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Cine 60 Sun Gun

I'm the proud new owner of an old, eBay Sun Gun. This is an open-face halogen designed for hand-holding.

It's supposed to have a 24V bulb.

The connector is a two-pin Amphenol military M8 with a screw-on locking collar.

Any suggestions for a power source? Is the connector an odd ball for modern 24V connections?

Does anyone know the bulb # ?

Bob Morein
Indie Filmmaker

>I'm the proud new owner of an old, eBay Sun Gun. This is an open-face >halogen designed for hand-holding.

Are you planning to use it exclusively for film work? If so you might get more mileage leaving it stock and I am sure that you wont have that much trouble finding a belt that uses those old Amphenol two pin connectors.

Having said that it's likely you might have to freshen up the batteries in that belt if it's of the same vintage as the Sun Gun.

I used to have a couple of Cine 60 24v Sun Guns. One got crushed and I modified the other to use 12v and I switched the connector over to an XLR4. I donâ€™t remember offhand what part number the 24v bulb was. I did the changeover pretty quick because 12v battery belts were a better deal and the 24v source that came with these guns was a large "lunchbox" style battery box that weighed a ton.

That got modified so that it sported two 12v XLR4's and it served as a dual 12v source.

Actually the output was closer to 14.4, but it was for "twelve volt" gear. I never did hear what happened to Ethan, the former owner of Cine 60. I used to be friends with his young assistant that ran the shop in Hollywood in the 80's....I believe his name was Richard Jenkins.

Jeffery Haas
freelance shooter and editor
Dallas

>Are you planning to use it exclusively for film work? If so you might get >more mileage leaving it stock and I am sure that you wont have that >much trouble finding a belt that uses those old Amphenol two pin >connectors.

How would the choice of voltage be related to the type of work? Where would I look for an old belt?

I wouldn't mind a lunchbox type, if anyone has one they're ready to heave.

Bob Morein
indie filmmaker

Bob Morein writes :

>I'm the proud new owner of an old, eBay Sun Gun. This is an open-face >halogen designed for hand-holding.

Actually, they're 30 volt.

>The connector is a two-pin Amphenol military M8 with a screw-on >locking collar.

>Any suggestions for a power source? Is the connector an odd ball for >modern 24V connections?

The reason it's "oddball" is so that 30 volt belts were not mistaken for 24volt.

>Does anyone know the bulb # ?

If it's a screw base: FBT 150 watt, FBV 250 watt, FBW 350 watt. All are 3400 K due to the immediate power drop which brings them closer to 3200.

Brian Heller
IA 600 DP

>How would the choice of voltage be related to the type of work?

---It wouldn't necessarily, but most video gear is 12 volt and it stands to reason that most of the accessories are as well.

It's not "related" to the type of work, it's adapted to the type of equipment you're going to have sitting around.

Jeffery Haas
freelance shooter and editor
Dallas

>I'm the proud new owner of an old, eBay Sun Gun. This is an open-face >halogen designed for handholding.

The unit is ok but the belt is old heavy gear. The Cine-60 belt looks like a diver's weight belt. They may have other types to use now. Do not buy the old belt style batteries. It is heavy as hell and will probably cost you a fortune to re-cell. They also had memory issues if you did not properly discharge/recharge them.

That was the defacto on-camera news light system going back to the CP-16 days on up to BetaSP one-piece units.

Imagine chasing subjects with a BVP-300a/BVU-50 or 110/Cine-60 belt/tethered to a reporter with a mic cable! That was considered lightweight compared to a TK-76/BVU100 rig. Glad those days are long gone.

Tom McDonnell
DP/Operator
New Orleans, La
IATSE Local 600

>The reason it's "oddball" is so that 30 volt belts were not >mistaken for >24 volt.

---Scratches head :

Yes I remember the thirty volt belts. In my travels I seldom used any 30 volt gear, if at all, sorry.

Jeffery Haas
freelance shooter and editor
Dallas

The "so called" 30 volt batt belts were 30 volt full charge but operated at about 28 volts, (as I recall) so that the color temp was a little lower (and the lamp life a little longer) than rated. If the belts had been made up with the extra ni-cad cell to bring them up to an operating 30 volts, the full-charge no-load voltage would have been high enough to destroy lamps on switch-on too often.

(This is my theory, uncorrelated, but if you are going to use a 30 volt sungun at 30 volts, make sure your no-load batt voltage is not too high or you will be buying a lot of expensive lamps.)

