Carl Looper

But if shooting at night - as you are - then reciprocity failure is definitely what you need to take into account.

I'm not sure I've characterised the problem correctly. The failure occurs at low light levels. But in the case of shooting outdoors in sunlight the situation is at the other end of the equations - one has more light than one needs (not less) so I imagine if there is going to be reciprocity failure that you'll need to compensate the other way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(photography)#Reciprocity_failure Carl

From memory there is a thing called "reciprocity failure" which works to one's advantage when exposing film. The rule of thumb is that the longer the exposure time you intend using the longer the exposure time you'll actually need. The term "reciprocity" refers to the reciprical relationship between exposure time and aperture (or ND filter). As you increase one you decrease the other by the same ammount. Well normally you do, but for longer exposure times this reciprical relationship fails. As the exposure time increases the less you need to decrease the aperture size (or increase the ND filter) to compensate. I know this doesn't completely answer the question but it's a useful thing to know and keep in mind when researching the problem further.

I agree. I assume he must be interested because he keeps popping up here. Not sure why this discussion is so threatening to him. I can understand the angst he is feeling about the collapse of the film industry (not the filmmaking industry) but it's not any of us who are responsible for that. It is just simple evolution. But evolution doesn't mean "out with the old in with the new". We learn from history. While bigger and better cars are made, or these days, greener cars, I still see a host of vintage cars driving around the suburbs where I live. Actually driving around. It is so much fun to see. And they obviously really enjoy it - restoring vintage cars to working order. It's a way of interacting with history. But it's silly to devalue such efforts on the basis that such restored vehicles could never win some contemporary super car race. That is not necessarily the point of such restoration. But it can also be about improving vintage technology. There was a film not long ago called the "The World's Fastest Indian". A great film. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412080/

Sounds great. Would be interesting to see how the 82 stock holds up. As K40 slips into history the very last shots to be made on such are being made right now.

Borowski needs to understand that there is an entire domain of filmmaking (both theory and practice) that operates outside of his limited field of view. The audience for such are not necessarily watching TV or sleep walking into the nearest cinema-plex on cheap Tuesdays. They go to art gallerys. They go to film festivals. They read history. They have an understanding of the big picture - one much bigger than the latest quickest way to earn a living with a camera. The problem is that Borowski keeps forcing the context back into that of conventional filmmaking and in such a context this discussion could seem rather strange, misguided, delusional, etc. Perhaps if Borowski made some attempt to understand the various contexts in which the discussion shifts he might discover why he doesn't understand the discussion.

This is from a distant memory of twenty five years ago - so don't quote me :) 1 & 2. Can't recall. 3. Footage counter - definitely. But in metres. 4. Press red button to test battery - the little window has a needle which moves across display to indicate battery strength. 5. Off mode - trigger does nothing. R: Run mode - trigger runs camera when held down, and stops camera when up. RL: Run lock mode - depress trigger to run, depress trigger again to stop. 6. Pull out to do manual exposure control - push back in for automatic exposure (AE).

I worked for a theatre company a few years back that did outdoor performance art. I was on their documentary team shooting video of their performances. The performance consisted of numerous vehicles driving around an oval and making a lot of noise and throwing flames everywhere. The work was called "Machine Wars". The really cool thing is that each and every vehicle had been collaged together from the remains of junked cars and trucks into really weird looking and evocative vehicles - think Mad Max the Road Warrior. So when one says "taking an Edsel and making it an electric car" my answer is "why not". Carl

Hi Nicholas, thanks for your offer. I did manage to secure one ST1. In fact I inadvertently have three more of them on their way from a clearance sale in Canada (the three were bundled). At least I think I do. My credit card says so - but I have yet to see them. I had put a purchase enquiry in for the bundle, prior to the single one becoming available, but hadn't heard back from Canada - so rather than risk not getting any I ordered the single one. And then eventually the Canada purchase enquiry came through. Good greif - what was I going to do with four of them? However a collegue I've worked with in the past has a Leicina, so one of them is for him. I actually built a custom controller for his camera some years ago - with an ad hoc camera plug and a custom circuit (complete with timer chips). It worked quite well - obtained some great results. For the current project - image processing experiments - am interested in capture of the sync pulse - for syncronising the camera to other data aquisition devices that will be operating in tandem with the camera. And while I could have built another circuit and plug I like the idea of using the ST1 instead. If you've got a copy of the Leicina diagrams, would certainly appreciate that. cheers Carl

