A beautiful machine.

Last night I had the pleasure of loading film into a movie camera for the first time. We’re using a Bolex H16 Reflex Camera and in terms of industrial design, it’s beautiful.

In terms of usability, it’s not bad, either. The camera is pretty simple, mapping almost directly to my mental model of a still analog camera. There are plenty of affordances and product semantics that tell you how it’s meant to be used. The shutter mechanism is the one thing that’s based on a different conceptual model. That works on a flap that is set at different angles to affect the shutter speed. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how that works mechanically, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out once I’ve had a chance to actually put it into action. I can’t wait until next week when we actually get to shoot!