Tyler Purcell

Got ya, cool thanks. :)

Hey Robert, where did you find that Prod? I've been looking and haven't been able to find any. :(

Pro Res is an add-on which can be downloaded for any Windows based computer. I'm not sure if Pro Res 4444 is supported with the standard plugin though, that's worth examining further. But yes, I would absolutely have the telecine done in Pro Res 4444 because it's a 12 bit, full raster format which works very well as a source for color correcting. However with all that said, I doubt your computer will be able to playback Pro Res 4444. It really requires fast storage and even faster CPU. It uses distributed multithreaded decoding, so the more cores you have, the better it plays back. In terms of scanning quality, scanning a 2.5k for Super 16 and 3k for straight 16, is a smart idea. This will allow for the appropriate scaling into a 2k workflow. You could also go cheap and do a 1080p telecine and standard Pro Res HQ workflow with a flat, uncolored transfer. File sizes are a lot smaller, but it's still decent quality. Those files should work fine on a 5 year old computer without specialized storage. I work with them all the time on my old macbook pro and they're fine.

VistaVision and 8 perf 65mm, were heavily used as visual effects cameras. Most of the time they were used for plates, but there have been many VFX heavy films that use those cameras for dialog scenes as well, Roger Rabbit being one of them. It's always funny to see BTS stills of some older movies and the un-blimped 8 perf 65mm camera on set. For films like Star Wars, they actually used the elephant ear VistaVision cameras for many of the model shots. Outside of Paramounts VistaVision which was 1.85:1, Technicolor's Technirama was an anamorphic VistaVision format 2.25:1, using a very simple Delrama anamorphic element. This was far superior to that of even MGM Camera 65/Ultra Panavision, there was no anamorphic distortion. This enabled the filmmakers to blow up to 70mm. Technirama was used on films like "Sleeping Beauty", "Spartacus" and "Zulu", it was kind of the final iteration of the format before it went away. The interesting thing is Technicolor wanted it to be projected in 35mm, but it was too costly for theaters to upgrade. So even though they had a wonderful mag striped projection format, it never came to be. Yep, I've done the same thing when I've had video tap's available. It's easy to mount a recorder onto the monitor and record a take or two for everyone to watch before you actually roll film. I'm absolutely guilty of wasting film though. I've lost lead actors mid way through production. I've lost critical locations, mid way through production. I've had people get sick and their scenes re-done by someone else. Heck, I made an entire film and the actor wouldn't sign off on it, threatened to sue, so it's never been seen! I mean, this is the kind of crap that happens. When you finally get into the edit room, things can be quite messy, even if you plan it perfectly. The trick is to make it work and flow seamlessly as you said. Sometimes the final product however, is nowhere near what you want. Of course, on bigger shows where money is involved, it's a different story. Yea, which is kind of my beef because most of the experimental stuff I've seen has been random mess that people somehow watch.

I don't know how you make a return on investment without any marketing, without wide audience appeal, without even so much as a trailer or website for the product. It's one thing to be a producer for hire, someone under payroll until the film is completed. It's another to make films on super 8 and project them on 16mm to a small audience.

Absolutely! With the studio system, directors would move on after principal photography. Most of them had no say in the final cut. So if there was no other material to use, then there was no way to muck up what THEY wanted. In my opinion, this is what made those movies so great and what's missing today. Nobody puts that sort of faith in modern directors.

In today's world, there are only two types of movies... those that get decent distribution deals and those that don't. There isn't anything in between anymore, those are the deciding factors in today's market. So yes, there are two types of movie... the big one's that put money in the right places and get distributed and the small one's that nobody will ever see. You can give your film away for free on youtube, vimeo, itunes, doesn't really matter. If you don't spend money on marketing/promoting, nobody will know it exists. Sure, a small group of people, searching on google, may stumble upon your product by accident, but otherwise it's as if you never made it and for all we know, it's just a film about your cat anyway. There is nothing wrong with messing around and having fun, but unless you make a product thats somehow relatable to the general public, ya know... the people who give you employment and pay your bills, what's the point?