Well said Robert. I too have have moved back to film, for reasons of archival stability and technical simplicity. However I remain an ardent fan of the digital space - unstable as it is. One of the first things one can learn in the digital domain is the transitory nature of the information running through it's circuits. I don't know how many files I've just let rot in broken hard drives or otherwise thrown out because I can't be bothered maintaining them. This can be interpreted in either tragic terms, or a re-evaluation of what electronic/digital media (or rather electronic/digital systems) might otherwise mean. I've mentioned this before but I'll say it again. When the US put Armstrong on the moon I saw it live on TV. Indeed, living in Australia, close to the tracking stations, I saw it a couple of nano seconds before the rest of the world. It was the live aspect of it that had meaning - that it was occuring in that peculiar dimension we call the "present". I've shot numerous hours of video in my life (working as a documentary 'film'maker) and while the results were not live as such there was certainly a similar kind of buzz in being able to turn around results more quickly than the two week for some Kodachrome40 to get back from the Kodak processing lab. But there is certainly that loss one feels - not at the time - but years later - when attempting to reconstruct the past for archival/historical or nostalgic purposes that can cut through one's heart quite severely. Especially when its personal. Photography of one's children for instance. That peculiar space we might call, for want of a better word, that of the 'home-movie'. When a fire threatens ones belongings, one of the first things almost everyone trys to save (apart from their family of course), are their photographs. But interestingly enough, if they lose their photographs (assuming they rescued their family) one of the first things they will feel, in the aftermath, is a huge burden lifted. There is a re-appreciation of life itself. The lost photographs pale into insignificance. Carl

Yes - those pessimists. Lock em up I say. I need to get back to my experiments. The ligtning rods are in place. The strom is rolling in. But they keep chanting at the door: "Burn, burn". But it's alive I tell ye. Its alive !

It was a Leicina Special. Its waiting at the airport. I have to get out there and pay some tariff fee on it this week.

A one-off custom made 16mm camera isn't really necessary as there are plenty of good 16mm cameras around - that despite being "dead", work just as well as they did when they were "alive". Super 8 cameras are a little different. Many weren't particularly well made - and those that were, still have some minor shortcommings. The shortcommings are not particularly bad, but it means there is some room for improvement - if anyone was so inclined. As already explicit in my previous posts, my point of view is that a work of art - such as clothes, cars or, in this case, a camera - does not need to come out of a factory. Carl

Not sure I understand the comment but I love the clip. Its very beautiful. The interesting thing about 35mm is that you don't need a particulary good lens for a 2K scan, due to the physical size of the frame. For a 2K scan you only need a lens with a resolution limit of about 50 line-pairs/mm. Most modern lenses are a lot better than that.

Not sure what you mean by "film transport". Perhaps you mean the motion of the objects in front of the camera - ie. that which is notionally being tracked by the motion signal processor. HDSLR sensors are not actually noiseless. But typically the sensor noise is filtered. A significant ammount of noise is filtered by the simple act of spatial integration during downsampling to HD (the input sensors have more pixels than the output signal). And simple compression algorithms can smooth out noise due to the motion vector techniques of such. Indeed it is the motion vector techniques of compression algorithms that can act as a useful starting point for understanding the idea of super-resolution. But instead of using the fast block matching/error correction codecs, super-resolution uses slower (computationally expensive) signal matching techniques. One thing not to use is the "error correction" component of compression codecs as that can reconstruct (to some extent) the very thing one is trying to suppress: the noise. Regarding comparison of film to digital its difficult to establish a common frame of reference. But the important point here is not so much whether one can improve the film signal to some notional digital standard - but just improve the signal full stop. How far the limits can be pushed back remains an open question. But the important point is that they can be pushed back. I'll have a look at that other site.

Yes - the resolution of the film is a problem. However the solution is the previously discussed approach of "super-resolution". See previous posts. The native resolution (if you do nothing about it) is limited by the grain of the film. However, unlike photographic images, motion picture images encode a large number of correlated images (per shot) whereas the grain of each frame (from one frame to another) is uncorrelated (independant of the signal). Digital signal processing techniques can be used to recover a signal with a higher definition (resolution) than otherwise recoverable from a single frame.

A new, mass produced, Super8 camera is not just highly improbable. But next to impossible. But that's not the only interpretation of what a "new Super8 camera" means. One can also consider one-off devices - a Super8 camera made from scratch in someone's backyard workshop. A custom made - one off camera, that uses Super8. How were camera's originally made? They were not mass produced in factorys. They were hand made. I'd love to see a hand made Super8 camera, inside a wooden box would be a nice touch. A handle for hand cranking would be cool. I'd love to see one made, not for some mythological mass of consumers that would buy it, but for those who would appreciate the art of it. In the same vein that certain clothes are made purely for the catwalk. Or concept cars made purely for trade shows rather than actual consumption. But a camera that actually works and solves all the technical shortcommings of previous Super 8 cameras. And a really good idea would be to make it in an extensible manner, in which it can be easily disassembled and reassembled, with plenty of space for mod work - adding electronics and so on.

