Super 8 Tribute to the Greek Spitfire: Pushing the format's limits at an airshow

[Aris Gavriilidis]

In September of 2025, I took my Beaulieu 4008 with a recently collimated Schneider 6-66mm (by Bjorn Andersson) to Athens Flying Week, with the sole intention of filming "MJ755", a Spitfire Mk. IX that our air force had restored and returned to flying condition a few years ago. I only had two 50D rolls with me and what you're about to see is pretty much the entirety of the useable material I captured, but I'm admittedly thrilled with the result. The takeoff shot I consider one of the best I've captured since I started shooting this analog format a few years ago. This little personal project was a challenge for me and I feel it pushed Super 8 to its visual and practical limits as well.

Tracking the Spitfire as it flew through the Beaulieu's flickering viewfinder was surprisingly difficult and vastly different from past airshow experiences where I had a digital camera with a 7" display. The bright sky "flashing" between each closure and opening of the Beaulieu's  shutter, made it feel as if I was filming a strobe light, to the point where I couldn't really see the plane, I could merely discern a dark object against a bright background, so in actuality I was basically doing my best to track movement with the hope that something useable would end up on the negative. This is also the reason that despite the 6-66mm having more reach, for most of the shots I was wider than I wanted to be, to ensure I could keep the whole Spitfire in the viewfinder under the aforementioned conditions. All I can say is the eye strain was real.

On the topic of what ended up in the negative: The scans from the first 50D cartridge, which I used for the static display shots, had two thin, continuous scratches close to the left edge, running through the entirety of the roll. Loading the Beaulieu in a dusty, windy place must have caused some particle to get lodged somewhere above or below the gate, pushing against the film surface as it ran. Thankfully, within After Effects, the panning shots provided me with a reference area I then used to erase the scratched region and for the static shots, I employed the clone stamp tool, successfully cleaning up all the material completely  - but calling the process tedious would be an understatement. The scans from the second 50D cartridge, which I used for the flying display, were thankfully free of any such scratches and I was especially thrilled with the shots, particularly the takeoff. The fluid head tripod I had the camera on at all times did most of the work, but I also did substantial stabilization within After Effects utilizing the motion tracking tools. The 4K scans I received from the lab, Kornmanufaktur, weren't remotely as stable as what you see in the finished film, but as we all know, jitter is an inherent limitation of Super 8 cameras (unless one somehow has either of the Logmar cameras) .

Part of me wishes I could have shot on 16mm with a video assist, which aside from easier filming during the event, would have also spared me from all the post work this short film required. Good thing it was a personal one too and not client work.

But, in the end, as with previous projects I've done with this camera, I feel that the stabilized shots, combined with the exceptional clarity of the Schneider Optivaron 6-66mm and the little bit of extra sharpness I added in Resolve to bring the grain out (by lowering the radius in the Blur tab from 0.5 to 0.46) are a testament to what the tiny Super 8 can do with good optics, a tripod and a meticulous workflow.

Most importantly, creatively, the unique character and attributes of the format, yielded an end result aligned with my original intent for a piece that stylistically, felt like an homage to both a legendary aircraft and  films or even news reels of its era. Hopefully these images will convey what I could only attempt to articulate in the above text. YouTube's compression algorithm doesn't like grain, particularly over large uniform areas like the sky, but watching in 4K eliminates most of the artifacts:

 

[Todd Pinder]

Amazingly smooth tripod movements! Great work!

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

Ωραία δουλειά αδερφέ, χαίρομαι να βλέπω τέτοιες προσπάθειες.

I think you really had some really nice shots in there, keep at it!

 

[Jon O'Brien]

Beautiful little film. It's got emotion in it.

I love the way film drinks up light like it loves it. I can't put it any other way. Film loves light. I guess technically you could say it loves highlights, but there's more to it than that.

Really nicely shot, too.

Love that zoom into the exhaust pipes. Nice touch.

Could you tell me, what program did you use to do your end credits etc? They look fantastic. I'm wanting to do something similar for my films.

[Aris Gavriilidis]

10 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Beautiful little film. It's got emotion in it.

I love the way film drinks up light like it loves it. I can't put it any other way. Film loves light. I guess technically you could say it loves highlights, but there's more to it than that.

Really nicely shot, too.

Love that zoom into the exhaust pipes. Nice touch.

Could you tell me, what program did you use to do your end credits etc? They look fantastic. I'm wanting to do something similar for my films.

Thank you for watching Jon, I'm glad you enjoyed the visuals and found emotion in it too!

The end credits I designed within GIMP, using freeware typefaces "Aspire" for the "The End" bit and a mix of "Big Shoulders Display" and "Voltaire" for the rest.

I split the credits into sections, so each layer either had a single word or a sentence in it and I did the same for each one's shadow. Then, I exported every layer as a PNG with transparency and overlayed them on the footage within After Effects to do the final animation. Technically, I could have just done the text entirely inside of After Effects, but I prefer keeping those elements separate for easier edits. Also, when working in AE, it's a lot less taxing on my system's GPU to work on the titles as image layers, rather than text, which counts as graphics within the software and requires more resources.

I placed each section of the credits at specific time intervals and keyframed the transparency. That was pretty much it.

[Jon O'Brien]

Thank you Aris. Great information!

[Thomas Dafnides]

During WW2,  my father , then a boy in Epirus saw a lone  Greek fighter plane engage 4 Italian planes in combat.  He shot down 3 of them.  I am guessing he was flying the Spitfire.