Ohh no, not anymore. Man, last set I was on, they had 3 cameras running on every single take! They had terabytes of material per hour! Crazy man, it's over-kill today. For big stunt scenes, yea... you wanna run many cameras. For simple dialog scenes, it's far better to single camera. I guess my earlier point is the cost difference between 35mm and 70mm isn't that big, so even if you have a low budget production, another million may sound like a lot, but in the long run if you can get it, you can deliver for an extra mil.

Not really. If someone paints a house, it's a house. We recognize it as being a painting of a house. If someone paints three black streaks, that's not something we would recognize as anything but perhaps the roman numeral for three. However, the artist maybe trying to show something very pertinent, but it doesn't come through. This in of its essence is the difference between abstract/experimental and a more normal art form. If there is any translation required, there has to be some preset boundaries or people simply won't understand what it is. I guess one could argue that some things don't have any meaning. If that's the case, why bother? Yea, but that's totally different. The house painting analogy I think works better. IDK man, I see it totally differently. I just see experimental/abstract stuff being laziness, that's all. I could make an abstract film that would blow your doors off, but I don't because I think it's foolish to waste the time and energy on something only a hand-full of people could ever appreciate. It's like building that plane that will go into space for tourists... it's just a way to make money, nothing more, nothing less. They have zero interest in bettering society, of helping anyone with anything. They want to take money from millionaires and billionaires. Abstract and experimental stuff is no different to me. It's a bunch of people making something that they can probably scam something into buying.

Which is the first step to making a movie in a lot of cases. It's like abstract painters who throw paint onto canvas and call it "art". It's only "art" because THEY say it is. It's the same with filmmaking my book. You can say "experimental" movies have their place. However, a filmmaker who is focused on experimental filmmaking is someone who is basically "telling" you what they're making is "art". This is the problem with anything experimental, I don't want to be shown a pile of metal welded together or a painting that looks like someone opened up a can of paint and it splattered onto the canvas. To me, what makes "art" so special is the fact that true "artists" can do something the average person can't do. When I walk into an art gallery, I want to see works from people who are very special and experts at what they do. When I see something that looks thrown together and the filmmaker says it's "art", they may fool some people, but not me. This is why we have some basic standards to follow and why people expect stories in all visual content from music video's and reality tv, through soap operas and feature films. Yes... MOST music videos have some story they're telling because it's in the music. In my eyes, the best, most brilliant musicians can tell stories without any lyrics, just via mood. Take those same musical instruments and have them yelp out crazy sounds that have no bearing on anything, it's just noise. To some it's "music" but what defines music is the organization of those sounds.

Well, that furthers my point, modern filmmakers don't know what they want, so all they do is waste money. It's not like a documentary where you'll be running the cameras on long interviews to cut out bits, with a scripted narrative, you should only really need to shoot any given scene what? 5 times? PLUS mistakes? That kind of efficiency is so critical when working on film, but not with digital productions. I guarantee you, if you go back to the 90's and before, you'll see ratio's in the 12:1 range on big shows. We've just become sloppy filmmakers today.

Sometimes its not just about quality. Modern super 16mm cameras have the same accessory/user benefits of 35, but are smaller, cheaper to rent/own, cheaper to use (stock/process/transfer), simpler to use (most are cartridge magazine style) and deliver resolution higher then most cinema projectors. The only downside to S16 is the grain at higher ASA's, but some filmmakers like that. Since MOST films never see a wide theatrical run, Super 16 is a great way to get the filmic look, with extremely high quality. By contrast, a guaranteed theatrically bound film with a decent budget (50M+) has zero excuse to be shooting on 35mm in today's world. The cost difference between anamorphic 4 perf 35mm and spherical 65mm is about double. So your budget would add an extra million for a 12:1 shooting ratio on a 120 minute movie, including all the photochemical finishing and 15 prints struck. That seems like NOTHING in the grand scheme of things, what's another million to get FAR BETTER quality? Sure the quiet panavision and arri 65mm cameras are unruly in size, they also tend to have more down time then 35mm cameras, according to cinematographers I've talked with who've used them. However, in the grand scheme of things, being able to project your masterpiece on 70mm 1:1, is pretty incredible and FAR better quality then any digital presentation currently available. So yes... if you want quality, why not just go for 65? The downsides are worth the results on a big movie. When you're just messing around at home, screening things for a few local people, who cares what you shoot on. I know it's fun to experiment, but in the long run, if you aren't getting paid, what do you gain by making something only a hand full of people will ever see? In my book, the whole point of making entertainment is so people from around the world can see it. This way you can get feedback, learn from your mistakes and next time around, make something better. Plus, filmmaking is all about telling stories, so if you're not sharing those stories, what's the point of telling them? So where it's cool to have special film-only projects, what you do with them has little to no bearing on the rest of the world, unless the rest of the world can see them.

