Large Format Camera Adapted to Super8

[James Foster]

Link above shows a thread that discusses the use of a 35mm adaptor with Super8. As far as I understand the use of a 35mm adaptor (having never been in contact with one) is that it uses a lens from a 35mm system which is focused onto ground glass and this is attached to the front of the super8 lens which focuses on the ground glass. The effect being that the apparent film plane, in terms of depth of field, is of the 35mm system, as thought the super8 camera is set up as a telecine of the result from the 35mm lens. 

My question regards whether the same principle could be feasibly improvised from a large format system, where the super 8 camera is focused on the ground glass, hence imparting a more extreme effect of depth of field.

Any thoughts or predictions of how this might look and work would be much appreciated,

J

[Dom Jaeger]

People have been playing with this idea since 35mm adapters were all the rage in the 2000s. Here's just one link I quickly found to an article about someone's attempts to make a large format adapter:

https://www.diyphotography.net/get-that-4x5-large-format-look-by-photographing-the-ground-glass-of-a-large-format-camera/

The main problem you'll encounter is that the ground glass has a texture which shows up when you film it. Professional 35mm adapters like the ones made by Letus or P&S Technik etc used a system where the ground glass was rotated or vibrated at a fast rate to make the grain essentially invisible. You also have the problem that the image is upside down, which some adapters overcame with an image flipping prism, others just relied on the camera inverting the image. It was never a great system and died off pretty soon after DSLRs became decent enough video cameras.

Vibrating a large format ground glass (while keeping it perfectly flat) is a much harder challenge than a 35mm one, especially DIY, so you'd probably just end up filming a static ground glass and seeing the grain. You would need to mount a Super 8 camera upside down, and use a wide angle macro lens to focus on the ground glass. You could do it, I'm just not sure it would be worth all the hassle.