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How To Shoot Razor Sharp Super 8: Use Deductive Reasoning Rather Than Nostalgia -- A Newbie Primer


Guest santo

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Yes, new S8 film and processing are both less expensive than with the larger formats. However if you are transferring to video the price differential is not as great as telecine prices are often determined by the minute rather than by the foot. And if you are intending for theatrical distribution the costs of S8 blowup or transfer to digital intermediate can eat up the price advantage of camera stock. And S8 will never look as sharp as properly shot HD or 16 / 35mm. So plan your production accordingly. S8 was originally an amateur format - mind its heritage and keep it cheap.

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And if you are intending for theatrical distribution the costs of S8 blowup or transfer to digital intermediate can eat up the price advantage of camera stock. And S8 will never look as sharp as properly shot HD or 16 / 35mm. So plan your production accordingly. S8 was originally an amateur format - mind its heritage and keep it cheap.

 

 

Super 8 blow ups done by someone such as Bill Brand can look simply stunning, He did some work for me a few years ago and I loved it, the look of the footage was unique and beautiful. Well worth saving up one's pennies for.

 

Anyone shooting super 8 to look sharp is missing the point. I also think shooting super 8 for some kind of price savings is missing the point, Super 8 like all other formats is a tool, use it when it meets the aesthetic needs of a project, that's what matters.

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Here's one idea that probably has already been spoken of. Take a Fujica ZC1000 and use the 5.5mm prime lens or modify the lens mount for a nice zeiss prime lense. Wait till this summer when new Fuji or Kodak film wil be placed in the typical single8 cartridge. The steadiness of the film running through a camera with a metal gate will help improve the picture. Prime lens along with the latest modern super 8 film. What a combination. Cost of this new film in single 8mm might be a problem. Wait and see.

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Here's one idea that probably has already been spoken of. Take a Fujica ZC1000 and use the 5.5mm prime lens or modify the lens mount for a nice zeiss prime lense. Wait till this summer when new Fuji or Kodak film wil be placed in the typical single8 cartridge. The steadiness of the film running through a camera with a metal gate will help improve the picture. Prime lens along with the latest modern super 8 film. What a combination. Cost of this new film in single 8mm might be a problem. Wait and see.

 

---Fuji has discontinued single 8 earlier this year.

 

http://onsuper8.blogspot.com/2006/04/fuji-...n-single-8.html

 

Since it wasn't as widely used as Super8, I don't really see special ordering new stocks on estar bases, slitting them and loading the film into hard to find( and no doubt expensive cartridges) as being a profitable enterprise.

 

& where is one going to find a ZC1000?

 

Japan, of course. Will it be easy? Prices seem to be around $US1200-1500. A lot for a camera that one won't be able to get film for.

 

Might as well get an ACL for that price. Doesn't have to be S16.

 

A PL to C-mt adaptor costs around $500. A minor fraction of the cost of an Arri/Zeiss Ultra 16 lens, of which the shortest focal length is a 6mm Distagon. Think they're at least $15000.

 

Super 8 is not a sharp format. Which isn't necessarily bad.

But if you're going to spend that much...

 

---LV

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Super 8 blow ups done by someone such as Bill Brand can look simply stunning, He did some work for me a few years ago and I loved it, the look of the footage was unique and beautiful. Well worth saving up one's pennies for.

 

Anyone shooting super 8 to look sharp is missing the point. I also think shooting super 8 for some kind of price savings is missing the point, Super 8 like all other formats is a tool, use it when it meets the aesthetic needs of a project, that's what matters.

 

 

..Interesting. I found Bill Brand's website:

 

http://www.bboptics.com/bboptics/

 

Doug, did you blow your 8mm up to 16mm? I'd love to hear more about your experience doing this.

 

Did you blow up color negative?

 

Steve

 

After reading and reading this post I believe that it is an award winner.

I'm adding the prices of film as a way to guage cost for film size. I called Kodak yersterday and here is what they gave me:

 

Super 8

64T $14.00

200T $15.15

500T $15.15

PlusX $10.59

TriX $10.59

 

16mm

50D and 200T and 500T $36.48 for 100' $141.92 for 400 ft.

 

35mm

50D, 200T and 500T $70.30 for 100' $254.00 for 400' and $623.70 for 1000'

 

So 16mm is 240% or 2.4 X's more expensive than super-8

35mm is 924% or 9 1/4 X's more expensive than super-8

 

 

At AlphaCineLabs processing :

100ft of 16mm : $15.00

50ft Super 8 : $ 13.00

 

http://www.alphacine.com/

 

transfer costs the same (maybe more for super 8 if colorist works on it more)

 

the raw stock costs significantly more as you show above.