Couldn't agree more! :)

I should have phrased it differently, but lensing is a problem due to as you pointed out; the implementation is different. Well, there is far more control in a lab when it comes to analog to digital conversion and the processing of the image into it's RGB components, then in a camera, especially with modern single CMOS imagers.

Yea, if the core isn't tight on the spindle, it will just spin and spin and spin, the film will eventually turn into spaghetti. I like that idea. :)

Yea and it's not just them! It's the big filmmakers as well, with the crazy use of green screen in our modern movies and TV shows. Filmmakers today from all generations, have given up taking any risks. It's a business and today's cinema-bound movies are pretty poor, predictable and made for the masses. They'd rather shoot a bunch of green screen and make the content in post production, where they can manipulate everything, then even bother going to location, building sets and making it look realistic. In the long run, it actually costs them MORE money to work this way, as digital artists are very expensive and you need quite a bit of them. So in the end, all of our fancy digital technology has just made things MORE costly. The music business is totally and officially dead. The fanboys will listen to anything artists produce and they don't care anymore about quality either. They hire and fire producers like they're going out of style and most of them have no idea how to write decent music. Sure, there are niche markets and bands who haven't given up, but all of the groups I loved in my youth are all "synthesized" today, which is really too bad. I haven't went to the store or iTunes to buy a "new" album in at least 8 years. To me, that's a travesty because there are so many excellent musicians producing excellent work, but they're unrecognized for one reason or another. I applaud risk taking as well, being so talented that you're "against the grain" product actually works. Ohh music has been dead since the Beatles. LOL :) I think Cinema has been dead since Stanley Kubrick died in 1999. I know that sounds stupid and far fetched, but in a lot of ways, since then we've been so focused on technology, all we do now is make whiz-bang. If you don't make whiz-bang, your product is worthless. It doesn't matter which delivery sector you're in; people want to see fancy transitions, explosions, accidents, anything to get a "rise" out of them, even on youtube. I have a phenomenal web series which tells stories about people who ride dirt bikes. They're well shot, well edited, tell an actual story and ya know what, nobody cares. When I make a video about crashes, I get hundreds of thousands of hits. Nobody wants to learn, they just want to shut their brains off. Honestly, at the rate we're going, I think the modern media is killing our society very quickly. Nobody has to think anymore, they're just force fed poop all day long and all of it's garbage, only put there to sell advertising. This is why I consider Cinema completely and utterly dead. Sure, every year a few filmmakers make a great product that gets picked up and distributed, but everything else is garbage and it's the same with music. Yea, this is a very common issue with the de-grain plugin. It smears the image, making it look very digital. The 4k screening I saw was very disappointing, it looked like a modern movie, no flicker, no crispness, it was soft, smeared and blah. All of that beautiful grain was gone and it really blows. I've been done with digital cinema for quite sometime. The Alexa looks good, but the other cameras stand out like a sore thumb. Everyone tries to push digital into areas they assume film can't go and sure it's not grainy, but the motion blur and highlight clipping in those night shots, make it look like bad daytime television. Plus, digital projectors in a lot of cases, look like crap. They're uncalibrated, low contrast, have huge aliasing issues due to the lack of pixel depth and are in a lot of ways, lower quality today, then they were 10 years ago. Frankly, the whole reason I went to the cinema was to see something I couldn't make and learn from it. Today however, I have a decent looking digital camera that shoots RAW and all the tools to make it look good, plus a home theater with DLP projector. So all the technology they use on film sets, is the same technology available to the general public. So... what's the "fun" in that? Cinema use to be like the theatre, a place presenting a product that you the audience, could not make. A place that delivers a "special" experience that the audience can't recreate when they go home. Digital technology has allowed everyone to do anything, which democratizes the art form to a level never seen before. In doing so, it's basically imploding on itself. There is too much content and too little money, so much of it isn't seen. Plus, unlike recording an album, the cost of making a decent feature length film is astronomically higher no matter what you do. So you can't exactly give it away for free, like so many artists do. That takes a real artist... What kills me is that I recently saw a print of a classic Warner Brothers film 'The Naked Spur' shot in the 50's, mostly exteriors in the mountains. I had forgotten how good these films look "unrestored", in their original formatting on the big screen, on 35mm. No highlight clipping, no motion blur, beautiful grain structure, just a fabulous experience. Sure, the print wasn't perfect, but it was damn good for sitting in the vault. Same year, I saw a print of Sam Fullers 'Pickup on South Street' and it too was quite amazing, though it had been restored. I knew right away it was restored by watching the print. The crisp sliver flicker was missing! I went to the projection room and asked the projectionist what he thought and analyzing the head of the print, we found it was made from a 4k DCP. So here we go again, now even the film prints are digital, what's the point? Yep totally agree.