Re: weight of belts and 30v vs. lower voltages, there is no free ride - if you are using ni-cad's, the amount of energy you store per unit weight is sort of fixed.

For a given light output, a higher voltage bulb will use less current than a lower one - if you use a lower voltage battery of the same size cells to power a lower voltage bulb, the higher current draw will make it last less long.

Additionally, of course, camera batteries are not designed for the high amperage current draw of a sun gun, so you might damage batteries or at least reduce their life, and the smaller wires used to connect the last cell in the line to the connector may heat up with the higher-than-rated current draw.

While Ni-cads were (and may still be) used for sun guns because they can be fast-charged, lead acid starved cell electrolyte or gel cell batts actually work fine for sun guns...the gel cells will not fast charge, but they are cheaper than nicads so you can carry more of them. It might make sense to make up a few block batteries with shoulder straps that you can throw over your shoulder when walking and plop down on the floor when you stop moving as an alternative to the belts.

I don't know whether anyone is using Nickel metal hydride batts for high amperage use like sunguns - a quick call to any of the rechargeable battery companies will yield a good education. Nickel Metal Hydrides do self-discharge faster than ni-cads, though they do not have the memory issues. I think the failure mode of lithium ion batteries in high amperage applications is to burst into flame which might counter-indicate their use for this sort of thing - happy to be corrected if someone knows better.

If you want to make up extensions for the sungun make sure you use large gauge wire - at lower voltages you get a lot more resistance from the same gauge wire than you would from line voltage, and you don't want to waste any electrons along the way in heating the cord when they could be heating the filament.

Try taking one of those little Lowell C clamps and attaching a Lowell Tota umbrella to the handle of your sungun. If you point the reflector into the umbrella, you will get a nice soft-edge glob of light with a pleasing fall-off.

Mark Weingartner
Cine 60 sunguns in my past

Jeffrey Haas writes:

>Scratches head: Yes I remember the thirty volt belts. In my travels I >seldom used any 30 volt gear, if at all, sorry.

No need to apologize. There wasn't much 30 volt gear. The only other item I can remember that used 30 volt dc was a Redlake LoCam Camera.

Mark Weingartner seems to be able to remember a good deal more about these, than I can. But then he's younger.

What he says about overloading camera batteries is the basis of the connector change. Panavision is 24 volt, therefore battery belts for handholding Panaflex's were 24 volt. Having the same connector meant that camera battery belts could be ruined by using them for sun guns.

Over discharging nicads can cause polarity reversal in belts without proper diode protection. The sungun doesn't care about polarity, but your camera might. @4 volts into the sungun means low color temp. 30 volts into an early Panaflexes means an early wrap.

There were a few Silver Cadmium batteries around. They were terrific in terms of power to weight, and in terms of maximum current draw. The drawbacks were that they were really expensive -- even by film standards -- they required a dedicated charger, they also had a very limited number of charge/discharge cycles in them before they would start to leak something really obnoxious by expanding rapidly and bursting the seams on the battery cans.

Brian Heller
IA 600 DP

There wasn't much in terms of 30volt camera equipment, but 30volt belts are in high demand today as most of the 125w, 200w, and 400w HMI lights use 30volt DC power sources. They use the same Amphenol military connector that was on the Cine60 sun gun, so you aren't likely to find a used working battery belt for a bargain price. Old belts would most likely need to be recelled, especially if they've been fast charged many times.

For new try Victory Battery ... www.victorybattery.com As far as I know, they offer NiCad and other battery technologies, and will recell old belts. There are also people here in Hollywood manufacturing belts with new technology (perhaps LiIon) that last much longer, and come with an appropriate price. If someone can refresh my memory with regards to who is making these belts I would much appreciate it.

Ted Hayash
CLT
Los Angeles, CA

>I'm the proud new owner of an old, eBay Sun Gun. This is an open-face >halogen designed for hand-holding.

Having said that it's likely you might have to freshen up the batteries in that belt if it's of the same vintage as the Sun Gun.

>>>>>>>Cine 60 continues to exist in Germany on a small scale. They do mostly Ni Met Hydrid Bats. In fact we are using their batteries without any problems for our Romy camera lights.<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Florian Granderath
Florian Granderath
Marketing
Panther Broadcast
Raiffeisenallee 3
82041 Oberhaching
Germany

My concern about switching to 12V is that the amperage, at equivalent wattage, would tend to burn up the wires.

What is the maximum wattage bulb one can run at 12V ?

Bob Morein
indie filmmaker