) I would think that people using these with computer control took pride in arranging the slides in a way that needed as little "skipping" as possible. Compare with configuring Cisco router, it's a bit more complicated than it has to do which ensures that casual outsiders will not achieve as good result as an "expert" and said "experts" get a feeling of accomplishment when finished. It's also the same as what's actually pre made meals but sold as "spice mix" or "cookie dough mix" or whatnot, where you add a few basic items that requires no skill to do, but makes you feel like you have cooked your own meal rather than just heated a pre cooked meal.
7) Love your vids. Keep up the good work!
I’ve always found slide projectors neat. I was born and raised in the 90s and never really encountered them. I’d start groaning if you brought out an overhead projector though (unless you have that sweet transparent calculator). It made really creative use of transparent LCD displays. All the numbers were transparent too so you could see them on the projection
I just looked up that calculator you're talking about, that does look cool! "The Educator" is a pretty blunt name for it though lol.
Why would the numbers need to be transparent?
I remember the era in which they were selling flat panel LCDs that you could lay onto an overhead projector in order to present to the group from a laptop. It was expensive but it was a lot more portable so long as you were certain there would be an overhead projector present in the room where you were going to be, and that was a pretty strong assumption in academia or business in the 1990s.
@@AlRoderick i was given one by my school i put a bright white high power LED i stole from my dads expensive flash light in it and took an old broken laptop and ripped out the backlight and turned it into my own movie projector i did not get spankings and we watched movies outside on the side of the house
Thank you for unlocking that memory of the calculator!
My elementary school had one of these guys! It was used maybe once a year, in the massive auditorium, to show anti-drug slides.
Oh and it was hooked into a massive 3 lens projector.
Dude, no joke, when i see you have uploded a new vid i go crazy, thats how much i love your vids.
I love when you said 'tremendous amount of heft', you let the thing bounce on the table and the GODDAMN CAMERA SHOOK.
When I was in highschool in the mid-to-late 2010's, my school was transitioning from those older document projectors to "smart boards". I've seen both, but anyway...
IIRC, math teachers would make the most use out of them. Most of them would have transparent documents w/ typed black text for lessons. The surface was like that of a dry-erase white board, so that they could easily write on them and erase their marks without skipping a beat.
Simple, yet elegant. Worked pretty well.
Absolute best video title ever. I’m giggling every time I read it. Nicely done.
I love projecting my slides. If you’ve never done it, you definitely should. It’s so incredibly lifelike to look at, compared to a screen
w/in 5 seconds of this intro, I'd already wanted to buy you a beer (soda w/e) and talk shop.
Genuinely apprentice the time & effort you're putting forth on these projects.
Used one of these along with a video toaster back in the early 90s to make a documentary in school on the Seven Years War and the British North America Act. Encyclopedia reference images and artworks related to the subject were on slides with the text works. Certainly wasn't the school that owned the equipment or reference materials though, it was owned by a media company that did in fact make documentary films.
Enjoying the bench video!
Miss your face, good luck with cooler days for the studio ❤
Bud, you got me interested in the history of scaners when I never thought about them up til that point. I'm here for whatever your tisim latches onto because you think it's neat.
That sample scan at 44:49 is groooossssssss lol. Cool video, interesting device, really enjoyed it
Slide projectors were very common in TV stations and production studios. They were used for everything from titles and credits that were chroma keyed over video to that over-the-shoulder box for news. They eventually were replaced with digital still store systems like the Quantel Paintbox. Most TV stations probably used some really expensive RCA projector bought back in the 1960s but production studios would find this useful. The color adjustment was used with titles to make them more colorful.
Also used during technical difficulties. The master control would switch to the feed of one of those boxes while figuring out the problem. The muted colors and very still image of those slides always puzzled me as a kid.
I actually very much enjoyed that! I trusted your don't leave yet!
This is a fantastic TH-cam channel.
29:15 "I love to reload during a battle"
using an ifixit spudger as a pointer is incredibly on-brand. great video!
Just gotta say great angles on showcasing the electromechanical parts on this! Love me some gears and levers.