Sure, anything without a digital intermediate. Since most people didn't use DI until in the last 10 year or so, we're talking quite a while since intermediates were the "final". You'd be surprised, most BluRay releases are made from identical masters used to make the DVD's, only with color correction. Heck, even the 97' Star War re-issue DVD is identical to the BluRay, same source! It's just so expensive to re-capture a feature film from the original negative, it's really not cost effective for distributors. This is why UHD BluRay is kinda of a dead format before it was even released. There is so little UHD content out there and 4k scans are very expensive to do, when you add re-correcting the ENTIRE FILM. Yep, but when you make something digital and make it analog again, you are loosing what makes it special in some ways. What was done with films like Vertigo, prior to the digital age, is quite impressive. I vastly prefer it's restoration over Jaws, which has a very unusual digital-like motion blur, that didn't exist in the film prints or prior DVD release. Not a big deal, just depressing. Ya know, I have a film school and my job is to teach youth how to use film cameras. The first shoot we did in 2016 was with a bunch of high school kids who had never touched a film camera before. They had very basic experience using digital equipment as well. I trained them on what to do and I sat back and watched. When they started to make mistakes, I'd gently correct them. The net result is an amazing piece of film done by 15 year old's, shot on Super 16 with no digital backups. When it's done, I will post a copy on the forums. All of that to say, it's really not difficult at all. Film is very easy to work with if you're told the limitations up front. I find it very forgiving compared to digital, where a slight over expose has nothing in the highlights and a slight under expose gives you grain/digital noise. I find myself fighting to make digital look acceptable, where film? With our modern digital scanning and color correcting tools, things can be pretty messed up and I'll get a decent image out of it. The problem is, students don't go out and experiment anymore, they just don't bother, so they never really learn

They stopped scanning intermediates years ago. So the DCP becomes the master and what is used to make the highly compressed MPEG files on DVD/BluRay. Back in the day, one of the intermediates became the "negative" and that was scanned for video release. When they say "remastered from the original negative" it's usually from an intermediate of some kind, not the actual camera negative. No pro res or mpeg, just RGB color space DPX or JPEG2000 used for mastering. Pro Res may take over someday, but it's one more conversion process that's unnecessary since it's not what they use for coloring or distribution. Now the audio does get remixed and in a lot of cases, the picture gets cleaned up as well. Most features go through quite a bit of work after theatrical before video release. So this is part of the reason why they stopped scanning intermediates because the prints in the theaters, don't represent the "final" film in a lot of cases.