 

So for a project shooting 3200 ft 16mm: stock, process, transfer will be about one third more than a project shot on 1600 ft of super 8....both with a running time of about 1:20 at 24fps..

Edited by steve hyde
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I'm currently in Europe and have seen a number of films here this summer that were shot on Super 8 and blown up to 16. They retained the Super 8 look, which I personally find beautiful,* but when projected as 16mm prints gave, as you would expect, a bigger, brighter image than the Super 8 films that were shown in the same programs. The process of blowing the footage up also allowed for some interesting manipulations (the use of different film stocks, varying of film speeds, etc.), that add to the creative possibilites of the Super 8 format. I am pretty sure that the filmmakers did the blow ups themselves.

 

Over here there are a couple of independent labs (L'Abominable, just outside of Paris, and No.w.here in London) that offer filmmakers the training and access to equipment necessary to process and edit their own film on professional gear, make copies of their work, or blow Super 8 footage up to 16mm. Does anyone know of anything like this in the U.S.?

 

 

 

*I agree with Douglas' point about Super 8 sharpness, and the unique aesthetics of Super 8 as a film format.

Edited by Guy Bennett
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RE: blow ups

 

Bill Brand suggested color lab for interpositive printing.

 

http://www.colorlab.com/filmsvcs2.html

 

below is the email from him:

 

Dear Stephen,

 

I print to negative but not FROM negative. If you want to use super8 negative to get to a 16mm or 35mm negative you will have to make an interpositive blow-up and then an internegative. The same is true if you want to do optical effects from 16mm negatives. All the work I do is from reversal or positive original or master materials.

 

However, if you want to pursue this, contact Colorlab http://www.colorlab.com. They are equipped to deal with super8 negative.

 

Good luck.

 

Bill

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Steve,

 

I sent Bill color and black and white reversal Super 8 for blowup to 16mm. My experience was terriffic Bill is a dedicated crafsman, as well as a nice guy, and an experimental filmmaker. He has also done a lot of archival work as well.

 

I loved the look of the footage, espically the black and white, its difficult to describe in words but I felt that for my purposes the footage was improved by the blow up.

 

Don't worry about interpositives etc, its par for the course.

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  • 1 year later...
does anybody know what ever happened to santo? i was always curious about what sort of image quality research he was up to. has anybody been doing any lens test lately?

Unfortunately Santo is more talk than action in my long experience with him. His heart is in the right place, but his mouth gets in the way.

 

Not every prime is better than every zoom, but an arguement can be had that one can find ideals of both.

 

His 50% example is just bad form.

 

Fact is, even the worst lens can look incredibly sharp *if* in the right conditions. The best lens can look softer than you can imagine in the worst conditions. In the end, what matters is less the lens in front of the film, but the brain behind it.

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hey nate. thanks for the response. i have to disagree with you on a few points. not so much disagree but think clarification is needed.

 

ive read his posts and seen a lot of what he said is true. in fact i dont recall seeing there was something he claimed that wasnt true. that isnt to say there were inaccuracies. mabye i can offer my pence worth.

 

when comparing things you have to do it with all things being equal. if you compare different manufacturers zooms against each other made at the same period in time youll find some stand out well and tohers dont. the same goes with primes. if your dealing with a zeiss zoom of the same era as an angenieux prime i wouldnt be surprised if the zeiss zoom was sharper but you know it will be at least as good.

 

the same goes with comparing lenses between different eras. i know everybody loves their beaulieu schneider zooms but ill bet they look like crap compared to using a a zoom off of a canon xl1. schneider was never really know for making great cinema glass. it was in the area with angenieux. both were the lesser expensive options.

 

the 50% better between primes and zooms (all things being equal) is actually not that far off. you just have to understand where that figure comes from. im not an expert by ny means but i have spoken to a number of cinematographers, sales agents and a number of well known serice people. zooms generally have twice as many elements as primes. so with the prime you are looking through half the glass. ive actually heard a lot of these guys say that sharpnes is about 50% better. dont get me where the number comes from. its like some kind of square law thing or something like that.

 

what makes this even more important with smaller formats is the smaller the format the more critical the tolerances have to be and the more important sharpness is. scanning a 35mm frame for telecine or projecting it will show less softness than doing the same with an 8mm frame when using glass with equal characteristics.

 

the brain is pretty important when it comes to getting a great image but there is an assumption of a certain level of common knowledge. take the same shot with a zeiss prime and a som berthiot of the same time and using basic fundamentals of film production then yo will get a great image with the zeiss and the som with look like vaseline was covering the lens.

 

now i do recognize the improtance of what look to choose and use for artistic purposes etc but when talking about sharpness on its own there are a lot of certain factors out there in terms of what works and what doesnt.

