Logmar S8 footage revealed!

[Carl Looper]

Betas are not delivered until about December. The prototype would be back with Lasse and co. by now.

 

I'll be getting a beta when it ships. I'm in Melbourne Australia though. And we'll be testing it for about 3 months, so unless you want to fly to Melbourne, and be part of the tests I can't help.

 

C

[Carl Looper]

I'll put up a blog on the tests we do so you might be able to use stuff from that for your project. But it won't be unti December/January. And sounds like you are in a hurry - end of year deadline? If so then nobody can help 'cause the betas aren't available until the end of year anyway.

 

C

[Andries Molenaar]

Ohhh man, that is so unfair, cause this would've been really useful to me for my university project where i dealt with Suoer8 film!

 

In a way im still somewhat a student and still want to fulfil this, do you know if it is possible to test the camera out for my project??? :(

 

What is unfair? Chosing a skilled filmer and writer over a student with little experience?

 

Contact Logmar and see if you can use it around the Logmar location. If so, pack your films and then travel to Denmark :)

Processing at Andec on the way home.

[Nicholas Kovats]

Omar,

 

I admire your optimism but your being a tad unrealistic and need to undertake a bit of research. Logmar's contact info is available on their website, i.e. http://www.logmar.dk/?page_id=2. They do respond to email but they are currently an operation of two engineers who are now very busy fabricating upwards of 35 beta cameras for potential shipping in December of this year.

 

Good luck,

 

NK

[Kenny N Suleimanagich]

Also it's not like no other S8 camera would have worked for your student project. For that matter, go buy a Bolex for peanuts and shoot as much as your heart desires until you can buy a logmar.

[Lasse Roedtnes]

No?

 

Anyone at all may i ask? :(

Hi Omar,

 

We are not lending cameras out at present, but Pro8mm will most likely have a rental program in place sometime next year.

 

Good luck with your project.

 

Lasse

Logmar CS

[Omar Alboukharey]

Hi Lasse!

 

I am personally not too fond of Pro8mm if I am completely honest, plus I am based here in the UK.

 

Will it be possible to message or email you personally to discuss this matter and to let you in on what I'm trying to do perhaps?

Edited October 27, 2014 by Omar Alboukharey

[Matt Stevens]

The Pro8mm announcement pretty much sealed the fate of Super8 with me. I'm getting out of it and will soon sell my Canon 1014 XL-S. I simply cannot deal with Pro8mm and how they treat people without deep pockets as though they are pieces of poop.

[Carl Looper]

I live half a planet away from Pro8mm, so it makes little difference to me. By this I mean Pro8mm is not any more convenient (all else being equal) than any other place servicing Super8. In other words, if Pro8mm is more expensive then somehwere else then I'd just use elsewhere.

 

Where I live we're quite fortunate to have someone who not only runs a Super8 lab (as well as 8mm and16mm) but is also a prominent player in the broader cultural domain in which a cinema of any persuasion operates. He is, before anything else, a filmmaker (screening work all over the planet).

 

Carl

[Andries Molenaar]

The Pro8mm announcement pretty much sealed the fate of Super8 with me. I'm getting out of it and will soon sell my Canon 1014 XL-S. I simply cannot deal with Pro8mm and how they treat people without deep pockets as though they are pieces of poop.

 

There are other US suppliers for S8 gear and materials.

Using late model low mileage top cameras like your Canon 1014xls, Leicina special or NIKON R10 you can shoot S8 until your retirement.

 

It seems you would only be stuck with pro8mm when you would want to purchase a Logmar.

There is no real advantage to the Logmar unless you are in pro studio filmmaking.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Andries Molenaar

[Nicholas Kovats]

Carl, I am quite sure it's ok to mention your incredible compatriot, Richard Tuohy. :)

[Nicholas Kovats]

Matt! I am sorry to hear of your imminent departure form the Super 8 scene. I am coming back! :)

[Nicholas Kovats]

Whilst I respect my Super 8 colleagues prior experiences with S8S I have been only treated with prompt courtesy and professionalism regarding my forthcoming Logmar camera. I just received my official serial number via Tommy@Logamar and S8S.

[David Cunningham]

Not to make this another pros and cons of Pro8mm thread... but I have never had the experience with them that I was too small for them. I use them only two or three times per year for very small (barely more than $100) jobs and they are always very accommodating. But, I guess everyone has their own experiences.

[Carl Looper]

Yes, as fellow enthusiast and equally undying optimist, Nicholas has pointed out, it is the priceless Richard Tuohey, to which I am referring. For those who know him he needs no introduction, and for those who don't, his name should have been mentioned.

 

When I say we're lucky I don't mean Richard's services are any cheaper than anywhere else. Rather I mean you get heaps more bang for your buck. You certainly don't get any condescending attitude (if that is something you wanted to pay for). Rather you get a priceless commodity. You get Richard.

 

C

[Carl Looper]

I should say the Logmar isn't any cheaper than anywhere else. The beta I'm getting direct from Logmar is no cheaper than if I got it from Pro8mm.

