Patrick Cooper

Rolando, 500T coped fairly well with these conditions. However, when I initially took a light reading, the meter indicated that there wasn't enough light. So I mostly shot with the aperture wide open and hoped for the best.

The 500T really delivered here. Very nice results for such challenging conditions. I had been given some 500T to shoot a wedding reception but the venue was incredibly dim. I took a light reading from a white table cloth (with the intention of opening up two stops) but it wouldn't even register. So I shot on digital instead with some old, manual fast Canon FD prime lenses. I ended using the 500T to film some city night scenes which I shot mostly widen open though the footage looks grainier than your gymnastics footage. Actually, a number of years ago, I filmed some performers in an outdoor stadium at night under artificial lighting with Kodachrome 40. And amazingly, the results turned out fine. A very impressive feat for 40asa film. Considering that, maybe I should have filmed the wedding reception on 500T, despite the meter indicating underexposure.

Jon, thanks for the good words. Oh yea there's nothing like celluloid.

This footage was shot last year in Hindley Street, Adelaide, South Australia on two different nights. My first time shooting 500T. Film was exposed with a Canon 1014E.

Brian, I made a typo. I was referring to the super 8 Quarz camera.

It does look like there are a number of viable options. Out of curiosity, does the Russian Quartz offer manual exposure? With regards to the capture format, I had originally planned to shoot through the microscope with digital video. And I have done exactly that over a week ago and was pleased with the results. And the majority of times in the future, I will also will also use digital video with the microscope. However, I thought it would be fun to try the same thing on super 8 film for the look - perhaps once or twice. Yes, digital is more convenient for this kind of shooting so logically, I will use that medium most of the time for this application. Though those old science / nature documentaries from the 60s and 70s do have an alluring charm about them. I'm hoping that by using super 8, I will get a similar sort of look to those old docos, even though they would have been shot on 16mm. Actually, a few years ago, I had filmed kangaroos in slow motion on super 8 on my family's farm. Watching the transferred kangaroo footage, it felt like I was watching a 70s nature documentary which gave me great satisfaction. So to summarise, I want to use super 8 for the look.

Simon, thankyou for the good words. Ive seen some other microscope videos on youtube where people have been lucky enough to capture some action (including predation) amongst the organisms. Haha! Those fine hairs that are moving quickly around some of the organisms’ mouths are known as cilia. They use them to draw in food by creating suction in the water. The larger creatures are multi-cellular and are called rotifers. Actually a common nickname for them is 'wheel animals' because their rapidly beating cilia resembles spinning wheels. I find it interesting that there are two different sizes of rotifers here. I'm not sure if the larger ones are more mature / older individuals or if they're a different species of rotifer. I believe that the first organisms shown (the ones that resemble loud speakers and quickly retract when disturbed) are stentors but I'm not 100% sure. They're single-celled organisms and also use cilia for feeding. Apparently, they can swim as well so they're not always fixed to one spot. There was another single-celled organism that was swimming close to one of the rotifers early on in the video. It looked a fair bit like a paramecium though the shape was slightly different. This one was using cilia for swimming.

I saw The Black Stallion at the cinema when I was really young. Really enjoyed the movie, especially the photography. By the way, Ive used some Fuji Provia 100F in 35mm stills and medium format but not in motion picture film as yet.

Ive been playing around with filming through a microscope recently. All the organisms in the video were found within a single drop of water collected from a bird bath in my backyard. Camera specifications: Panasonic G6 with Sigma 30mm f2.8 lens Microscope specifications: Nikon CFW 10x eyepiece + Semi-Plan 40x objective = 400x total magnification

Oh darn, I just noticed that the Chinon Pocket 8 doesn't have 24fps. All the exposed footage on this current cart of 50D has been shot at 24fps (and will be transferred before too long.)