We had seen 90% 10% into the video, and 3/4 30% into the video. The video keeps on giving.
"No bloody A, BC, C or D!" I see what you did there... 🤣🤣
The RS-232 control was for A/V automation systems such a Crestron. You could control multiple devices from one controller and have all of the projectors, monitors, VTRs, etc racked up and mounted permanently.
I recently opened a boxed MS Office from the 16-bit era, and it came with an ad for a company that would take your PowerPoint presentation and literally print slides for you, so you could project them in a carousel.
It really cemented the whole “slide deck” metaphor in the same way learning about typesetting and graphic design taught me the origins of “copy/paste” and “clip art” and all that.
Hi! Carousel and regular slide projectors are still used in a bunch of art projects, as well as overhead projectors (the latter because you can do live interactions with materials to generate and project interesting shapes). Any projector can also be used to project interesting stuff onto people when you do, for example, studio photography. They're great for loads of creative endeavours!
The title of this video is true art. Gravis don't miss!
We did not take 1000 photos. We had rolls with a certain number of shots, so we had to carefully think about whether a certain moment or scenery was worth a shot on your film. Good ole days when photos meant more. I preferred it over taking 1000 photos and then never looking at them again❤. Great video dude!
Well, it depends on your intentions and budget. A casual photographer probably wouldn't, but a serious amateur or pro, who commonly *did* take a dozen shots or more of anything they felt was worth shooting at all, very possibly would use that much on a multi-day trip. 1000 photos is only about 28 rolls at 36 exposures each; I have half that much film sitting in a bag in my closet from a road trip I took in 2004, all shot on a fully manual Minolta SRT-102 from the mid 70s. If we'd stopped a couple more places I'm sure I'd have had well over 20.
you are committed! I might have done that had I been able to afford that much film. Developing all of the rolls cost money too. I could develop my own black and white in a lab at high school, but not color film. I did find thousands of slides my dad had developed by Dale laboratories back in the day I want to eventually do something with. Thanks again for the video and the engagement!
We’re here for it man🎉
I care about slide projectors 😂 I love collecting random sets of slides and it’s always fun to project them to see what you got. I love photography, particularly old stuff like slides and viewmaster reels.
Is this this the 'shortest' episode of the year yet ? Either way, I enjoyed it a lot again ...
Slide projectors were very common back in the day when you wanted to share vacation or event photos with friends and family, from what I've been told by customers a few jobs back. They were very much a social thing!
Love how this man at the beginning was trying to convince me not to click off while I was sold when I saw some dumb looking slide projecter in the thumbnail and new we was in for a treat.
0:02 I smiled in an ‘aww, cute! Every library would have needed one!’
Then I LAUGHED when I saw 46 minutes. Well done, I want something long, interesting and funny (in the right ways!) :D
*waves paw* here, I cared about projection back in the day! I was still a bit too young back when I got a decent camera and when slides were still a thing but I planned one of these fancy dual projector setups for fade over effects with audio track... but that never went past the planning stage. The key to not bore your audience is to *remove* up to 9 of 10 of the pictures you made on your vacation. It's usually the "20 times the same thing only slightly different" that gets people to run away from home slide shows, I think.
There were many “dissolve controllers” that were used with multiple slide projectors pointed at the same screen well before this device. In addition to simple dissolves some had effects even simple animations by rapidly turning the lamps on and off in multiple slide projectors pointed at a screen. These controllers were connected to remote port to control the projectors.
Using multiple of these Elmo’s and a video mixer could be used to convert one of these complex shows to video.
To be fair, I would've watched the video even if it was about a slide projector. Keep up the good work!
Mesmerized by the mechanics and your knowledge. 😵
Yeah slide projectors!!!!!!!
I did a thing where I cut squares out of cardboard, pasted on print outs of constellations, then poked holes in the appropriate spots. then because I didn't have a carousel I hand fed them through the machine reflecting off of a mirror on to the ceiling. The kids were amazed and I ended up explaining how a projector worked.