Yea, I agree with Adrian, the wider angle lenses always seem to vignette more. My 25mm S16 prime, almost covered my 35mm camera, it was very close. The 50 was perfect coverage.

Can you imagine pushing 19' two stops on 15/70 and cropping down to 2.20:1 for standard 5/70? It would probably look friggen amazing still. Get crazy sensitivity without the crazy grain. I personally think that's their intention. Still, it would be cool for Kodak to formulate a 1000 or even 1200 ASA stock that had smaller grain then 19'. Imagine that much sensitivity with the same grain level of 19'.

There are four systems on 35mm film. Dolby digital = little varying dots between each sprocket hole SDDS Sony Dynamic Digital Sound= Little varying dots on the edges of the film DTS Digital Theater Systems = optical timecode track offset from the analog track Optical Stereo = Usually encoded with Dolby A or SR noise reduction None of these systems are compatible with one another, they all require different readers. Most older projectors put the readers above the projector, though more modern projectors put it in the optical audio housing, which has two readers on modern projectors, one for DTS and one for analog stereo. So there would be THREE individual readers the film needs to go through= DD, DTS, Analog. SDDS came and went very fast, it was a more advanced 24bit system, but Sony licensing was expensive and even though it was a superior system to Dolby Digital, there were problems with dirty prints and edge damage, which caused the format to be phased out. Even though DTS was only 6 channel initially, it faired well because unlike Dolby Digital and SDDS which were both digital on film, DTS had no audio on film. Where splices effected digital on film, they didn't effect the analog timecode. DTS read so far in advance, it was prepared for pretty much anything, so you could splice the living crap out of a film and not skip a beat. This is why MOST theaters stuck with DTS. Before discrete soundtracks on 35mm, 70mm was the only format with enough real estate for the 6 channels of audio. This is why you see films shot and/or projected in 70mm in stereo or surround sound from as far back as the early 50's. Originally, every studio had their own format, some used 4 channels in front and one in the rear. Others divided it up like we have today, three in the front, one in the rear and one low frequency effects. It wasn't until more recently they made stereo rear channels. Even though there was magnetic sound available for 35mm, very few films were projected that way. For a small period, there were even VistaVision projectors with mag strips at some theaters as well, but it was yet another failed format. It was the mighty powerhouse of Fox that pushed through 70mm and since they owned more theaters, the format became synonymous with a "special" experience and at the time, there was nothing else like it. For all the grander of 70mm, with it's surround sound and cleaner image, 35mm was left on the back burner. Even when Dolby A and SR were common place at the big theaters, the smaller houses still only had mono sound. It wasn't until the advent of Dolby Digital that theaters started pushing for better sound. So in the 90's there was a huge push and by the late 90's, 70mm was dead and 35mm had reached it's precious technology wise. I remember wanting to see Schindler's List really badly because it was officially the first movie to be distributed in digital audio... ohh and the thought of seeing a film shot in B&W reversal was amazing. Unfortunately, my parents didn't let me and I was a wee bit too young to see it on my own. So we waited until the summer of 1993 to see the second film released with digital audio; Jurassic Park. Funny how both were Spielberg films. I'm certain there were other smaller films released in between, but those were the most exciting. Now, 70mm is all digital. It works with a very similar format to DTS, timecode on film and disks for playback. I'm pretty sure Hurt Locker is the only one that you can see the 35mm print on BluRay. The other one's, the BluRay's are made from the DI. I heard there was a photochemically made print of Carol running around, but the BluRay is absolutely the DI. There is another 16mm film being made right now by some european filmmaker, who is doing a festival run on 35mm with a blow up and the normal theatrical and video release is supposedly 4k DI. I read the article on Facebook, not sure of it's authenticity. The problem with blow-up's is that you always loose crispness through the added lensing. The digital process doesn't do that, in fact 16 scanned back to 35mm will always be crisper. Yet there is always data loss going from film to digital and back to film again. So it's a catch 22... which is why 4 perf 35mm was used for so many decades. It's an identical format to theatrical prints. You will notice, S16mm acquisition for theatrical, has expanded since the advent of DI processing.

