Cynthia Almanzar

And yes, you can use any film you like if your camera has manual mode. The 40/160 text turns into dust and falls off the camera the second you switch to manual.

 

Yes, I do this all the time and I just have a really basic camera (Nizo 136XL). When I first started using it I was equally freaked out about the whole 40/160 ASA limitation thing. Cartridge pins never match it exactly with these modern film carts, so I used to only rely on auto-exposure and just use stocks like 200T (because that would meter at 160 ASA and give me a 1/3 stop over-exposure which this films likes, so it would come out awesome every time by just plugging it in there and setting to auto - This might be good for you Aymie to test out your camera - but yeah you'll need to pay to telecine that stuff then because you can't project negative of course. If you want to try it out straight up, use Tri-X, which is also 200T and reversal).

 

Cynthia, yeah, I started to just set this same camera to MANUAL mode yes, and basically just point the camera very still at whatever the area of focus was in order to get a good reading on the dial inside the viewfinder of what f-stop (it will literally just say the f stop on this cheap little dial in there, and you can see it floating around as you move the camera across the scene, so hold it still on what you want to shoot - this is just my camera though so yours will have a different way of showing you the reading probably - but same idea basically - an f-stop is shown depending on what you point the lens at). Then, you just go "ok, that is the reading" (a very important step. You have to say this out loud or else it won't work). Then adjust the markings on the lens to that f-stop. This will avoid you a lot of really bad super 8 footage that looks like the camera is constantly "jumping" exposures trying to catch up as it moves past bright windows or dark spots etc as the camera moves. If you shoot negative stock (like 200T) then you can just find a medium lit area and meter for that and your camera will not have all these schizophrenic fluctuations when panning around a scene.

Matthew:

Thank you for the responses. I am a newbie as well and I appreciate you taking the time to give me detailed answers.

hope to continue to see you around.

Hi Aymie. I hope you don't mind me hijacking your post too much but I am also curious about this. I was under the impression you could work around this by getting any film and using an external light meter and manually exposing. Am I completely off point here?

Thank you

Perry.

I will do the test roll exposing manually and see how I goes. I expected to have to take for service because even if it is a simple thing I don't feel comfortable opening up myself. The only thing is I'm a bit short on cash and hope the camera continues to work until I can take it to get serviced.

Anthony,

That's so odd the very same thing happen to you. Maybe the issue is not uncommon for this camera? I'm impressed the camera ran for 5 years after that. I hope im get that lucky. I hear you about the camera. I took a lot of reading on super 8 before I decided on this one.

Thank you for your responses, guys. I really appreciated it.

Hi Everybody. This is my first post here but I've been looking around for a couple of weeks. All of you inspire me to join because you are very knowledgeable and helpful. So, I thought I should take advantage of that :)

I just got my first super 8 camera on eBay. I put in new batteries and the camera runs at all speeds. I loaded some marked film just to make sure that the film was transporting and that also went well. However, when I put in new batteries for the light meter the indicator wouldn't move. I pressed the battery test button, put on manual mode and nothing happened. I looked in the battery compartment, even cleaned it, entered the batteries every way I could. Nothing. The indicator stayed at f1.8 at all times. To make an already long story short, I ended up banging the camera on the left side. Stupid reaction out frustration but as fate would have it the indicator moved. I banged it back and forth a little bit more and suddenly the thing worked!

The battery test worked. I walked under different lighting conditions and the auto exposure seemed to be working. I set the exposure manually and it also worked. To this moment the light meter seems to be fine. Now, my questions is: What could be the cause of the malfunction? Do I need to take it to Du-All for service? Do I run a test and if it works, leave at that?

What do you think guys?

Thank you!