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Very good clarification, and mostly accurate, but there are some notable exceptions, lenses so good that they transcend their eras. I shoot with a B&L 210mm lens, for example, that produces pictures so sharp that it's insane. But that lens is also 104 years old, and was not designed for movie cameras but for still photography. I also had a 1944 Zeiss 25mm that produced pictures equally sharp to my 1980's Hexagon lens, an impressive feat considering the age difference. But, for the most part, these lenses are the exception rather than the rule. And it is nigh impossible to make a complete lens kit with such lenses. While, say, the 1975 Yashica 45mm f1.7 can equal early Canon's L's, nothing else in Yachica's lineup comes close, limiting you to a single example.

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When somebody tries to tell you that DV is good enough for super 8 transfers, they clearly have no goddamn idea what they're talking about.

 

It's good enough for those who do it and are subsequently happy with the results. I'd like to see someone argue *that* - "sure they were perfectly happy with the results, but it wasn't good enough!"

 

When Rick and I made Sleep Always (a film we will *never* stop referring to), my feeling was that excessive dust and scratches were the biggest bane of a "pro look" in Super 8.

So we ran it through some pads soaked with Isopropyl, (not too much now, CAREFUL!), transferred to MiniDV, and we were happy with the results! Really, there's about five specks and not a single scratch during the whole 81 minutes.

 

I have since transferred tens of thousands of feet of Super 8 and 16mm to MiniDV for people, and every last one of them has been...happy with the results! Some of the home movie footage is simply breath-taking. You need to adjust gamma for shadow detail, and tweak the colour, but other than that the MiniDV looks great. Throwing an HDcam on the chain looks even better, as does capturing 10bit, but that doesn't mean the MiniDV doesn't still look great.

 

But yeah, don't use nostalgia for sharp images - it doesn't make sense. ~:?)

 

Mitch

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It's good enough for those who do it and are subsequently happy with the results. I'd like to see someone argue *that* - "sure they were perfectly happy with the results, but it wasn't good enough!"

 

When Rick and I made Sleep Always (a film we will *never* stop referring to), my feeling was that excessive dust and scratches were the biggest bane of a "pro look" in Super 8.

So we ran it through some pads soaked with Isopropyl, (not too much now, CAREFUL!), transferred to MiniDV, and we were happy with the results! Really, there's about five specks and not a single scratch during the whole 81 minutes.

 

I have since transferred tens of thousands of feet of Super 8 and 16mm to MiniDV for people, and every last one of them has been...happy with the results! Some of the home movie footage is simply breath-taking. You need to adjust gamma for shadow detail, and tweak the colour, but other than that the MiniDV looks great. Throwing an HDcam on the chain looks even better, as does capturing 10bit, but that doesn't mean the MiniDV doesn't still look great.

 

But yeah, don't use nostalgia for sharp images - it doesn't make sense. ~:?)

 

Mitch

 

I think the biggest factor in whether your footage looks good, regardless of transfer method, is how it was shot in the first place. Poorly shot footage isn't going to look good with even the best transfers.

 

While I personally hate miniDV as a format (not reliable enough, not enough universality) I agree with Mitch that it is typically "good enough". I find that some people get too hung up on minutiae (X device is Y sharper than Z device) and forget that the best technical work flow won't rescue a poor story and a good story will stand up under almost any work flow. In my experience people who get hung up on such minutiae are the same ones who don't shoot very much and they use the minutiae as an excuse - I am not going to bother shooting until I get the best possible workflow. Since there's always something better on the horizon or some way to "improve" your situation, you never shoot. Good luck with that.

 

Rick

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I think the biggest factor in whether your footage looks good, regardless of transfer method, is how it was shot in the first place. Poorly shot footage isn't going to look good with even the best transfers.

 

Ya but the best-shot footage can be killed dead by a really bad transfer (though of course the transfer can be redone, presumably for less money than a re-shoot)...all the factors are the biggest, but with Super 8, dust and scratches seem to warrant special attention, due to the tiny frame.

 

While I personally hate miniDV as a format (not reliable enough, not enough universality) I agree with Mitch that it is typically "good enough".

 

Just to be clear, I actually called it "breath-taking", and said it looks great! ~:?)

 

Mitch

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  • 8 years later...

Where exactly does one apply oil and lube to a Moviflex?

I have an S8 that is in virtually perfect condition except that it's extremely loud because the motor needs lubrication.

Also, how exactly does one do manual exposure on one of these things? I tried it once on another one I had owned previously, and it seemed like you actually had to hold the aperture knob on the f/stop you wanted because the auto exposure would fight you. I refuse to believe an otherwise excellent camera would have such a screwy way to do manual exposure...

 

I really wanna be able to use this as my go-to camera now that my 814's been stolen. It has a great lens on it, sharp and contrasty, but that motor noise...

Edited by Larry Wilson
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