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New Kodak Super 8 Camera


Gary Lemson

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My first reel of Super 8 I got back in the mail when I was 13 I projected onto the wall of the house, a small image just over a foot wide, and was sort of saying to myself, "Whaaaat?". I was disappointed by the look of it. I'd grown up with 35mm still slide photography. Was very grateful for Super 8 because it allowed me to make movies but all the time I was using it, for years, I was hoping and dreaming for the day I could shoot 16 and who knows maybe one day 35. I never want to go back to it. One big thing that frustrated me was the inability to backwind for special effects, though I did manage to do it for short sections of film. But if you like all the attributes of Super 8 and that's what you're chasing, that's great. There was nothing like getting a fresh new cartridge into the camera and closing the door, and seeing that bit of yellow through the plastic window. Back in action again!

Edited by Jon O'Brien
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Talk is cheap. If you gave all of those under 25's two rolls of film and a free camera. They'd shoot the sky, the ground, a tree, a building and their feet. After those two rolls were gone, they'd probably forget about processing them and forget about the camera.

 

We scan film for students almost every day of the week. There are three or four colleges with film programs that still shoot film around here. Some are annoyed that they have to use it for classes. Most are totally into it, and once they've shot film they come back and shoot more, either for their subsequent classes (where it's not required), or on their own. Several of them have graduated and moved away but still send us their film for processing.

 

Your blanket statements about Super 8 are tiring, as is your dismissal of the format. It's not for you. So don't shoot it, but stop disparaging it because it doesn't fit your aesthetic and it's not what you would use. You are in LA, which is going to have a different mindset than, say, Boston, NY, Austin, San Francisco, Portland, cities like that. LA is the center of the US commercial film industry, and your approach reflects that. Your priorities are your priorities, but they're not shared by many other filmmakers.

 

We do a *ton* of scanning work for artists, documentary filmmakers, students, wedding filmmakers, bands, etc. and the volume is about equal: Super 8 and 16mm. We're even seeing a (tiny) resurgence in regular 8mm lately.

 

Yes, the market is measurably smaller than it used to be. Of course it is. Nobody is arguing that. But so what? It's still big enough to sustain a lot of companies like ours, and the point here is that as Kodak comes online with their own processing service, they will be incentivized to promote the format more, which only helps everyone else.

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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I'm working on a project where I've shot a band in a studio on Super 16 for one song and BMPCC for the other, using the same PL lens on both. Fairly low-light...so far the digital image looks amazing. I'm sending out the film today and should have it back and scanned before January 1st (hopefully!). Vision 3 500T on Super 16 will undoubtedly be more grainy, but I can't wait to actually compare the two formats in a real working environment, shooting the same things with the same light (which is not necessarily the way to do it...film should have more light). My gut tells me the film will be great, but I'm not sure if it will be great enough to offset the costs.

 

With Super 8, it would be a different analysis because the format has such a unique look. Super 8 is much more of an artistic choice that doesn't really have a direct counterpart in the digital world. Yes, we can use plugins to approximate it, but nothing that would fool anyone in this forum.

 

If you are a skilled DP and have the post help you can get an Red or Alexa to look pretty damn good and close to 35mm...16mm in my opinion is a little harder to match looks with a digital camera, but Super 8? Much harder to make a digital camera look like that...even more so with Regular 8mm.

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We scan film for students almost every day of the week. There are three or four colleges with film programs that still shoot film around here. Some are annoyed that they have to use it for classes. Most are totally into it, and once they've shot film they come back and shoot more, either for their subsequent classes (where it's not required), or on their own. Several of them have graduated and moved away but still send us their film for processing.

Sure and students are forced to work within the confides of the school program. I agree that as students of film are very into it during school. Very few of them will actually become filmmakers and those that do, will be forced to use the "norms" of filmmaking in order to make money. So it's great you're seeing people continue to use film after graduating from college. I would like to see what it's like 10 years down the road. Will they have enough clout to make that XYZ project on film. Once people have full-time jobs and/or constantly shooting digital projects (the norm), it's hard to fit in those film projects and they're generally just for fun in the long run. This is from my personal experiences and the people I talk with as well. Most of the people who rent equipment from me are "experimenting" with film, rather then using it for a commercially viable product that a wide audience will see, with financial gains.

 

Your blanket statements about Super 8 are tiring, as is your dismissal of the format. It's not for you. So don't shoot it, but stop disparaging it because it doesn't fit your aesthetic and it's not what you would use. You are in LA, which is going to have a different mindset than, say, Boston, NY, Austin, San Francisco, Portland, cities like that. LA is the center of the US commercial film industry, and your approach reflects that. Your priorities are your priorities, but they're not shared by many other filmmakers.

