Robert Beyer

Hi , yes, Martin, I’m familiar with the most of the wealth of info you have provided. The film made for Fairchild I believe was Ansco, and it was lousy. Naturally it was great when Kodak started making the film. They have held up well vs Ansco and even the b/w Superior , both very grainy etc. I didn’t have my Fairchild projector all that long , and sold it a few years later, never had to take it apart ? ! I was in the USN, did take the camera on 1 cruise (1967)to the Orient during the Nam era and later moving around , eventually I bought a used Kodak pageant sound 8 , and it is still working today ( after I did some servicing on it last year) I used it to play the old Fairchild films ( after splicing etc) w/o running film thru pull-down as Just was digitizing the sound tracks. They are filed in my desktop and am getting the films scanned at 24fps on a moviestuff retro unit @ FPS. The plan then is to sync the sound best I can to the image with editing software. My first test with a 3 min clip from 1965 actually worked! It will be great for our family to be able to see and hear family friends and relatives , many no longer with us in sound! My very first roll was of course “ Fairchild film” and I just got it scanned on a retro ( avoiding use of beat up sprocket holes, lots of chemical artifacts , etc) . It was in bad physical shape as my younger brothers played those movies as well as the older silent ones from a silent camera so much while I was away. However the image is there and the sound which I digitized (&cleaned up ) is there providing great memories from 1964!

Hi. Rob here, back when I was turning 19, in 1964 I wanted a new 8mm movie camera. I had worn out my wind up silent one making a goofy syfy movie with friends and Brothers over a summer. (actually tried to put sound from a tape recorder on film afterwards as Kodak came out with magnetic stripe service. They pushed a 8mm sound projector that could record sound on that mag stripe (1/16th of an in) great for travel films etc.. Also Universal and other film companies with big libraries, made "headline" (short 12 or so min 8mm movies in sound) that were sold in film and dept stores or by mail. I figure they came close to doing what Fairchild did with a sync camera -but then came up with the S8 cartridge which made it so easy to do movies,. Not only was the picture a tad bigger due to smaller sprocket holes but they came out with a sync sound version in mid ? 70s. Anyway back to the Fairchild, yes, it was advanced for the time, but a tad late. It had early germanium transistors, that got noisy, I had to smack the camera when I heard static!.. Also there was small Nicad battery inside the camera - another new tech at the time, and it like all those older nicad setups, they "learned " bad charging habits. Ours didn't hold a full charge when it got older and it would run down at end of film which would make the film seem it was going faster - (24fps dropped down to prob 18, 15 etc. this is going to make it difficult to sync the sound the way I have to do it - sync sound to pic in Computer. I'm trying out a guy with a pricey sprocketless LED scanning system and having it set for 24fps- There are a few units custom made with led lamp, speed control on motor, and a HD vid camera shooting into the lens barrel or using an optic box - you have to adjust the speed control to get rid of the frame sync issues btwen projectors and video . I have a rig like that for Super 8 film . So its something I've been wanting to do for years, these new "retroscan units " area pricy but great for old film - a lot of my old Fairchild films were over played by my younger Brothers while I was off to college, USN, etc etc. and many areas where sproket probs. more later If anyone is out there.