Comparison with 35mm

[Daniel Meier]

I got my first reel of Super8 footage back from the telecine company.

(Passwort: dk)

 

I'm very happy with the results and even more so that the camera I bought is still doing it's job right.

But I wonder why the Super8 stuff always looks so much more grainy, dirty than 35mm or 16mm.

I shot that on a roll of Kodak's 200 ASA Vision3.

 

Is it because you are exposing, processing and scanning a very small area of film compard to 35, and thus all the flaws (like grain, dust, defocus) become much more apparent?

Edited September 5, 2016 by Daniel Meier

[Michael Lehnert]

In a nutshell: yes, you are correct on all points B) .

 

Super 8's camera frame size area is 23.84 sq-mm, 4.22 x 5.65 – reduced to 4.01mm x 5.36mm for projection frame size area.

 

Normal 16 is already about 3.5 times the exposed frame size area, so the difference to the various 35mm formats is getting rather significant, irrespective if you shoot/scan Academy/Widescreen/Super 35/ 2|3-Perf.

 

Instead of 'flaw' to describe grain (among other material-aesthetic characteristics of cine-film you list), I would choose the word 'texture'. Because that's what it is.

 

Nice work with 7213. What camera and lens did you use? Overexposure/low-saturation was intended?

[Daniel Meier]

Thanks, Michael!

 

I shot it on the Canon 814 XL-E with the built-in lens (CanonZoom 7,5 - 60 mm f/1,4) .

For exposure I mostly used the incident meter on my Sekonic L-308 DC and stuck to manual exposure.

 

Kinda turned out a little overexposed in some cases, yeah. But I rather like my image to be a bit over than under, to reduce the grain.

(FYI: the Vimeo clip has only the raw, ungraded footage in it)

Edited September 5, 2016 by Daniel Meier

[Will Montgomery]

Try different formats to get a feel for each. It's fairly inexpensive these days to rent 16 and 35mm cameras for a weekend and short ends can be had cheap. The differences in formats become extremely clear just shooting them.

[Jesse Andrewartha]

Think of any imaging like pointillism, with grain (or pixels) being your paintbrush and the format is the canvas. If you have a stock like 500T, that's your paintbrush to make dots. Let's say that one paintbrush makes dots 1/2" across, and you have a canvas 25"x25", then you can only fit approx 2500 dots no matter what you paint. If you increase the size of the canvas, then you can increase the number of dots to make a more detailed, higher resolution image. This is akin to what happens when you move from super8 to 35mm on a given filmstock.

 

If you have a slower film, then that's like a smaller paintbrush: then you can fit more dots on a given canvas. This is why 50D shot on super8 can be so sharp and detailed. If you choose a larger format (like 35mm) then you have a much larger canvas compared to the grain size and you get much higher resolution and why 50D on that format is just spectacular.

 

More things happen with smaller formats. Normal lenses for super8 is 13mm, versus approx 32mm for super35, so usable lenses have a greater depth of field at normal apertures. Shallow dof is more an issue on super8... and yes: dirt, hair & grime and film weave in the gate is amplified on super8.

Edited September 7, 2016 by Jesse Andrewartha