Geoff Howell

Like I said, if you like a good challenge :D

I was always told that once removed from the foil packing/properly sealed metal film can; film shouldn't be put back in the fridge as it runs the risk of getting covered in condensation and ruined. In short never put exposed film back in the fridge! Although, I'll fully admit that I've been 'told' lots of crazy semi plausible doe's and don't s over the years ;)

If you like a good challenge give one of these a try! For only £90 you can't really go wrong! Here's a badly uploaded example

I did this myself a couple of times years back! the hardest part was getting the new film in to the little plastic toy mag, it's like trying to thread a needle whilst wearing boxing gloves! The transfer itself was surprisingly easy; I just shot frame by frame off my laptop screen with a cheap Sankyo camera (automatic exposure :rolleyes:) loaded with Plus-x, it worked like a charm! I also did some colour experiments using the old Ektachrome160 but the results were really blueish with the other colours drowned out; a 812 warming filter probably would have helped here! Apparently Retro8 in tokyo has an old Sony device that makes super8/single8 prints from a video source; maybe drop them a line and see what they say! Good luck!

If you need empty carts there was a guy on ebay selling 30yr old r25n. I'm pretty sure the film will be useless but it should be easy enough to remove it and use the empty cartridge. I know what you mean about being unsure about continuing with single8. I've always wanted a ZC1000 and recently passed up the opportunity to buy one for under £100 as I'm concerned about sending r25n and rt200 to Japan and I'm not really interested in the other films that are available as I can always get those as super8 or 16mm. Maybe I'd change my mined if Retro8 went ahead with their plans to exclusively release the Fuji 400asa colour reversal film as single8 but apparently there's lots of politics with Fuji that won't allow them to do this :(

Ha! that's true. They used to have a really cool little shop in Islington but that went years ago :( So, from the sound of it you need to post your film to an address some place in London in order for someone else to in turn post it to Germany :huh:

I'm afraid not! The Widescreen Centre has the same type of set up (sending film from the UK to Andec) and that always takes at least two weeks! Seriously, the next time anyone in London has some film to process give Stanley Productions a shot, I'd be really interested in hearing other peoples experiences with them. It's relativity cheap, the film doesn't leave London and, as far as I know, they've got a pretty good reputation!

Quite why it takes 2 weeks just to send a film to Germany is quite beyond me :huh: I remember about 6 or 7 years ago Pro8 used to have an office right behind the Astoria on Charring Cross Road. You could drop yr film to them at the start of the week; they'd send it to their lab all the way out in California and you would get it back in under 4 days!!!!! Bloody fast if you ask me! cheap as well!!! I'd always heard stories about them being cowboys and screwing up peoples films but I never had any problems and always found them to be really friendly and easy going; especially when compared with other London based labs I'd deal with <_<

From what I understand Blue just sends all their stuff off to Andec.

doesn't Stanley Productions have (or work with)a lab in Surbiton?!? They've processed a fair bit of 16mm neg for me with no problems and unlike most other labs in that neighbourhood they don't have a minimum order. They also offer HD telecine but I don't know what system they use, although, I don't think it's anything too improvised/DIY as I know they've done transfers for Getty Images in the past.

hmmmm, I didn't realize the 4008 doesn't have a DIN socket to connect the battery :rolleyes: so I think this is the best way forward It looks pretty straight forward!

nah, you'll be fine, $299.00 isn't such a low price; I paid less than half of that for an R16 a couple of years back! As far a battery's are concerned; Beaulieu cameras can be easily rigged to run from 7.2v radio controlled car battery packs! Just grab a 3(or was it 4 :unsure:)pin Din plug from Radio Shack and bingo!

Dose anyone know if Retro8/ Retro Enterprises/ the Japanese postal service is open and operating as usual after last months awful events? I have some R25n that I'd like to get processed, I'm not in any great rush or anything but just wondering if anyone has used them recently.

just out of curiosity how dose Straight8 deal with the negative film stocks? If I was to submit a film on 500t how do they go about projecting it?

Thanks! yeah 90% of those were taken in Japan, I haven't shot much single8 since returning to the UK as I'm not to keen on having to ship exposed film all the way back to Tokyo for processing, and the Pound being so weak against the Yen at the moment dosn't help :( The Rolleiflex addvert was from one of my many unsucsesfull attempts to film on the metro dure in the rush hour stampede, Fun times!

If anyone's interested here's some quick frame grabs: The top row is un colour corrected R25n, The center row is R25n with colour correction, and the bottom two rows are colour corrected RT200n

I was still able to buy R25n in regular Japanese high street stores such as 'Bic camera' as late as mid 2009. It's fantastic film, amazing colour rendition, super fine grain; what's not to love! I'll miss it far more than K40 :( It's a real shame that the few publicly avalible examples of this stock in action are badly telecined, badly compressed Youtube clips that do it no justice at all. Oh, and R200T isn't too shabby eather!

I've used Retro Enterprises a number of times; whilst in Tokyo I dropped a large amount of film to them in person and found them to be very pleasant to deal with and their service was always very fast and efficient. Upon my return to London I tried sending some more film to Tokyo in the mail for processing but would not get any replies to me emails which I thought was really strange; after a couple of weeks I finally managed to contact them sent my film and everything was fine. Maybe try contacting them via Skype or even phone and ask how they shipped your film, if it was sent by EMS (Express Mail Service) there should be a tracking number. I'm not 100% sure but I think the communication problems are possibly down to a filtering problem at the other end as I've had similar problems when emailing friends in Japan. If you are shooting with the recently discontinued Fuji R25n or RT200n I believe that Retro Enterprises are the only lab in the world that can still process this film, they are to Single8 what Dwayne's is to Kodachrome! However, the newer Cinevia/Velvia film can probably be processed at any number of labs around the world.

Thanks. I emailed Super8.nl and was told that all r25n and rt200n needs to go to Japan. Ever since Fuji stopped supporting single8 Retro8 has been doing all my processing; however I have never ever sent them film directly in the post, It's always ether been sent through a third company like the Wide-screen Centre (a service that they no longer offer) or I have dropped it off in person. I've emailed them twice to ask about prices and had no reply and I don't want to send the film in the post unannounced for a number of reasons (and I've found this can really piss some labs off!) All this has got me feeling very pessimistic about any future use of single8. I'll give Nanolab a try but so far the general consensus seems to be that you need specialist machinery to deal with the Fuji stock; this isn't down to the chemistry or the cartridge design but some kind of rem-jet backing which prohibits It being processed in the regular machines. Having said that, from what I understand there are any number of places that can handle the fancy new Cinevia stock but for me the whole appeal of single8 was r25n which I'll miss far more than K40 :( Thanks again

Dose anyone know if Retro Enterprises in Tokyo is still in business? Also, are there any other labs that can process r25n and rt200n? thanks inadvance