I actually have three units now. And some of them are the really nice industrial ones that have been passed down from the school system to the extension office to me.
I also bought a weird composite / S video only input Sharp digital LCD projector that stands vertically.
( I used one once and got to thinking I wonder what they're going for an eBay "stupid idea" although I did managed to find myself the commercial version with a gray plastic instead of black and BNC terminals ).
And I don't know why but I feel like I want to break the universe at least once by attaching this slide carousel camera system to up convert everything to composite and then send it off to the projector. Yes I think I'm crazy yes I think I'm crazy. I hope one of those things shows up at my Goodwill.
Your writing on this was amazing!
Can you imagine a toaster (bread not video) that could perform in this way. I really like the way it deals with those slides! Cheers for the vid dude!
Slide projectors are fucking cool. Sharper than any 4k projector and gorgeous colors too. I'd love to own one and start collecting slides
The good ones are the Kodak Ektagraphics (most common) and the Elmos (like this one, but without the video bits). Telex is also good.
Well, its got RGB, NTSC, Y/C, and Genlock, so I'm guessing Broadcast Telecine chain for keying slides into a video switcher for a news broadcast would be the number one use case.
oh, elmo! every school i went to had a ton of their document projectors. pretty sturdy machines, to last in an environment like that for so long
My school had an Elmo document camera at it in 2020 I never new why it was called an Elmo until now.
It stands for Electric Light Machine Organization or something along those lines.
I enjoyed this video very much. When I was in my last years of high school in the late 80s and early 90s , there was a production company that would come to the school and give a multimedia presentation using several of these patched into each other as well as one of those big ass CRT projectors . The shows highlighted events from the past summer , showing clips of summer blockbusters , music videos and current events of the year . If memory serves , it was a 3 screen presentation with the CRT projector in the middle and still images to the sides that would cross fade as well as play off of the video being shown , extending it with effects to the sides . I wish I knew the name of the production company that put these shows on . I have looked online for more info but there doesn't seem to be much out there . Would love to hear from others my age who remember these shows . They were the highlight of my school year . Very polished and professional productions with very skilled technicians.
I happen to be in the market for a slide projector. Eager to add to my watched Ebay searches!
That was neat; thank you for sharing with us :)
this channel is becoming the king of " neat things, that i'd have zero use for.. but still neat to see how they work. "
Beside the already mentioned broadcast and classroom use, it would also be a nice addition to a video conference system back in the day. With the serial input, it could even be controlled through the conference systems main unit. The focus, zoom and iris were often adjustable on the main camera in those systems anyway, so the necessary control buttons (or automatic circuitry) would already be present.
18:33 The focus function would also be useful to compensate for varying film/camera distance with different types (thicknesses) of slide frames, or cases where the film is buckled in the frame. The zoom function is of course also handy when viewing slides on smaller film formats like the 16mm pocket camera film (110-format) or APS.
Ah, ELMO. When I was in late elementary school we were transitioning from overhead projectors to doc cams. Of course, as 9-10 year olds we all made a big deal over the name because the only other Elmo we had heard of was on Sesame Street. But man was it so much better than overhead projectors. Even before I got glasses I couldn’t see what those things projected. The Elmo doc cams were big and slow at first, but by the time I got into college they were so much smaller. This was a fun look into what they did before moving into education!
The BBC (and doubtless other broadcasters) used slides scanned in this way in their interstitial announcements between programmes. The art department would mount images from the programme, title cards or times of broadcast an an image of the channel identity (BBC1 or BBC2) and photograph it, and develop to a slide. These could be loaded in a number of these carousel scanners and cut or mixed between. Also used by television news for 'over-the-shoulder' inset images of a person or story.
The lightbulbs in these must have a terrible lifespan if they are switched on and off for every slide change.
It did come to me with a burnt out bulb haha
@@Ranger_Kevin it probably has a shutter...
Power cycling over a short-term is perfectly fine for a light bulb, what kills a bulb is coming back from cold. Think about all the Marquee signs and traffic lights that blink for years on end, the bulbs do blow out but not really faster than one that was just on.