Actually, projector speed isn't that much of a problem because it will only be off by a small margin and the computer can change pace to compensate. It just needs to be constantly reading the timecode and adjusting.

DTS, Digital Theater Systems, already solved all the problems with syncing film to digital. It's a simple timecode pulse recorded onto an optical audio track. In my eyes, this is really the best solution because ANY 16m projector with an optical reader could output the data into a decoder box. It's that decoder box, which would take analog and turn it into digital, which is the only real piece of hardware required. My thought is to make the box two way, so it can take timecode in and spit out analog, then visa versa for projection. This way if you can score an optical soundtrack recorder, all you've gotta do is plug it in and let it run. You could take the un-processed blow up, throw it into the recorder and stripe it with timecode. Of course, there would have to be some sort of sync mark on the film, maybe a punch or something because you'd be exposing that little bit of film when loading the optical soundtrack camera. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be within a few frames. Then in the playback software on your computer with the digital soundtrack, you can adjust offset based on the film's countdown and 2 pop. If you do the math right, it should work. Even if you don't, you can adjust the offset in the computer to any number you want, within the rage of timecode printed onto the film. Then you can offset the soundtrack digitally to match the film, save it and you're all done forever. In terms of aspect ratio, that's super easy.. Anamorphic lenses. I see projection lens adaptors on ebay all the time. It's then down to the optical printer and theoretically, you could use the same adaptor for optical camera and projector, why not? Sure, you'd have to design your optical lineup using lenses that were similar sizes, but it would work. This way you can get almost any aspect ratio you want out of straight 1.37:1 16mm. Obviously, you need the soundtrack area or you could turn it into super 16. I've personally found converting projectors to super 16 to be something of a chore. Plus, now you've gotta develop your own optical path for the timecode and the film would be incompatible with any other projector. I'm personally not a fan of 16mm blow up's. I think 16 makes a wonderful acquisition format, but once you get into projection, it's tricky because the prints are so fragile. It's not like the polyester 35mm theatrical prints, they're so robust, you've gotta put in quite a bit of effort to scratch/tear them. If I were making a feature, I'd be blowing up to 35mm because then you've got something you can take anywhere you want to project and it will survive forever. Obviously for something shot on super 8, this isn't worth while. But for stuff acquired on Super 16, you've got a lot more real estate on 35mm and it still looks really good, especially with low-grain stocks. If you wish to watch a few films done this way, grab "Hurt Locker". It was a complete photochemical finish and the BluRay is made from the 35mm print. It looks pretty darn good, worth watching for any fan of narrow gauge. Remember it's long in the tooth now as well, our modern stocks are far better then they were back then.