Sorry you feel that way... I spent my childhood and early adult life shooting Super 8 (and other film formats). I've shot hundreds of cartridges, I have a milk carton filled to the top of 50ft spools, some of which have been projected once or twice. Heck, I just helped shoot part of a new movie on Super 8 just this year. I have the right to comment about something I'm intimately familiar with. My point isn't to disparage the format, my point is that everyone talks this whole thing up as if it's some amazing new product that magically will make super 8 good. Yet I don't see it as such, I see it as a waste of money that SHOULD be spent on making better stocks for the professionals. I'm scared Super 8 may be Kodak's big fail and in turn, damage the professional level products, of which people like me use on a more regular basis.

 

Yes this is an exciting time for "film" and we as filmmakers need to perpetuate the use of it for future generations. I believe the super 8 format in of itself, is incapable of achieving this goal due to the reasons mentioned above.

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I'm working on a project where I've shot a band in a studio on Super 16 for one song and BMPCC for the other, using the same PL lens on both. Fairly low-light...so far the digital image looks amazing. I'm sending out the film today and should have it back and scanned before January 1st (hopefully!).

Nice! It's funny you mention that because I'm doing the same thing on a shoot very soon. I've been wanting to do this test for a while and I'm looking forward to seeing how yours comes out.

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Sure and students are forced to work within the confides of the school program. I agree that as students of film are very into it during school. Very few of them will actually become filmmakers and those that do, will be forced to use the "norms" of filmmaking in order to make money. So it's great you're seeing people continue to use film after graduating from college. I would like to see what it's like 10 years down the road. Will they have enough clout to make that XYZ project on film. Once people have full-time jobs and/or constantly shooting digital projects (the norm), it's hard to fit in those film projects and they're generally just for fun in the long run. This is from my personal experiences and the people I talk with as well. Most of the people who rent equipment from me are "experimenting" with film, rather then using it for a commercially viable product that a wide audience will see, with financial gains.

 

None of this is new. If every film student who got a BA in filmmaking became an actual filmmaker, there would be a glut of filmmakers out there. I have fairly close contact with most of the people I went to school with 25 years ago. Few are making films. Life happens, people's interests change, etc. Of the 25 or so people in my program, I think maybe 5-6 are still involved in the film world in some capacity (two teach - one at an art school, one at a more traditional film school, one is the tech for the animation program at the school we went to, one is working here, scanning film as I type, others are making small films in their spare time). Everyone else went on to different careers, some related to film, but most not. This is not unique to film. (though I have to say that the fact that 25 years on, at least 20% of my graduating class is still working in the field is pretty impressive, all things considered).

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Shooting modern super 8 stocks and scanning them, defeats the purpose of shooting film in the first place... outside of Perry's example of holding onto family memories for longer then a hard drive. Yet, by saying that, he actually proves my case that Super 8 is still and always will be a consumer format.

 

That is some twisted up logic right there.

 

I am one person. I speak for me and only me. I'm shooting Super 8 home movies because I like the way they look and I know that 50 years from now, they'll be viewable. I have little interest in projection because projection damages the image.

 

Please, pray tell, enlighten us on how the 6000+ photos I've taken with my DSLR are any different than scanned films?

 

Digital archiving is just a different mindset than film archiving. Shooting the home movies on film means I have a worst case scenario backup by default (the film). But what I'd show people are the files I've edited, graded and prepared for viewing. Those are the digital files. You'd have to be a fool to stick them on a hard drive and think you'll be able to view them in 10 or 20 years. We tell our clients who scan home movies to plan on getting two more drives, making copies and sending them around to family members. Then every 5-10 years, moving the contents of those drives onto whatever the current format is. Digital archiving means keeping the film in constant motion from format to format. If you're not doing that, you're going to lose the files. It's that simple. I would neither do, nor advise that.

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That is some twisted up logic right there.

My comment was referring directly to the aesthetic of the motion picture format, rather then the image retained within each frame.

 

Once you digitize, you loose the aesthetic of the format in my opinion. You don't however, loose the image within the frame.

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Working with analog frames gives you mechanical control over the images you capture, and while some S8 cameras are point and shoot, others give you more control than any other format, film or digital. Here's some footage I shot for a music video, on the street and on the stage. The idea was to make something dreamy any psychedelic. Some of it planned, some of it spontaneous, but every frame carefully calculated in terms of exposure, frame rate, exposure time, and post editing techniques. There's no one reason I shot this on S8. It's a combination of all the reasons, a game of it's own.

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I am one person. I speak for me and only me. I'm shooting Super 8 home movies because I like the way they look and I know that 50 years from now, they'll be viewable. I have little interest in projection because projection damages the image.

