Super 8 Newbie

[Chris Durham]

Hey all,

 

I've been doing a bit of video, but I'm ultimately interested in film. I'm really tossing around the idea of picking up a Super-8 camera and shooting a couple shorts to learn the ropes. So I've got to ask all the obvious questions:

• What cameras should I be looking at?
  
• What film stocks should I be looking at and what do I need to know about them?
  
• How much can I expect to invest?
  
• Any good resources, apart from this forum?
  
• Any miscellaneous advice?
  

Thanks in advance - I'm really looking forward to giving it a go.

[Matthew Buick]

Well, I don't know what I can tell you about everything else but since the untimely demise of Kodachrome 40 Super 8 has been really expensive, it can cost something like $50.00 from buying the initial roll to viewing it on your TV (via Telecine), but I think there are cheaper ways.

 

There are basically two types of film:

 

Reversal-This film is the kind that gives that classic home movie look, when the film comes back from processing it is in positive form, a positive is the kind of image that can be viewed in a projector and loks normal.

 

Negative-This is the kind of film that all the blockbuster hollywood movies use, and it's sadly the most expensive, primarily because it either has to be digitally scaned onto a PC (Telecine) or printed to a positive (to be viewed in a projector) it won't work out any more expensive to use this film if you are going to Telecine of print to a positive anyway, but this is absolutely neccesary, otherwise you'll only have the dirty brown image of the processed camera film to look at (no fun at all) using this film will take you further away from that classic home movie look.

 

Hope this helps.

[Oron Cohen]

Hey all,

 

I've been doing a bit of video, but I'm ultimately interested in film. I'm really tossing around the idea of picking up a Super-8 camera and shooting a couple shorts to learn the ropes. So I've got to ask all the obvious questions:

• What cameras should I be looking at?
  
• What film stocks should I be looking at and what do I need to know about them?
  
• How much can I expect to invest?
  
• Any good resources, apart from this forum?
  
• Any miscellaneous advice?
  

Thanks in advance - I'm really looking forward to giving it a go.

Hey Chris,

 

Just do a search in this forum, I think that every week or two, someone new comes in to the forum and ask the same questions you are asking.

Personally my first camera was and is an Elmo 1012s-xl which I bought for 100 dollars; I think its very good camera for the price I paid.

Here is a few links anyway:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/s8mm/ind....4.14&lc=en

 

http://www.super8camera-shop.com/shop/index.html

 

http://www.filmshooting.com/

 

http://www.pro8mm.com/main.php

 

http://super8wiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

 

http://www.geocities.com/meta8mm/index.html#Processing

 

http://homepage.mac.com/onsuper8/

 

http://www.westsiderfilm.com/clips.html

 

Hope it will help you,