[Tyler Purcell]

Lovely material, proving if you shoot with a tripod and really focus on camera work with low-iso stock, you can get some really nice images on Super 8. It's more challenging than 16mm for sure, but possible. I have done the same thing a few times now and on a regular basis, pretty happy with the results outside of the cost. 

The sunset beauty shots really make the film pop nicely. 

Could tell it was cleaned up some, including sharpened. It's always an issue with super 8, always gotta stabilize and sharpen the image. It's unfortunate that the resolve sharpening tool is so recognizable. There are other tools which sharpen at a great cost to the system performance, without that look, but they are expensive. 

Edited September 4 by Tyler Purcell

[Aris Gavriilidis]

15 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Lovely material, proving if you shoot with a tripod and really focus on camera work with low-iso stock, you can get some really nice images on Super 8. It's more challenging than 16mm for sure, but possible. I have done the same thing a few times now and on a regular basis, pretty happy with the results outside of the cost. 

The sunset beauty shots really make the film pop nicely. 

Could tell it was cleaned up some, including sharpened. It's always an issue with super 8, always gotta stabilize and sharpen the image. It's unfortunate that the resolve sharpening tool is so recognizable. There are other tools which sharpen at a great cost to the system performance, without that look, but they are expensive. 

Thank you, pleased to hear you enjoyed my little film!

I wouldn't have sharpened this much, but the first upload had grain too soft for YouTube, so in the flying shots, it compressed the sky areas to one big ugly pixelated mess, regardless of what bitrates I tried. I jacked up the grain beyond what I normally would to trick the compression engine into perceiving it as detail and considering the vastly reduced image artifacts compared to my first upload attempt, it did the trick.

I'd be interested to know what these tools are. Film is so expensive to process & shoot that I might as well go all the way when it comes to post production.

[Clark Nikolai]

On 9/2/2026 at 3:03 AM, Aris Gavriilidis said:

The 4K scans I received from the lab, Kornmanufaktur, weren't remotely as stable as what you see in the finished film, but as we all know, jitter is an inherent limitation of Super 8 cameras (unless one somehow has either of the Logmar cameras) .

This has probably been done but I wonder if a Super8 camera was put on a fancy modern gimbal (or even a Steadicam) what it would look like. Would it not be thought of as shot on Super 8? There's a particular motion when a Super 8 camera is hand held that I think is part of the look of old home movies.

[Tyler Purcell]

6 hours ago, Aris Gavriilidis said:

I wouldn't have sharpened this much, but the first upload had grain too soft for YouTube, so in the flying shots, it compressed the sky areas to one big ugly pixelated mess, regardless of what bitrates I tried.

Yea the trick is to only use UHD/4k workflows. The 1080p workflow with YouTube has been depreciated. All the bandwidth goes to the UHD/4k ones today. 

[Jon O'Brien]

It doesn't matter if it's been sharpened, or stabilised. Super 8 needs all the help it can get when digitised, in my view.

Do to it whatever you want, to get the online look you want.

Someone on facebook said a little ad I made for a historical site on Super 8 had been sharpened. But I sharpened it like that deliberately, so that the final look on youtube was exactly as I wanted it. I like to see that grain.

[Jon O'Brien]

7 hours ago, Clark Nikolai said:

This has probably been done but I wonder if a Super8 camera was put on a fancy modern gimbal (or even a Steadicam) what it would look like. Would it not be thought of as shot on Super 8? There's a particular motion when a Super 8 camera is hand held that I think is part of the look of old home movies.

Yes if you want the Super 8 home movie look, film handheld. I try to get out of Super 8 the opposite of the home movie look, so I put the camera on a fluid head tripod, and stabilise the footage, and whatever else on Davinci to make it look the way I want. I do intend to do tests with a gimbal and a lightweight film camera soon. You can use a mobile phone as a monitor, taped into place at the eyecup. I made so many home movies when I was younger that I'm over that look. I'd do it if someone asked for it of course.

[Jon O'Brien]

On 9/5/2026 at 5:20 AM, Tyler Purcell said:

.unfortunate that the resolve sharpening tool is so recognizable. There are other tools which sharpen at a great cost to the system performance, without that look, but they are expensive. 

Could you elaborate on this?

The resolve sharpening tool is great. What specifically is so recognizable about it? This is youtube, remember.

Can you post another youtube Super 8 video that avoids the resolve sharpening tool look that you find slightly objectionable? Truly, I would be interested to know exactly what you mean. Like I said above, people sometimes mention this sharpening but I like the look. So, what look do you prefer Tyler?

Could you let me know also what the other tools are, that are expensive. Thanks. Always keen to learn from others.

[Tyler Purcell]

6 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Could you elaborate on this?

The resolve sharpening tool is great. What specifically is so recognizable about it? This is youtube, remember.

Can you post another youtube Super 8 video that avoids the resolve sharpening tool look that you find slightly objectionable? Truly, I would be interested to know exactly what you mean. Like I said above, people sometimes mention this sharpening but I like the look. So, what look do you prefer Tyler?

Could you let me know also what the other tools are, that are expensive. Thanks. Always keen to learn from others.

Oh don't get me wrong, I use the resolve sharpening tool all the time, maybe not to this extent, but quite commonly. If you just barely use it, just to give a tiny hit of sharpening, it works fantastic. Other tools like the Dehancer and Neat Video, have excellent sharpening tools as well, they're just slow to render. I haven't used the new AI driven sharpening tools in Resolve yet. I'm concerned it will remove the grain. 

I shoot super 8 for home movie stuff, so most of it isn't shot well enough to really give an A/B comparison. I did a camera test for my Beaulieu 6008 when I first got it and we didn't do any sharpening.