 

I don't really have deep pockets - I'm just sacrificing a bit more (or a lot more) than the average punter might do on such a camera. In terms of experimental cinema broadly speaking the camera doesn't give you anything more than a throwaway camera on ebay would give you. Indeed a throwaway camera (or indeed no camera at all) gives you far more scope for experimentation, since there's next to no overhead. You don't have to be stressed by the ammount of dollars you've commited.

 

But the experimental cinema I'm interested in is a particular kind of experimental cinema into which the Logmar makes a good fit. Indeed many would consider what I have in mind is not experimental at all. But I'm not in any way particularly fussed by whether it can be called "experimental" or not. Although I am, as a theorist, certainly interested in why that might be the case, and that will be something to explore in due course.

 

I'm currently going through 70s film theory. Julia Kristeva is a good read. Stephen Heath is probably the best read in terms of how a radical cinema was being proposed in the 70s. It is against Stephen Heath I'm working. Heath is a briliant thinker and writer but that doesn't mean he can't be taken to task. Although it does mean it's incredibly difficult. The task is not that simple.

 

 

Carl

[Carl Looper]

Stephen Heath makes an equation between narrative and ideology. In the "novel as much as the cinema" he would say.

 

The realism of cinema, as that of the novel, is to be understood nit in terms of some immediate mirroring of some Reality (though it's defintion in these terms may be a major ideological strategy) but in raltion to the representation of 'reality' a particular society proposes and assumes, to what Althusser has described in a lecture as that 'complex formation of montages of notions - representations - images on the one hand, and of montages of modes of behaviour and conduct-attitudes-getsures on the other. - Stephen Heath, Film/Cinetext/Text

 

Heath continues in this vein seeing little difference between the "familiar monocular perspective developed in the Renaissance" and the development of the camera. There is the basis for an equation here, between the practice of painting, and it's attendant constructive capabilities, and a machine which would be no different, other than it constructs such a montage according to a machined version of the same principles.

 

It becomes Heath's task to deconstruct the camera image - how to read or re-read the camera image as if it were no different from painting or indeed no different from writing (the novel or any other form of writing). The concept of a text will be broadened to accomodate this. The camera image as a text. A 'cinetext'.

 

Semiotics forms the domain in which this is developed. Between object and subject is understood or inserted the idea of communication. Indeed one will adopt communication as already there before the concepts of object and subject have had any oportunity to separate out from each other, and will, by virtue of this logic, be understandable as inheriting any ideological aspects of the originating communication. It will not be just the subject constructed in relation to the communication but the object as well - although Heath wil have difficulty in proposing this side of the implications. It will be a later postmodernism capable of treating reality herself as ideological. Heath instead will skirt around this issue, giving the term "reality" as many scare-quotes as he can. And not, it must be said, without reason.

 

The operating assumption, completely understandable, is that of the image as a composite, as if composed from more elementary parts. The film as a composite of sequences. Sequences as a composite of shots. Shots as a composite of imges (photograms). Umberto Eco will be one of the first to suggest treating the photogram (single frame of film) as decomposable - that it too is composition, of smaller elements, and as the digital revolution will eventually formalise, in the limit will be found the pixel, or Roman tile. The basic unit of composition. The image as a composite - a montage or collage, of such elements. The idea here is that the composite will be a function of the way in which these elements are combined, be it by means of a machine such as a camera (and attendant operations) or a computer graphics system. There is this idea of an equation to be made between these machines - that there is no fundamental difference.

 

Writers such as Manovich will take up the same argument in the digital age. "Naturalism" (equated with Passolini amongst others) will be treated as some sort of strategy (intentional or otherwise), in some sort of ideological game to be deciphered and otherwise deconstructed - before it's ideological end game, whatever it might be, comes about.

 

Against this is the proposition, to be elaborated, without in any way compromising semiotics (but rather to more fully expand it) that the component elements of an image (such as a pixel) can be understood just as much as a function of the image, as the other way around. If the image is a composite, the pixel is just the reciprical: a decomposition of the image. A "decomposite" one might say. To treat either as any more fundamental than the other seems unnecessary. But to redress the historical bias, if not reverse it, we will bias it the other way - to say of the image that it is more fundamental than the pixels of which it is otherwise treated as composed.

 

That's the simple version of the task to be undertaken. The difficulty with such a position is not it's peculiarity so much as the criticism of "complicity" it might attract in relation to ideological agendas with which we might otherwise not wish it to be understood. But this isn't enough to undermine the theory. What is good for the goose is always at risk of being good for the proper gander. But we can use other means to immunise a work against propoganda, ie. other than throwing out a potential baby with the bathwater.

 

But anyway, this is but scratching of the surface, making it sound a whole lot easier than it otherwise is.

 

C

[Matt Stevens]

Not to make this another pros and cons of Pro8mm thread... but I have never had the experience with them that I was too small for them. I use them only two or three times per year for very small (barely more than $100) jobs and they are always very accommodating. But, I guess everyone has their own experiences.