Same here, I have about 5 400ft from the last 4 years, of just my kids stored on color neg and TriX. I feel comfortable knowing I'll have that footage forever. I have little faith that i'll be able to access all the cell phone footage 20 years from now.

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Same here, I have about 5 400ft from the last 4 years, of just my kids stored on color neg and TriX. I feel comfortable knowing I'll have that footage forever. I have little faith that i'll be able to access all the cell phone footage 20 years from now.

 

That's why I shot as much Kodachrome as I could before it disappeared.

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Thanks for the upload Heikki.

 

As I expected, doesn't look at all like the Logmar. The registration is all over the place, but it also includes the rocking boat syndrome. So the worst of both worlds... EEK! :(

 

That rocking motion is definitely weird.

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Roger Evans chimed in about the rocking motion on Super 8mm facebook page:

 

"The rocking motion isn't from the camera. It's from the movie scanner that uses the edge of the sprocket holes for lateral registration instead of the edge of the film. Depending on who perforated the film, some color neg has sprocket holes which are not parallel with the film edge and each sprocket hole has a slight tilt. So, when the scanner reads the right and left edges of the sprocket hole and corrects the orientation digitally, the edges end up being straight but the image rocks back and forth. If this same test had been performed with older reversal from the 70s or so, it would have been much steadier because the perfs on that stock were quite good with little variation. Also, if this same film were transferred on a scanner that reads the edge of the film and not the sprocket holes for lateral registration, there would be no rocking motion."

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/27648968851/permalink/10155611642373852/?comment_id=10155611959068852&notif_t=group_comment&notif_id=1482225433424871

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Thanks for the upload Heikki.

 

As I expected, doesn't look at all like the Logmar. The registration is all over the place, but it also includes the rocking boat syndrome. So the worst of both worlds... EEK! :(

 

The "rocking boat" syndrome is due to post-scan stabilization. It has little to do with the camera. The logmar footage that I scanned for Friedemann Wachsmuth, when he was testing the early Logmar cameras, shows the same rocking. It was stabilized because of the problem of Super 8 Perfs not being consistently placed relative to the edge of the film. When the film is shot in a pin-registered, or very stable camera (it happens with Canon, Nikon, Beaulieu and other cameras as well), then scanned with a pin-registered scanner like the ScanStation, you see the problem appear.

 

That rocking motion WAS NOT in the film or the scan, it was from stabilization that was done after the scan was delivered. Since then, the Lasergraphics ScanStation software has a new feature that corrects for the horizontal jerking motion, by using the film edges to simulate a spring-loaded edge guide.

 

In any case, this is not a good example of the quality of the camera, and I don't think we should judge it by this.

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"The rocking motion isn't from the camera. It's from the movie scanner that uses the edge of the sprocket holes for lateral registration instead of the edge of the film. Depending on who perforated the film, some color neg has sprocket holes which are not parallel with the film edge and each sprocket hole has a slight tilt. So, when the scanner reads the right and left edges of the sprocket hole and corrects the orientation digitally, the edges end up being straight but the image rocks back and forth. If this same test had been performed with older reversal from the 70s or so, it would have been much steadier because the perfs on that stock were quite good with little variation. Also, if this same film were transferred on a scanner that reads the edge of the film and not the sprocket holes for lateral registration, there would be no rocking motion."

 

This is incorrect. The problem is not the scanner (unless they're using a scanner that's doing stabilization on the frame, which is kind of crazy to try to do in-scanner (because you can't always see the edges of the frame). See my post above. This is a problem of post-scan stabilization.

 

The perf issue is not limited to color, we've seen it happen on Black and White as well.

 

It's also completely untrue that it would be better with old film. We've scanned film going back to the 60s that exhibits the same problem.

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This is incorrect. The problem is not the scanner (unless they're using a scanner that's doing stabilization on the frame, which is kind of crazy to try to do in-scanner (because you can't always see the edges of the frame). See my post above. This is a problem of post-scan stabilization.

 

Pre-coffee post. bad idea. What I meant to say was "unless they're using a scanner that's doing (rotational) stabilization on the (perf)," not the frame. As soon as you add in rotational stabilization and you're using a perf that's in the middle of the frame, you're opening yourself up to the rocking motion. If you notice, the worst rocking on these examples, (like on the Logmar video), is always on the opposite end of the film from the perf. That's because using a small single object for rotational stabilization will cause things farther away to have a more extreme movement. Basically, the perf becomes the pivot point for a fairly wide swing. the tiniest imperfection in the perf edge relative to the film edge will cause the film to swing up and down on the right side.

 

So the right way to do stabilization post-scan, is to use either the frame edge (if you can see it - dark shots are harder), or a stationary object in the shot, or some combination of the two -- and to use multiple reference points. This is one case where gate hairs can be your friend...

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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