James Grahame

Bolex is now a tiny company with only a handful of employees. I would be surprised if they sold more than 20 new cameras each year, and they only have a single technician. The current new cameras are simply assembled from their old parts inventory. The "Bolex XL" models you refer to weren't actually Bolex cameras at all. The last Bolex Super 8 models were the Macrozooms released in the late sixties. The company was sold to Eumig in 1970. Eumig made slight cosmetic changes to some of their Super 8 cameras and sold them under the Bolex name at premium prices. Bolex continued to produce their 16mm lineup. After Bolex collapsed in 1981, the remains of the Bolex company (and spare parts for Eumig cameras and projectors) were acquired by the then managing director of Bolex International. His son now runs the company.

Correct. A "standard" 50 ft Super 8 cartridge lasts 2:30 at 24 frames per second. A 100 ft spool of DS8 will run 5 minutes per side.

Do you have hard evidence to back up this extremely serious accusation?

Thanks for mentioning my site, Alex! The direct link to this story is: http://www.retrothing.com/2007/01/a_new_super_8_m.html I agree with others in this thread that ?4200 is quite a bit of money, but I don't think it's fair to compare a brand new crystal sync camera to a secondhand early 1960s windup Bolex. The Ikonoskop team did a fantastic job of creating an extremely compact camera at an extremely low price, especially considering that they've only produced a couple of hundred cameras. The A-Cam would make an ideal camera for extreme sports action shots, vehicle exteriors, music videos, cockpit sequences (race cars and aircraft), and so on. I'd buy the Super 16 model in a minute if the factory offered it with a reflex viewfinder (Du-All has proved that it's possible with their viewfinder add-on).

Why don't you simply ask them to send it by the United States Postal Service instead of by DHL overnight courier? I suspect their response will be either: "We can do that, but we can't guarantee delivery" (which is perfectly reasonable) or "We can't do that." (which would be an irrational way to lose business, unless postal services have started to x-ray international packages)

Hang on a moment! I think you're wrong. When I last checked Kodak's annual reports (about a year or so ago), their motion picture film is turning a very healthy profit because they have relatively little competition. The trouble is that this market is going to dry up relatively soon as theater chains migrate to digital and no longer require thousands of film prints. It's very hard to get an accurate reading of Kodak's situation because of the way they lump disparate technologies into categories when reporting financial performance, but their consumer digicam line definitely didn't set the market on fire (their Kodak-branded consumer cameras are now produced by a third party). It'll be hard for Kodak to make inroads into the video market with their digital sensors, because Sony et al will prefer to use their own designs. As for medical imaging and digital projection, who knows what the future will bring. They're in a tough spot.

This is a planned outage. Andreas is physically moving the filmshooting.com server to a new hosting facility. I believe he is also updating its IP address at the same time, which might cause DNS weirdness for a day or so until the new address propagates.

I sent quite a few of Kodak's prepaid bags directly to Switzerland from Canada with only letter mail postage on them. They always got through successfully, perhaps because the bag looks official and extremely small. I think the postal workers thought there was some special arrangement with Kodak. That misconception suited me just fine.

Thanks, Steve. That's an interesting bit of information. I've yet to run into problems when trying c-mount primes with my 4008. I wonder if they tried to use primes marked "RX," which are corrected for Bolex equipment? Cheers, James

Terry, if recording sync sound was as simple as starting and stopping a cassette recorder and camera at the same time, everyone would do it. Very few people own crystal sync'd S8 cameras because it's an expensive custom modification. And unsynched cameras drift as their batteries discharge. The same goes for tape recorders (although a minidisc or hard disk recorder is essentially crystal synchronized - its sample rate won't drift). To make things more complicated, you'd need a projector and audio playback deck that run at exactly the same speed as the original recording equipment when it came time to screen your work. That said, some cameras do hold their speed quite well throughout an entire cart. I have an S8 cam that I use with an external battery pack. If the pack is fully charged, the frame rate hardly drifts at all for the first 3 or so cart -- a very useful trait. BUT: It doesn't run at exactly 24 fps and I always slate the beginning and end of each take so I can timestretch the audio to fit the picture once its been Telecined (which will happen at 23.976 fps, whether I like it or not -- guaranteed to be slightly out of sync with my audio recording right from the moment I start post-production). And I agree with Matt about the "infinite" color reproduction of film. This simply isn't the case. If it was, film would essentially be a perfect image reproduction medium. In the real (and imperfect) world, each different film stock responds differently. For example, you might find a Fuji emulsion that produces vibrant greens while rendering skin shades a garish shade of cartoon pink. Or Kodachrome, which captured red so well that it almost seemed capable of jumping out of the frame. You have to carefully pick and choose your emulsion to suit your shooting situation and its (often significant) limitations.

Thanks for sharing this, Steve. I tend to resist taking my 4008 out and about because it's a heavy beast with the external battery pack and Schneider 6-66mm zoom. Your pic was enough to convince me that I'd get more use out of my beautiful toy if I invested in a nice wide prime such as this Ang or maybe even a Schneider. I bet you get some beautiful pics, too.

I enjoyed Santo's 'direct to hard disk' article that appeared in smallformat. It was timely and challenged people to strive for the highest quality results from the technology. Unfortunately, his habit of lashing out personally at other board members cost him a great deal of respect and credibility.

I've got a couple of dead Nizos, each with two tiny springs behind the gate. Let me know if you want them.

