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Kodak resurrects Super 8

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Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#71

Post by alrs »

mmahemoff wrote: post #47
k-mcgrady wrote: post #39

Interesting. Today I've come across quite a few stories on analogue tech. This + new Technic SL-1200 models + new vinyl pressing machines being produced due to vinyl demand continuing to grow + record players and instant film cameras being incredibly popular on Amazon this Christmas. I wonder if we'll see this occur to other analogue tech too?

There will always be a big market for items of nostalgia, whether it's taking photos, playing music, enjoying ancient video games, or banging out letters on a typewriter. All good fun as long as people don't spout pseudoscience about its inability to be emulated with modern equipment.

Until the nostalgic die. Things are going to be rough for Rickenbacker when Beatlemania breathes its final gasp ca. 2030.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#72

Post by kalleboo »

beamatronic wrote: post #65
bprater wrote: post #62

You may have not noticed it, but the benefits of film have been going extinct this decade. Check out how many feature films are shot digitally versus on film. Unless you are Spielberg, you are shooting digitally. Currently, there are small digital cameras like the Blackmagic Pocket Camera (BMPCC) camera, under $1k, which have a capability to shoot images that are so similar to 16mm film that the average consumer coul…

Or unless you are Quentin Tarantino; see Inglorious Basterds (2009) to see what rich colors film can provide.

> Sean Mattini .... digital colorist assist

Edited and color graded on digital intermediate

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#74

Post by ghaff »

madaxe_again wrote: post #68
dietrichepp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of 8mm film does it take? I don't think I've seen anything but Super 8 for ages. I know some 8mm cameras can take standard 16mm film that's been cut in half.

Standard 8 - they made it from '32 to'92. Camera is a kodak, from '32, model 20, in the family since it was new. It is beautifully engineered.

Kodak once made some really nice cameras. My dad has a Kodak Retina IIIC which he used for many years before giving it to me, and I used it until the late 70s when some of its mechanisms finally just wore out.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#75

Post by burkaman »

nsxwolf wrote: post #32
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see someone trying to shoot a professional movie that wanted that effect for part of it, because that part was supposed to be someone playing a Super-8 movie. But I suspect that there's a Photoshop filter for that...

That use of filters to simulate things like that leaves me cold. Especially bad is when they attempt to fake a CRT television display.

Well it sounds like bad simulations leave you cold. I don't think making a realistic Super 8 effect would be too difficult for a professional VFX artist.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#76

Post by kalleboo »

colechristensen wrote: post #58
mmahemoff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will always be a big market for items of nostalgia, whether it's taking photos, playing music, enjoying ancient video games, or banging out letters on a typewriter. All good fun as long as people don't spout pseudoscience about its inability to be emulated with modern equipment.

It isn't just nostalgia. Digital music can't simulate having a physical album cover, an e-ink screen won't ever be similar to a printed page, no music encoding will physically prevent loudness-wars mastering the way a vinyl record will (the needle would just jump out of the track), no printer will ever be able to fool someone into thinking a document was written on a typewriter. You can tell the difference if a piece…

What gives those things value IS the nostalgia though. A computer printed page has clear crisp letters with advanced fonts and typography compared to a typewriter with smudged, fixed-width fonts. E-ink books allow for notes, search, bookmarks and much more. The new is with few exceptions objectively better.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#77

Post by ryandamm »

The death of film has more to do with distribution than acquisition; the pervasive switch to digital projection completely killed the last bastion of demand for film stock. (A typical film might requires 100s to 1000s as much stock for delivery to theaters as it needed for initial capture.)

That said, you can't get the entire Super8 look with digital filters. There are optical properties (have to use the same lens and sensor size), and the way it handles highlights vs lowlights is different than digital sensors. (The 'rolloff' in the highlights, rather than clipping at saturation, is very desirable.)

And it's true that film isn't entirely dead in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino shot his most recent film on 70mm stock. But that's nearly 100x the resolution of 8mm film, so they're not really comparable. OTOH, I recently saw Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom," which was shot on 16mm reversal (color, not negative) film stock for the look.

In each case, the choice of film stock definitely affected the look of the film. It also affected the act of shooting the film; even if you can mimic a filmic look digitally (through digital acquisition and post processing), shooting digitally is very different than shooting film. I happen to prefer digital, but courses for horses.

But yeah, for consumers, it's pretty much a hipster affectation. Good for Kodak, though! Also of note in the annals of hipster retro photography is 'The Impossible Project,' which revived Polaroid film:

https://www.the-impossible-project.com/

Also, 'lomography.'

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#78

Post by Turbo_hedgehog »

sparky_ wrote: post #52

Interesting to see history repeating itself a bit: "When you purchase film you will be buying the film, processing and digital transfer". Kodak was pursued by the DoJ in the 1950s and ultimately ruled against in an antitrust suit for doing the exact same thing with Kodachrome, the market leader in color (still) photography at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing

Looks like the consent decrees were terminated in 1995. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1300513.html

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#79

Post by ryandamm »

Animats wrote: post #63

Amusingly, it's also a video camera, since the viewfinder is an LCD display. Not clear if the manual aperture and shutter time settings affect the viewfinder. You can feed video into the display (why?) but it's not clear if you can get video out of the camera. The film costs $50 to $75 per cartridge, for a running time of 3.5 minutes. Market: wannabe hipsters and old guys in the movie industry. Kodak makes movie film…

This is probably what's called a 'video assist' in the film industry: when the film is being pulled through the gate, it's shielded from the light by a spinning mirror. In a fully-analog camera, that mirror reflects the light up to a ground glass target in the eyepiece, so the cinematographer sees the light that isn't recorded onto the film.

With a video assist, that light is simply captured by a sensor (yes, exactly like in a video camera) and presented to the user on a video display. Some use a beam-splitter to deliver the analog view to the cameraperson while still sending some photons to the video tap.

Note, in both cases, the light that hits the film itself is never visible to anyone until after development -- the camera crew gets to see the photons that are rejected, which can do weird things when you go to unusual shutter speeds (the image gets darker in the viewfinder as you increase the exposure)... though I believe there were some 16mm Bolexes that simply used a beamsplitter, so the viewer saw the same scene as the film stock -- but don't quote me on that.

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