Super-8 camera

Phil Rhodes · March 11, 2004

Hi,

So, I've got this super-8 camera, a Chinon 410. It lists a range of film speeds in side the cassette loading bay, from 25 to 400 in daylight and 40 to 640 in "artificial light," which I assume means tungsten. Can I therefore assume that if I stick some of that Vision 200 in it, it'll know what to do?

There is manual exposure reversion, but hey, that would defeat the object of shooting a crappy format, eh?

It also makes a very loud and irritating whirring noise when shooting, especially if you take your life (and your wallet) in your hands and hit the '48FPS' button on the side, but I'm told this is considered normal. Welcome back to the 70s, dudes!

Phil

GeorgeSelinsky · March 12, 2004

Hey Phil,

Congrats on the new acquisition - that's a pretty nice camera! There are a bunch of Super 8 heads out there on the net, one of the first places I'd check is the usenet's alt.movies.cinematography.super8 (you can access the Usenet through Google - select "groups" in the top menu bar).

Check out this site also, very good. Then there's Mike Brantley's site Super 8 filmmaking which has a fairly active Super 8 forum on it, as well as a bunch of links to other Super 8 sites.

There are some real Super 8 addicts out there. Some are heartbroken over the discontinuance of prestriped sound Super 8 film and go through the trouble of getting second party striped Kodachrome 40 in Germany (I actually have three carts of single system prestriped Super 8 K40 left in my freezer, but I can't possibly think of an application for them right now). Some buy expensive cameras like the Beaulieu and have them modified to take this special sound film. With such a dumpy frequency response (especially at 18 fps which is a more popular "standard" frame rate with Super 8 than the professional 24 fps), and with no easy way of transferring the sound to video in sync, I really feel it's a pointless exercise. It was fun back in the day, a bit of a novelty to have sync on film without a crew, but not a real serious professional tool (though it did better quality wise than the optical sound on film Auricons that were used for TV news for a while).

As for the "notching" of Kodak's Vision 200T cartrige (which is what sets the film's exposure rating automatically) I have no idea what that is - I'm sure a search on Google groups aught to dig something up (there's a Super 8 guru, Martin Baumgarten, who knows a lot on the format). It may be notched for 160 asa film (Kodak always had a 40 asa and 160 asa film available in Super 8 - some old cameras, not yours, can't read the 160 asa notch). In that case you'll be fine, as overexposing color negative film a little isn't dangerous and even desireable in a format like S8. If in doubt, and you have a manual override - use it to be sure.

Just for tradition you might want to run a roll of Kodachrome 40 through your camera first. You'll get a positive that you can project out of the processing envelope, and processing costs are most benign (here it's about $6.00, the famous PK59 mailer that sends your film out to Kodak Switzerland). To process the dreaded grainfest Ektachrome 125 or black and white we're talking 10 to 16 dollars easy. Back ten-twelve years ago when I was shooting the stuff it cost me $2.50 to get it outlabbed from my local supermarket. Boy have times changed...

To process your Kodak Vision color negative film you'd need to get the negative developed (probably at least 10-15 bucks) and then set up a telecine session, where you pay a minimum half hour to hour (and no, they don't make workprints/positives off of Super 8 color negative - if they did it'd cost a lot). Not worth it in my opinion if you just want to do a trial run.

Definitely check out the workprinter, if you're ticked at Rank transfer rates (which are high for Super 8) one of these babies is intriguing to consider.

If the desire so pulls at you check out my site on processing your own film, http://www.geocities.com/gselinsky

And yes, don't run it at a high (above 24 fps) speed unless it has film in it - that's a general movie camera rule.

You can do some very fun stuff in Super 8. To me, the greatest thing about Super 8, aside from its portability and interesting look, is that it was the cheapest way to shoot film. Unfortunately that aspect of the format is disappearing, especially when compared to 16mm. It's now looked upon as a novelty format more than anything, which is why outfits like Pro8mm show up and push decently budgeted shows to go funky with a Super 8 sequence. To me that's a departure of what Super 8 was really about, which was getting your feet wet shooting film and having a good time without worrying about the pocketbook too much. That option is still there with the Kodachrome 40 and PK59 mailer, but who knows how much longer that will last.

Enjoy! Oh yes, and while we're on the subject of the 70's (my favorite era for rock), why don't you put on a, goodness, was about to say record but those are going away too, a CD of Deep Purple when you're viewing your first dailies? One of Britain's finest.

- G.

Phil Rhodes · March 12, 2004

Hi,

Well, I didin't exactly acquire it - it was my father's, and it's been lying around forever, I just didn't do anything with it before due to the wallet-shrinking price of running it. We have a little projector and the editing station with the large ground glass screen - aww, cute. He even custom built electronics to sync up a Ferrograph tape deck to it, and we have Uher portable 1/4" recorders. Oh, the possibilities; oh, the flared jeans!

It did actually have a cassette of film in it, about one-third used, but considering it was probably made and exposed in about 1985 I'm not going to bother doing anything with it! Stuff sound, that's hardly the point, especially with the sewing-machine noises going on. I can't really revert to manual exposure since I don't have a meter.

All I was going to do was to get a couple of carts of K40 and the Vision 200 and have a noodle around for fun - I'm not really taking this very seriously!

Phil

Patrick Neary · March 12, 2004

Hi-

George is right, the vision 200 cart is notched for asa 160, so you get a little overexposure and slightly denser neg. I shot a music video not too long ago ( http://www.brokenskyfilms.com it's the "keeping it real" vid for buellton) on S8 and really enjoyed it- I'd love to do more- especially with the 800asa neg, it just becomes a surrealistic-mess-o-grain.