I was warning about the look as well as the cost. The film was released on 35mm and I suspect that the less-than-stellar frame registration of Super 8 might not be accepted by modern audiences who're used to rock-solid images when projected on a large screen. Cost is a secondary factor, since many of us own (or have easy access to) decent NLE systems without having to pay by the hour.

Franka Potente recently directed a quirky Super 8 film that's over 40 minutes long. You can bet that the response to her film (which is shot and cut in the style of a 1920s B&W film) will result in a burst of interest in Super 8. Be warned that her film required image stabilization in post production to bring it up to modern standards, even though it was shot with a well maintained Beaulieu 6008. There are a couple of articles on the film in the upcoming issue 3/2006 of smallformat.

What's with the billboard-sized graphic sig? Did I miss some Zeiss bashing? :unsure:

The big problem here is that "serviced" can have a wide range of meanings, to the point that it's really hard to quantify it in an eBay ad. It could mean inspected, or maybe inspected and lubed, or maybe inspected/lubed/repaired. I know that was probably the thinking behind the repair DVD you suggested. Perhaps a simple standardized checklist/repair list would be a much better idea? If someone released a standard form in acrobat format, camera techs could check off what has been done to the camera. It would still rely on the seller's good faith (ie: unscrupulous sellers could easily forge the papers), but at least it would provide some assurances with more reliable long-term sellers. "As for shipping costs, most Super-8 cameras can be shipped for under 2.5 pounds, if the packaging is done properly, perhaps even under 2 pounds. Here is a shipping idea to consider." The magic number is actually 2 kg (4.4 lbs), because it's the maximum weight to ship a parcel internationally as a "small packet" to/from many countries. Splitting a shipment like that is an interesting idea, as long as the seller is willing to put in a bit more work. An alternative is to ditch any accessories that you're unlikely to ever use.

Let us know how your repair experience goes, he sounds like an excellent resource. What are his rates like?

The majority of people on the films***ting board aren't/weren't Scandanavian, unless you're really Sanders Santossen. :) It's hard to find good Beaulieu repair people. The consensus seems to be that Irv Higdon in California is old and crotchety, and someone recently made a comment that Wittner was difficult to contact. That contrasts sharply with the word on the street about Bjorn. Having sent equipment to him several times, I can attest that he beat my expectations as far as quality of work and speed (took him about four days from receipt --> quote --> repair). This is the first I've heard of Mr. O'Doherty. If he does good work, it makes sense for those in the USA to send their equipment to him (although his focus seems to be 16mm equipment). As Canadians, we lose a little of the convenience because we have to pay a shade more to send the camera down and USPS can be expensive when shipping back to Canada using their Global Express "International" service.

Ahh, but does Mr. O'Doherty have any Beaulieu spare parts? One of the nice things about sending to Bjorn in my experience is that he installed a new rubber eyepiece and was able to replace a couple of worn parts.

Hi. Your 2008 can handle Ektachrome 64T. The ASA knob on the side can be set from 10 to 400. Set it to about "40" without a filter key installed (there's a little slot at the top of the handle on the right side of the camera) and you're ready to shoot outdoors. As far as battery stuff goes, See Super 8 Man's site for some information on batteries for the 2008 and what voltage goes where (there were two revisions of the 2008 -- I believe they had different power requirements): http://home.pacbell.net/mnyberg/super8mm/super8_10.html It looks like the connector is a 4-pin DIN connector (like those used in old CB radios) but I can't see the pinout properly on my monitor. Radio Shack sells something like it. Or at least they used to. The power is provided by chaining together 1.2V rechargable batteries. Once you know what you need, a local battery store can build one for you relatively cheaply. They can also give advice about low cost chargers.

This is normal for a 4008 - my footage looks almost the same without any light leaks or anomalies -- expect an image that runs about half-way into the sprocket hole and vignettes.

I was talking to Phil about Max-8 earlier this week. They recenter the lens and add 16:9 frame lines in the viewfinder. I forgot to ask whether they had to modify the mirror - not sure if the standard shutter is wide enough to cover the full frame. He is genuinely excited about the difference a wide viewfinder makes to the way Super 8 shooters frame their shots. As for gate-filing, I'm in Calgary and can share a few tips and tricks. I've done a few gates, but I'm not comfortable modding someone else's camera -- just in case.

Chris, my copy of Super 8 Today arrived yesterday. Congratulations on getting it out of the door. And now let's take a sharp right turn, folks. As far as dumping the small format thread goes, that kind of destructive behaviour from Santo is beyond reprehensible. With one hand this character openly questions the intelligence of people who participate in the filmshooting.com forum, and with the other he attempts to eviscerate an attempt to start a new English language film magazine. I for one put in a few weeks of work after my son had gone to bed -- between 10 and 2 in the morning -- to help get that first issue out. The reality is that smallformat is very much a part-time enterprise. The only "big guns" involved are Schiele & Schoen, the publishing company that prints and distributes it. I think our anonymous friend would do well to remember that just because something looks like it was put out by a huge corporation doesn't mean that it is so.

I just shot some 200T with my 1014 and no pressure plate, actually. There's so much disinformation floating around that I decided to find things out the hard way and put my equipment through a few trials by fire. Besides, in the end it boils down to how each individual camera responds -- some might not pull as strongly as others, or the film gate might be slightly misaligned. I'd rather know what teases the best footage out of my gear, then I don't have to think about it again until something breaks. Will try to remember to post some examples. I'll wait to see what Captain Howdy's friend thinks of the Debenham transfer. Seems like a good low cost way to get my recent shoots Ranked.