Thankyou all. That is a wealth of information. Yea I was mainly interested in good quality prime lenses rather than junky ones. And manual exposure would be mandatory. Though I am on a shoe string budget so Beaulieus and Leicina Specials wouldn't be viable options. I guess I should say what I would be planning to use such a camera for. Basically filming through a microscope with an afocal setup. I did this very same thing a few weeks ago but used an M4/3 camera to shoot digital footage through the scope. My original aim was to shoot digital video footage of microscopic organisms found in aquatic environments and I must say that I'm very pleased with the results. I used a Panasonic G6 in conjunction with a light compound microscope. At the moment, I'm finishing off a cartridge of 50D and thinking of suitable subject matter to shoot and a thought occurred to me. Why not shoot some footage through my microscope? I think the results could be cool and might look sort of similar to those old nature / science documentaries from the 60s and 70s. Though of course those sort of docos would have been shot on 16mm film but I digress. The reason why I'm prioritising prime lenses is because zooms often don't do well in afocal photography. Especially long range zooms as they tend to vignette. So something like a 10x zoom would almost definitely be out of the question. Some short range zooms can work well in such setups without vignetting. However, a prime lens will greatly reduce the chance of vignetting. Though even a prime is no guarantee against vignetting in afocal photography. It all depends on the particular lens design. I note that the recommended focal lengths for digital formats in combination with a 10x microscope eyepiece for afocal are slightly longer than 'standard.' For M4/3, it's a 30mm lens. For APSC, it's 40mm.and 63mm for 'full frame.' I use a Sigma 30mm f2.8 lens on my Panasonic G6 M4/3 camera with a 10x Nikon eyepiece for microscope footage and that combination works well. I think I recall that the standard focal length for super 8 is around 12mm, right? So about 15mm would probably be ideal. Martin, what are your thoughts on the quality of the optics of the 15mm lens on the Chinon Pocket 8? Also, is this lens fixed focus? I'm assuming everything would be in focus from several feet to infinity? As long as I have infinity focus, that's the main thing. It might surprise some people but in afocal setups, the camera lens is focused on infinity, despite being millimeters away from the eyepiece. One possible issue I have is a matter of colour temperature. I'll be using daylight balanced film with the microscope's LED light source. I note that LED lights vary a fair bit with their respective colour temperatures. I'm not too keen on engaging the camera's internal filter as that's designed for tungsten lighting and would rob the film of a fair bit of light (it's only 50asa.) By the way, I do have two LED lights that I can use with my microscope. One has quite a warm colour and the other looks a fair bit cooler. I also have a blue filter I can use with the microscope.

Just wondering if anyone knows of any super 8 cameras that were produced with fixed focal length lenses? Obviously, they would be extremely rare since the vast majority of these cameras had zooms. I did own a Halina super 8 camera which I believe had a prime lens unless my memory is playing tricks on me. Unfortunately, the lens quality was not that great and it did not have a reflex viewfinder. I guess other possible options would be the few cameras that have interchangeable lenses like Beaulieus and the Leicina Special. I see that the Russian Quartz camera has a prime lens (when the zoom lens is removed.) Though I'm reading conflicting reports about the focal length of the Quartz prime lens. Some say it's 12mm and others say it's 15mm.

Woops! I forgot about the image circle being smaller. I guess lenses designed for Super 16 would likely cover MFT? Though they would be out of my budget regardless. I was hoping that there may be some old, manual focus fast zoom lenses designed for 35mm still photography that I could adapt to MFT but so far I haven't come across any.

I have a Krasnogorsk 3 16mm camera that stopped working a number of years ago. I haven't seen it around for a long time but it's got to be around here somewhere. I was thinking of mounting the Meteor f1.9 17-69mm lens to a Panasonic M4/3 camera. I do have an M42 to M4/3 lens adapter though that seems to be misplaced as well - Ive got to hunt around for that one too. Though one thing that concerns me a bit is the rear glass element on this Meteor lens. From memory, it protrudes quite a bit and has sort of a cone shape. I don't think Ive owned any other lens where the rear element sticks out so much. Obviously, there wouldn't be any mirror for the rear element to hit when it's mounted on an M4/3 camera. Though would there be any chance that it could hit the sensor?

