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Author Topic: Digital Super 8 Mitchell Dvoskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1869 From: West Milford, NJ, USA Registered: Jan 2001 posted 12-10-2013 10:14 AM                     Yes, everything old is new again. I came across the link below for a company that plans to manufacture a Super 8 film cartridge for digital capture on your Super 8 Camera. Click Here  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 12-10-2013 10:38 AM                    Shooting off a ground glass sounds like a dumb idea, especially one that small. Why can't they pick up the image as an aerial image? And internally processing the data to a particular film look is also not a good idea. Compress the data if you must but don't apply looks, IMHO.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 12-10-2013 12:11 PM                        It's hard to think who the market for this gizmo will be. It's unlikely to appeal to seniors with Super 8 cameras in their attics, because a lot of them won't be comfortable with PC timeline editing the files afterwards. Arty types will regard it as inauthentic, while professional filmmakers trying to achieve the small gauge look (e.g. in a flashback scene to a 1970s childhood - that sort of thing) will probably regard 720p as being not good enough for integration into their post-production workflow. If it only costs $30-50 I might get one just as a curiosity, but not if the sticker price is heading towards three figures.  |  IP: Logged Paul Gordon Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 580 From: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Registered: Aug 2005 posted 12-10-2013 12:16 PM                        or you could shell out the big bucks and buy an all new super 8 camera and shoot on film. http://www.redsharknews.com/technology/item/1294-super-8-bounces-back-with-a-new-professional-level-super8-camera?utm_source=www.lwks.com+subscribers&utm_campaign=f62add0b05-RSN_Dec10_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_079aaa3026-f62add0b05-74536277  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-10-2013 12:24 PM                        The article about the first product suggests that super-8 cartridges are now unavailable. That is demonstrably untrue, as they are listed in the current Kodak motion-picture product catalog. I wonder how it deals with cameras that are fixed at 18fps?  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 12-10-2013 03:39 PM                        Is the all new S8 camera actually a production item, though, or just at the prototype stage? It looks cool and I wish them every success, but there's nothing in that trade mag story to suggest to me that they've gone beyond a prototype and plans announced - same thing as with the long-promised Ferrania relaunch. All that having been said, $2-3k in today's money isn't big bucks at all, given that the nearest to professional that S8 cameras got (Beaulieu etc.) in the format's mainstream period of the '70s and '80s went for around that figure at that time. $2-3k now is something a small start-up production company could realistically consider buying outright. A professionally spec-ed small gauge film camera from in the middle of the last century (sticker price $10-50k adjusted for inflation, depending on options) is something they'd have had to have rented on a per-production basis.  |  IP: Logged Mike Heenan Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1896 From: Scottsdale, AZ, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 12-10-2013 04:46 PM                     You can shoot on Super 8 cheaply, but there's only 1 guy who's printing them in Germany, so there's basically no cheap way to shoot and project anymore.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-10-2013 06:44 PM                     On a more substantial re-use front P&S Teknik has cone out with a digital magazine for existing Arri SR2&3 cameras... Digital Magazine As for Super-8... who would want to project it? Straight to digital... Not like it's gonna look good on a big screen anyway. Super 16mm or Ultra 16mm, that's another story. I should add that Agfa recently released a new 16mm color reversal stock... Mark  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 12-10-2013 06:55 PM                     quote: Leo Enticknap It's hard to think who the market for this gizmo will be. Hipsters. That's who.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-10-2013 08:11 PM                     I never thought of Super 8 as being hip. It's for home movies, not giant screen documentaries.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-10-2013 08:27 PM                        Edit your own super-8 film, 1970s style I am just finishing postproduction on two short films which I edited on film (in 16mm). I have no problem with film editing in 16mm, but editing super-8 just looks terribly painful due to the tiny size of the frame and the fact that (in the Kodak film above) one typically edits camera original in super-8. The sound quality is probably not so hot, either. And, when the film is edited, one is left with something that cannot be projected on a large screen, due to the small size of the film frame.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-11-2013 12:10 PM                     Years ago there was a company that was going to market a digital imager that was made into a 35mm cassette with a sensor that one drew out to the location of the shutter in ones slr  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 12-11-2013 12:28 PM                        quote: Mark Gulbrandsen I never thought of Super 8 as being hip. It's for home movies, not giant screen documentaries. To be fair, Vision 200T on Super 8 is in a different league from the reversal stocks of the '70s and '80s - transferred at 2K and carefully graded, it can look (subjectively, to me, at any rate) as good as a 16mm negative shot in the '90s. The problem is that the lenses on most Super 8 cameras were cheap sh!te, and so unless you're shooting on a high end Braun or Beaulieu, or another camera that has been remanufactured to put proper lenses on it (I believe Pro8mm can modify some cameras to take a T-mount), you'll never be able to use the stock to its full potential. Likewise, if you transfer the footage one light on the lower end scanners that "We copy your home movies to DVD" places tend to use, a lot more image information will be lost, too.  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 12-11-2013 01:13 PM                     quote: Mark Gulbrandsen I never thought of Super 8 as being hip. It's for home movies, not giant screen documentaries. Anything retro is hip now. Even more hip if it is obsolete. Taking a perfectly good image and then fucking it up to make it look old is hip now. Using a clunky super-8 film camera to record amateur-looking digital video will appeal to hipsters.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-11-2013 01:15 PM                        What Leo said. In addition to lenses, another weak point with super-8 is that the pressure plate (which is one of the most precisely made parts of a normal motion-picture camera) is a plastic thing that is built into the Kodak cartridge. By necessity, it is not a precisely machined object, and the film often does not lie flat in the gate. The new camera design referenced above solves this, as do double-super-8 cameras (which do not use cartridge-loaded film). But, still, super-8 makes little sense in 2013 for most people. Film and processing cost about the same amount as with 16mm, as does telecine time. But, with super-8, the number of facilities that will deal with the format is very limited, the footage cannot easily be printed and projected as film, and the image quality is poorer than with any other film format. For $3k, a good, used 16mm camera would be a better purchase.  |  IP: Logged

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