@@pablorai769 41 minute mark has him operate the machine while partially disassembled. There's nothing in between the lamp and the lame duck end of the machine, and it's very much not illuminated while it's transitioning. It is actually just turning off, not using a shutter.
I have an old scsi Canoscan 2700F for scanning 35mm, 110, slides etc., it will also handle 35mm movie frames. It is now very old tech but the scan quality is still good. I enjoy the arrogance of keeping the thing going, especially when it still has a use. It is perfect for archiving snapshots and identifying 'the 1 in 100 frame worth the extra work.' I got the drivers working with Windows 7 (with scuzi) and it is still dragged-out about once a year to digitise someone's old photo films. .... Oh yes... Another fascinating video. Thank you.
The old nikon coolscans have scary cult following.
29:37 Damn, I've seen a few video toasters, but this is the first slide toaster I've encountered
I sort of went to school. All I did was volunteer at their FM radio station and that taught me more than the average electronics tech.
Ever play with a 15,000 watt transmitter? Been watching your videos for years and it seems time to broadcast beyond TH-cam.
that way old episode about transmitting from a NES might count as "beyond TH-cam!" :D
Hello!
I'm a film shooter and shoot/DIY reverse my BW film to BW slides for projection - scanning being the afterthought. That huge and pixel-free image is amazing to withess. You don't view cinema in brightly lit rooms. You don't project digital image under sunlight. Similarly - you don't do slide projection in bright ambient light and thus are amazed.
Out of curiosity, what film do you use to make the B&W slides? I've tried this with Tri-X before (photograph negative with a slide duplicator onto Tri-X, then process, making a positive), but the base is not clear, so the slides come out looking grey. Who makes clear-base B&W film now?
@@Alpha8713 you probably need to rethink this :)
Any film can be processed as a BW Slide and it's the BW Reversal chemical process that turns your film out of the camera into positives for projection/scanning/whatnot.
I've tried many films, C-41 and E-6 included. Can provide my Flickr link if interested to see the results
@@diapozitīvs Ah...I missed the reversal process part. That makes sense.
Saw this (probably exactly this model) thing on TV production. Or, to be even more specific, four of them, on a documentary series production set up somewhere in early to mid 1990s then used until at least mid 2010s. With four of them, blank synchronizer and computer controlling all that stuff, you can do a crap load more. For example, the problem with iris and dynamic range could be entirely corrected with two of them set up for different parts of image, and a control computer switching video source WITHIN given half-frame, on a given scanline. So you can, depending on situation, transmit odd lines from one and even from another unit, getting something in between, or use one device for top part of a frame and other for the bottom half, switching on a specific scanline. All without digital video.
With four of them you can do that AND smooth fade transition.
And, as an icing on a cake, with 486DX and an FPU (config on side) even crazier crap was possible by utilizing mid-scanline switching (literal Atari 2600-style beam riding), like new image transition appearing from the side/top without fade, or in a complex pattern fill, or as a wave - computer would intercept and mix images from all four of them in any given shape or way.
Another usage of beam-riding would be any kind of PiP or overlaying part of one slide on another. Ex-employee who made that program was a magician probably. The unit was sent to scrap metal only after HDTV switch in our country.
i desperately need a 16mm film projector to watch an ABBA music video i own on film! i got it as a gift (i’m a huge ABBA fan). i think slide projectors are pretty cool, and if your friend is up for showing those scans publicly, i’d love to see more!
25:58 You could probably make an entire series of videos on stuff made for rich dads tbh.
dude u got shots from the mt st helen eruption. dam thats awesome. i had fam up there during the eruption.. not sure what the time frame on it is though.
6:41 is that a bug on the camera lens? It's on the top right.
you had me at elmo trans video 😃
Love your videos man
I'm the guy who got excited to see a slide projector video
The audio input is to sync the turn stile to the audio, you mix inaudible tone pulses in the audio to tell the projector when to advance.
I completely forgot about Elmo document cameras! I remember they were introduced in our school district when I was in kindergarten and I still saw some of them being used when I was in high school!