Unbelievable. It's happened again. Youtube has removed monetisation from another one of my videos - another tame, innocent video with no offensive or objectionable content. One I shared in this forum previously where I used green screen with a huntsman spider. Beyond ridiculous.

Ive heard good things about Elmo slot load 16mm projectors. They appear to be well made and reliable but don't know the model names / numbers.

Same thing happened to my K3. Somehow, it detached itself from the top of my tripod as I was carrying it and fell to the ground. It was completely fine. Though Ive never experienced light leaks with mine.

Youtube works in mysterious ways. Previously, I had monetised one of my videos that featured footage from an endoscope camera recording inside an ant nest. Then later youtube stopped the monetisation, claiming it wasn't 'advertiser friendly.' I fail to see what's so offensive about my bull ant nest video - it certainly doesn't feature any violence, sexual content, swearing or racism etc.

Very nice indeed. I'm assuming that such a basic camera doesn't have a reflex viewfinder. Out of curiosity, how do you get accurate focusing without a reflex viewfinder? Do you have to estimate focus? I guess there are parallax marks for composition?

I did some experimenting and found out that Sony Movie Studio cannot open these MOV files (containing the super 8 footage) on the laptop. These MOV files supposedly contain the Pro Res codec. A message comes up saying that Quicktime Components were not properly installed. There is a link provided which leads to a website (could have been Apple but I can't recall) where I could download the Quicktime Components. I did download the items multiple times but I still cannot open the MOV files within Movie Studio on this laptop. Each time I download the Quicktime item from that website, I get an error message near the end of the installation process, something about memory referencing

Trailer looks awesome and the super 8 footage looks great. I got to use 50D for the first time in super 8 recently and I was surprised how grainy it was. Perhaps I stuffed up the exposure though I also shot some Tri-X on the same day and that turned out quite reasonable in terms of exposure. It's been years since Ive viewed my Kodachrome super 8 footage but I recall that being much finer grained than my recent 50D content.

It was very reliable for a few years before it died on me. During the time when it was running, it never scratched or jammed film, and I never had film jumping or anything like that. Very smooth and stable. 0 issues before it's untimely death. Ive heard from a few other K3 owners that they had a number of issues with film jumping / jamming etc (something Ive never experienced with my K3.)

By the way, Windows 7 is running on both machines if that's of any help. The pc is 32bit whereas the laptop is 64bit.

I have a pc which really struggles to render long duration videos. Actually, it's pretty much impossible for it to render any HD video that's over 8 minutes (that contains lots of 'events' and transitions.) I'm currently working on a 20 minute wedding video and I know there's no way that this pc could render it so the plan is to edit it on the pc and render it on a relative's laptop (which has the same version of Sony Movie Studio installed.) So just recently, I took the project file from the pc to the laptop via external hdd and opened it up. I had all the contents for the video saved within the same folder yet annoyingly, the program kept asking me to specify the location of individual video files (and there were a lot of them.) I also had some transferred super 8 footage which the program had a lot of trouble locating (even though it was stored in the same folder with all the other content for the project.) Sony Movie Studio requested to do a search to look for the files (that contained the super 8 footage.) By the way, my brother (and his then-fiancee) specifically requested that I use super 8 film for the wedding and even payed for the film stock, processing and transfer. Eventually, the program located the elusive files after searching for them and I clicked on the file names and then clicked on something like 'OK' or something similar (I can't recall exactly.) I then went ahead and rendered the video which took some time. On the same weekend, I had the family over (including my brother and his wife) and we decided to play the wedding video on the TV. Everything went well until the segment came up that contained the super 8 footage. Every time a super 8 shot was supposed to come on, I got a black picture on the TV. In other words, about less than a quarter of the wedding video was missing. I stopped the video soon after the first three black shots appeared and apologised to my family. Clearly, Sony Movie Studio on the laptop is at fault. It is not adding all the content from the project file, despite me confirming it's location. Would anyone know of a solution to this?

Someone on another forum reckoned the problem might be due to me splitting the video with NLE software.