True enough. However, electronics has played a role in audio recording for much longer than it has done in image recording. There hasn't really been any viable alternatives. Wax cylinders? Now digital systems are a "natural" evolution of electronic systems. If audio went digital it wasn't necessarily due to any pre-existant demand for such but because inventors of electronic systems (such as Sony) had been researching and developing digital systems in the first place. They had entertained the idea that digital systems could generate demand. By generating demand in new technology, you reduce demand in older technology. I'm an advocate of Super8 but I also use 16mm. However 16mm is cumbersome (35mm even more so). What is attractive about Super8 parallels the attractiveness of video/digital. Cost. Portability. Convenience. But I'm not a fan of so called "arty" reasons. I don't like badly scanned Super8. I don't like scratches. I don't like dust. I don't like soft images. I don't like hand-held shots that jump all over the place. I don't like grain. I don't consider any of these things as inherently artistic. Once upon a time they were. They represented a form of necessary anarchism - a revolt against the rigor mortis of the fifties and early sixties. But today these things are just cliches - romantic nostalgia for a lost era. I'd rather use Super8 in a way that had no self-referentaility whatsoever.

The biggest move from 16mm to non-film media occurred in the early 80s with video. That should have been the end of 16mm you would have thought. Indeed video should have been the end of Super8. It certainly spelt the end of the cameras . But the film has persisted. It is somewhat surprising that these smaller guages have persisted. I expect that if and when 35mm dies that will mean the death of the smaller guages. In recent years we have seen the dominant market for video eagerly and easily move across into digital video. And with advances in digital video there have been those remaining in the 16mm space moving across into digital. 35mm users ahve been doing as it well. But there is an interesting background movement going on. Apart from die-hard filmmakers with a film-or-death position there are those like myself who understand the virtues and limiations of both film and digital and can see very useful hybridisations wherein the best of both can be exploited. Super8 does sound like a non-intutive alternative but there are very good reasons to move from 16mm to Super8. The first reason is that Super8 is cheaper than 16mm (but not as cheap as digital). If used correctly and properly handled in the digital domain, it can compete with digital on purely technical grounds. Its not necessarily going to outperform gimungus sensors. But one has to understand that bigger isn't always better. What happened to Cinerama? Or why does IMAX almost always show crap films? Because there is a careful balancing point between technical production values and creativity. While both should be possible the cost of one appears to put too much pressure on the other. Not always. But most often. Big business has to play it safer more often than it doesn't. But sure, it does sound unlikely, a new Super8 camera.

This comment doesn't engage with the previous discussion on super-resolution and reflects the usual knee jerk simplistic characterisations with which this problem has been treated by those who think the answer is too obvious. But even as early as the 1970s Lenny Lipton was recognising the promise that digital signal processing had to offer in this area. What was completely madness then is not so crazy now. Digital signal processing can improve a signal considerably. And while native 35mm definition may be difficult to achieve for the humble Super 8, it is not completely out of the question, and is a worthy target for those working in the area of digital imaging. The reason for testing these algorithms on Super8 is that Super8 is cheaper than testing it out on larger formats. But a nice byproduct is that a. the algorithms can be used to reduce the cost of shooting a film that might otherwise require 16mm or 35mm, and b. the same algorithms can also be applied to larger formats without any change.

You are a troll. Andre Bazin was a realist. That didn't mean he'd bring a hammer down on speculation. I'm happy to entertain the idea of a new Super 8 camera - even if it's just pure speculation. Its only by taking anything seriously that you can assess the actual reality of anything. No pain. No gain. Kids can learn from their mistakes. They can also learn from taking wild ideas seriously. They will not be poorer for it. I don't know if 16mm is on borrowed time, but S8 is certainly cheaper than 16mm. In other words one can imagine a move in the market, from from 16mm to S8, if only because of the price. I was certin S8 was going to die 10 years ago. All the signs were there. But it didn't. With a better understanding of the technical relationship between film and digital intermediate/distribution there is an opportunity to rebrand/repurpose S8 as a professional format. S8 is a film format that for some reason is still with us. While originally marketed as a home movie format, it enjoyed brief use during the seventies as a professional medium. And has always been used by artists in a non-home movie manner. 16mm was also invented as a home movie medium. It was only later rebranded as a professional medium. And like Super8, 16mm has always been used by artists in a non-home movie manner. And home movies need not be artistically empty. Indeed I've seen a number of creative and well crafted "home movies" that have more to say in a few minutes than the hours of rubbish on television and in the cinema. A "crummy home movie look" can be achieved using any format and the correct digital signal processing techniques. But using Super 8 to achieve that look is probably cheaper. It is not, however, necessarily more artistically valid. Lichtenstein's comic book art is, from certain points of view, artistically valid despite being done in paint rather than with a cheap offset printer.