 

That was my experience with them... Until it wasn't. they messed up and overcharged me. I called and asked them to please credit me. They refused. Long story but I fought the charges and won. But it was a terrible experience and I was flat out insulted on the phone and told I don't matter because I didn't spend that much money with them. That is not an exact quote, but it's close. Needless to say, I was floored that they could so casually throw away my business and insult me rather than just fix the overcharge and keep me as a customer.

 

It so soured me on 8mm that I haven't shot any since.

[Carl Looper]

 

That was my experience with them... Until it wasn't. they messed up and overcharged me. I called and asked them to please credit me. They refused. Long story but I fought the charges and won. But it was a terrible experience and I was flat out insulted on the phone and told I don't matter because I didn't spend that much money with them. That is not an exact quote, but it's close. Needless to say, I was floored that they could so casually throw away my business and insult me rather than just fix the overcharge and keep me as a customer.

 

It so soured me on 8mm that I haven't shot any since.

 

I had the same problem in an Apple store. With the same outcome. Normally I work with Windows boxes, but a particular job required I get a mini mac, to program. I asked the accomodating shop atendant if they could provide a keyboard with the mini-mac. I also asked them how it plugged into the mac. They said it didn't. It was bluetooth. I asked if there was any proceedure to follow in order for the two to communicate with each other. They looked at me as if I was some sort of dildo. "its an Apple" they said. "It just works" they said.

 

It goes without saying that it didn't just work at all. As it turned out they'd given me a keyboard that had already been used, no doubt, to demonstrate how "it just works" to some other customer. It had become paired, as they say, to a machine whih wasn't mine.The simple solution was simply to turn the keyboard off and back on again. But without such knowledge I could not for the life me get the keyboard to pair with the machine I'd just purchased. So in desperation (job required it) I just got another generic keyboard with a usb lead, and that "just worked".

 

Folowing the job I took the Mac keyboard into the shop and said it failed and i wanted my money back. They refused. I stood my ground and refused to take no for an answer, explaining what I went through. They claimed it was impossible. Apples just work they claimed. Some of the attendants were more willing to listen than others but each deferred decision to their resident Apple guru who gor quite irriitated with my story of how it didn't "just work".

 

My strategy was to talk quite loudly but calmly about how the keyboard failed, ie. so that other customers walking around the store couldn't help but here my clear and concise, and absoluetly earnest description of how the keyboard didn't work.

 

But I have to say, after an hour of making their lives perfectly miserable, the store manager got back from lunch and put his minions in their place by refunding the money and apologising.

 

But after that experience I decided that if the cost of working with Apple devices is having to deal with Apple fanatics, it was just way too much for my sanity.

 

C

[David Cunningham]

 

That was my experience with them... Until it wasn't. they messed up and overcharged me. I called and asked them to please credit me. They refused. Long story but I fought the charges and won. But it was a terrible experience and I was flat out insulted on the phone and told I don't matter because I didn't spend that much money with them. That is not an exact quote, but it's close. Needless to say, I was floored that they could so casually throw away my business and insult me rather than just fix the overcharge and keep me as a customer.

 

It so soured me on 8mm that I haven't shot any since.

That stinks. Was it Scott? Any idea who it was? (Pretty limited staff there, most being a Vigeant. LoL)

[Chris Millar]

 

Some of the attendants were more willing to listen than others but each deferred decision to their resident Apple guru who got quite irritated with my story of how it didn't "just work".

You're referring in the particular to the Chadstone drone sub-species?

 

If so, yes, they're quite snooty - and you have to catch a bus.

 

I took a retina macbook pro in with a dead pixel (along with another more pressing issue) - response re. pixel:

 

"that's impossible, you cant see retina pixels"

[Miguel Loredo]

 

It so soured me on 8mm that I haven't shot any since.

 

Sorry but this sounds a bit nonsense... There are plenty of Super8 businesses out there, so you haven't shot any since because you don't want to B)

[Carl Looper]

I suspect what Matt is doing is what I did in relation to Apple. And that is to make an educated guess that if Pro8mm is anything to go by, then perhaps the entire Super8 community is the same way oriented.

 

Completely irrational of course but completely understandable.

 

Both Apple and Super8 can be considered as operating along the same lines - to treat the consumer as a dildo - for example, that they need cartridges to shoot film because they don't know how to load up a camera - or they need computers with built in apps that "just work" because they don't how to program a computer.

 

And the wizards behind such will be laughing all the way to the bank.

 

And there is an element of truth to such.

 

Carl

[Carl Looper]

The counter-argument is that even when you understand the technology, things like cartridges or ready made apps, are quite convenient. They allow you to concentrate on other aspects of filmmaking. Or computing. And preferably something worthwhile.

 

But if someone is taking advantage of that, or more to the point, developing their conceit at your expense, then an appropriate reaction could very well be to say F them all.

 

One bad apple as they say.

 

C

[Carl Looper]

Fotunately I'm so addicted to the film image I'd be happy shooting on 2mm film if someone invented it.

 

C