If Arriflex sold 50 SR's, they would have shelved the project, discontinued the camera and blamed the people in their company for it not being a success. If you make 50 of something by hand in your garage and sell them all, you're most likely going to consider that a success no matter what. So what Logmar did was right in the middle... for a camera manufacturer they were a failure. For a hand-made, one-off product, I guess you could consider them successful. I consider it a failure because I assume their eventual goal was to propitiate the format of Super 8 AND eventually make money off the huge investment required to make them, non of which happened with only 50 examples ever made. Plus, in the world of engineering and design, ANY hand-made product is a prototype. Only in mass production does your product loose that status. This is because in manufacturing, you will fine tune the design to the point of it being easier to make, less costly to make and be able to sell them for less money in the long run. Lets face it, had the Logmar been a $999 retail price camera, it would have put Pro 8's refurbishing program out of business AND they would have sold MANY more units. My point and only reason I responded is because I consider it a complete utter failure, where Kodak's $499 entry Super 8 camera is an entirely different market. Yes, it's the next generation Logmar. It has many of the same features, but they made it for mass production, they removed the prototype design look and feel, making it A LOT cheaper to manufacture. Again, pricing is $499 - $999 depending on the features. That's a HUGE price difference to the Logmar. Right, because the Kodak camera falls into an acceptable price range and it's not some hand-made prototype, it's mass produced. The Kodak is like buying a Blackmagic Pocket Camera. It low-cost, entry level capturing to the lowest acceptable quality resolution. The Logmar does virtually the same thing as the Kodak, minus some bells and whistles, captures to the lowest resolution film format, yet its 5 times more money. The assumption there is that anyone buying a Logmar, must need it's features for some crazy big project like a feature film, where the camera would stand out amongst it's peers. Otherwise, why would ANYONE by one? Yes, in regards to the vast majority of people who shoot super 8, this is the case. I mean, I do live in Hollywood, the home of the filmmaking "hipsters". I know many of them personally and they dress up in fancy retro clothing, go out around los angeles and make their little super 8 movies. They choose their cameras on ebay, based on the looks, which one is more retro then the other. How do I know this? Because I have a bunch of super 8 cameras and when I lend people cameras, they always pick the same one. It's the most "retro" looking of the bunch. These guys don't care if it's out of focus, if it's got gate weave, if the colors aren't perfect or it's grainy. The reason they shoot super 8, is to get that look in the first place. As you well know, I've been working on a feature film that we're shooting an entire section in super 8 to match older material shot in the 80's. We just did our first big shoot and it looks great, but he choose the worst of my cameras because he wanted to look cool on location with it. I keep saying, I'll buy a better camera and the results we keep getting back are exactly what he wants, so we're not changing anything. Honestly, I just dislike the logmar because they tried to mix old with new and it just doesn't work, nobody wants that. Yes carl, I've gone to Pro 8 and worked with the camera. I went to the open house few years ago when it first came out and spent quite a bit of time with it. I was tremendously unimpressed and dismayed. They had the opportunity to make something wonderful and in my opinion, they blew it. Now they want to make 16mm and 35mm cameras? Give me a break. When I can go out and buy an Aaton LTR or XTR for a few grand, why would anything they offer the public be any better? Heck, I just sold my beautiful Moviecam 35mm camera for 3 grand! Do you think Logmar's camera will be anywhere near that price OR produce less than 20db when running, which is kinda what's required for shooting sound these days. Good luck with that! See, I care about film too much Carl. I want it to be LOW COST, not high cost. The only way to solve that problem is to get more people shooting. If you charge them tens of thousands for cameras, they simply won't shoot. If you charge them a few hundred dollars, they may bite and that's why USED cameras AND the Kodak camera, are steps in the right direction and why the Logmar is a complete, total, utter failure in the grand scheme of things.

Yes, viewfinders are everything Carl. Using a standard definition low-resolution video camera as your ONLY VIEWING DEVICE on a "film" camera, is ridiculous. It would have been cheaper for Logmar to buy a GoPro and make a HD viewfinder system, then what they wound up with. The whole idea of LCD display menu's on a film camera to access basic functions, is scary. I wouldn't consider making 50 units of something "successful". They made 50 prototypes and perfected the design which they appear to be selling a modified version to Kodak. Plus, most of the people who shoot super 8 are looking for "retro", not modern. When they go out and shoot super 8, the look of the camera, the feel of the camera, how the camera is used, these are more critical then the final output. Plus, the pricing of the camera is insane for "retro" people, who are the bulk of the Super 8 users. It's like selling a laser reading record player. People who play records, don't want lasers and electronics, they want analog... that's the whole point. So Logmar's grand scheme of making an electronic based camera that shoots a "retro" format, is in essence, going against what would sell. So... no, the Logmar was a complete failure in the grand scheme of things. The 50 cameras they made, many of them not sold, will disappear into the cabinets of those who purchased them and most likely forgotten. You and maybe 3 other people, will most likely shoot stuff with theirs. However, it's just a toy in the long run. Another "cool gadget" for the equipment locker. As I've said many times, when someone shoots a theatrically run feature on one, I'll perk my ears up. What matters to filmmakers like myself, is the usability on set, more then anything else.