A HD signal of 1920 x 1080 pixels, specifys the maximum definition of the signal displayable by those pixels. That doesn't mean the actual content necessarily reaches that definition. Even when something is shot at 1920 x 1080, the definition of the signal could be a lot less. For example, if one shoots something out of focus then the definition will be a lot less than if the shot was in focus. A signal is made up of many frequencys, from low (blurry signals) to high (sharp) frequencys. Compression algorithms involve storing the low frequency information (blurry signals) using less bandwidth than the sharp signals, because there is less information in the blurry signals that there is in the sharp signals. Uncompressed signals use the same bandwidth for all frequencys which is simply a waste of bandwidth. Interestingly the sharpest possible signal, across the entire frame, is pure noise (across the entire frame). In other words a signal devoid of any signifcance (notwithstanding the shot of TV snow in Tobe Hooper's 1982 Poltergeist). By comparison we can imagine an interesting shot, such as a single blade of grass moving back and forth against a featureless, and out of focus, sky. And yet despit this signal having far less "information" than pure noise, can easily have far more significance. In other words there is no correlation between the ammount of information in a shot and the significance of a shot.

Yes - that's very true. Whatever you can do to make Super 8 look better you can also do to make larger formats look better. This is not a sad thing.

I've used Avisynth (and VirtualDub). These contain numerous plugins for enhancing signals in the time domain and are an excellent benchmark. Indeed I'm using such as benchmarks for my own software. Regarding scanning I've got an experimental 4K scan setup (using a Canon 10MP with bellows and microspcope objective) which yields very good results. Ah yes - the pressure plate on Super8 isn't as good as it could be - causing possible loss of definition along the vertical axis. However a very good signal can be reconstructed from motion blur (blur along a single axis) using an appropriately calibrated weiner filter. Full circle blur is a lot harder to filter. Yes that's right. Film grain is so much easier to process than the fixed frequency of video pixels. One problem I haven't mentioned is the lens. Unlike film grain the lens is not in a random location from one frame to another so the limits imposed by the lens are more strict than that of the limits imposed by the film grain. If a signal is moving with respect to the lens then the limits of the lens can be pushed back, but for a locked off shot on a non moving signal, the same rated lens (in MTF lp/mm) will introduce a lower defintion signal on Super 8 than it does on 35mm because there there are less millimeters available. Or to put it another way, a lens with the same resolution limit of, say, 80 lines/mm will resolve four times more lines per width of 35mm film than it does per width of Super8 film. For a standard 2K scan of 35mm film, where the film width is 22mm, the lens only needs to resolve 93 lines/mm (46 line pairs/mm), but for Super 8, where the width is a lot smaller (5.79mm) the lens needs to resolve 353 lines/mm (176 line pairs/mm) if it is reproduce the same signal. Now the resolution of a lens is limited by microscopic-defects in the lens, in which the mutiple paths of the light wave, through the lens, fail to meet at a precise point. So one possible approach to this limitation is to obtain the signature of a given lens. The defects will not be symmetrical so the resulting point spread function will also be non-symmetrical meaning that the signal is ammenable to weiner filter correction. Carl Carl

I've been running the numbers on the difference between using a Kowa (2.0X) A lens, vs cropping, and these are my results. When targeting HDTV do not use a Kowa 2X lens. It is significantly less efficient use of film area than if simple cropping was used. And furthermore, a 1.5X lens offers little more than 1% improvement over simple cropping. If you want to target the 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 standards, the Kowa 2.0X will offer significant improvement over simple cropping, but not as much improvement as using a 1.5X A lens. Notes. The usable area of a Super8 frame (which we treat as 100% use) is: 5.79mm x 4.01mm = 23.2179 sqr mm. Targeting 16:9 A Lens Used Area of film (more = better) Percentage of film used ------ --------------------------------- ----------------------- Crop: 5.79mm x 3.257mm = 18.858 sqr mm 81% 1.5X: 4.753mm x 4.01mm = 19.1 sqr mm 82% 2.0X: 3.565mm x 4.01mm = 14.296 sqr mm 62% Targeting 1.85 : 1 A Lens Used Area of film (more = better) Percentage of film used ------ --------------------------------- ----------------------- Crop: 5.79mm x 3.13mm = 18.12 sqr mm 78% 1.5X: 4.95mm x 4.01mm = 19.8 sqr mm 85% 2.0X: 3.71mm x 4.01mm = 14.87 sqr mm 64% Targeting 2.39 : 1 A Lens Used Area of film (more = better) Percentage of film used ------ --------------------------------- ----------------------- Crop: 5.79mm x 2.423mm = 14.0 sqr mm 60% 1.5X: 5.79mm x 3.639mm = 21.0 sqr mm 91% 2.0X: 4.792mm x 4.01mm = 19.2 sqr mm 83% Carl