Does anyone here shoot in super8 or 8mm?
 

In the next couple of months I will be playing around with shooting in both formats and I'd love to get some advice if any of you regularly do this. There is a group/club in my state but I wont really be processing until the month after so wont really be able to ask them any questions.

Super 8 will be first as its less costly for the stock but the same price to process... But I want to shoot both so tips with either would be great.

I have access to these film stocks at the moment; (note no velvia or 100+ colour stock..)


Super 8 Ektachrome 64t

160PUSH Ektachrome 64t in a cartridge specially notched for push processing by nano lab to 160 asa tungsten

Super8 Plus-X (7265)
Black and White 100 asa reversal.
Gives even finer results exposed as 50asa

Super 8 Tri-X (7266)
Black and White 200 asa reversal.

Standard 8mm 25' Ektachrome 100d

Standard 8mm 25' Cine-x (Plus-x 7265)
Black and White 100 asa reversal. Gives even finer results exposed as 50asa

Double Super8 Un54 Black and White
(100asa as neg, 200asa as reversal)

Double Super8 Ektachrome 100d now available in 25' and 100'.



what do you think ?

and what is the double super8? :confused:

tokolosh is your man if he is still around, haven't seen him here for a bit

Sorry to be a snob, but after I worked with 35mm, 16 felt extremely tiny. I just couldn't imagine doing 8mm. Of course, I guess no one actually edits 8mm anymore--just transfers it to video.

But the question is, what do you want to do? Each of those films has a particular use. Obviously the first question is color vs. b&w. Then light level or grain structure.

fighting...
fighting...
losing...
lost...


"that's what she said".

ok. right. coffee is done. off to check my email for nipples.

you can be a snob all you like I dont mind. Wont really give me the money for the film or equipment for 35 though. I've never edited or filmed with 35mm. The closest I've come is lifted a 35mm movie reel to load into a projector...that was heavy as fuck!

I want to use 8 because I have access to equipment, and now film stock.. And because I dig the grottyness and comparitively low quality look. I dont want to make huge movies, just capture some random fun footage. No I wouldn't edit. Could but it would be pointless really, I'd be happy with the reels as is. Then transfered to video.

Id like to shoot in both colour and black and white. More interested in lighting for best results. I'm guessing that it is all outdoor day time only? or large amounts of studio light? I'm aware that grain is going to be an issue because of the size of the film but as I said up there the grungy style of the film is partly what is appealing so don't really mind as long as exposure is alright.

point form writing. is all I can manage. it seems. ??

anyway your snobbery is welcome if it can help me.

no turning my nerdy film thread into cock jokes.

I'd never heard of double super 8 so I looked it up on wikipedia--its 16mm film with 8mm sprockets--you seem to need a special camera. You load it on one pass and then reverse it for the second pass. It gets split into two regular 8mm pieces on developing.

Otherwise, it sounds like you've answered your own question. Get some of each and shoot it and see what it looks like.

Do you have a digital camera that has ASA settings? You can use that to see how much light you need for the 8mm. Do you have the camera and know how fast the lens is and what shutter speeds are available?

The 200 or 160 should do available light reasonably well.

This was a long time ago but I'm pretty sure it was shot on plus x (100asa) with two mongo (1kw) lights. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzRHySNtf0o

says video no longer available??

I dont have the camera at the moment, it's packed up in storage. One of them is one of the first canons, the other I think is a hanimex but I honestly dont remember. There are two but Im sure that neither takes 16mm.

wow how silly am I, yeh I do have digi SLR.. okay so if I'm checking exposure ordinary 64 is just as it is.. if its to be push processed I just check exposure as if it were ordinary 160, or whatever it is being compensated to? Or is it better to be a little on the over exposed side for that?

Huh! I guess my clicking on it alerted the copyright police... It was a very 80's rendition of Laurie Anderson's Excellant Birds.

Yeah, you got the idea of checking exposure--except that it would be a lot more useful if you knew the speed of the lens and shutter speeds. If'n ya know the names, I'm sure you can look it up.

I don't know about over/under exposing--it probably depends on the stock. I guess I'd tend to a little under exposing. For your porpoises, probably doesn't matter too much.

i havent heard of double super 8 but of double 8 which was 16mm split in half. ancient cameras. i have a handful of those on a shelf.

i was gonna use (super)16mm ektachrome in an upcoming project and have it scanned to HD but it's hard to find a cinematographer and it's pricey anyway and blah blah blah so i'm shooting it straight to HD.

ayawawayayawawa.

super8 development will likely include transfer to video so you could actually edit in a NLE.

ps the ektachrome will give you lovely saturated colors if well exposed-- otherwise it will be all washed out . so get yr meter.

it doesnt, :( (guess there just arent many places left here that do it, so I get what I'm given) but I can have it done as an extra option. Will probably opt to have a go at xfer myself though. Through frame by frame and filming projections with speed slowed down/up to fit into fps.

ah okay neat. This is kind of what I was asking too... I know EXACTLY what most brands of still film will do to colour saturation and overall quality look in all light conditions.. but have NO IDEA for this kind of thing. thankyou!

I was pretty good at photography until I learned I needed to own my own camera.

Like always, I know nothing of the technical details.

come in to the dark room with me ;) I'll show you.

No, I'm still scarred by that one scene in Ghostbuster 2.

pft. :(

where did you get the film from?

I remember making a thread about this a while back and, yeah, Tokolosh was the man to speak to. I remember him saying it's rather awfully expensive and hard to actually find a place to process the film. Not to mention you only get 3 minutes of filming per roll, making it time consuming aswell as costly.

BUT! if you find out more, I'd surely like to be informed, too. My gf's dad owns a super 8 camera in perfect condition, so I have a camera (and perhaps film) accessible to me that I'd still like to play with.

telecine for super8 can be pretty cheap as there are many homemade solutions-- people have rigged some cool low-cost scanners. worth trying as it lets you edit.


i notice majority of your films are reversal-- the ektachrome of course is too. this means you get a positive copy and there's no need to make a negative and a working copy but you watch your film directly. like slides. ive never tried b/w reversal, but color is awesome.

you can also cross-process for weird effect (process reversal as negative or viceversa).

k gtg

http://www.nanolab.com.au/

pretty sure the ektachrome processing is not the same as c41/e6 cross process though so I dont know that I'd have access to someone who will do that for me? I know I would not do it in my lab if I were only running small scale heheh. In my experience with still film, slide looks great processed in c41 as it tends to exaggerate everything but I dont really like negs in e6 as the colour looks messy. Or at least the look is no where near as nice to me... Do you know if the results are similar this way?

yeh.. cheaper is good. Plus.. I was kind of looking forward to looking at the different results I could get and whether it would look completely different visually, or not noticeable.

re: telecine Something to be aware of is the difference in frame rate between film and video. For experimental porpoises, yeah, you can just project the film on a wall and record it with a camcorder. Using a CMOS camcorder would produce very spotty results; a CCD model would be preferred. Your eye has persistance but camcorders don't.

A professional telecine compensates for the difference in frame rates--doubling or tripling video fields to match with the film frames. yr lab has a good tutorial on it... (And you know they don't process B&W, right?)

But, doing it at home, you can do optical effects like project/shoot at an angle, zoom in, etc.

yeh I read the tute about frame rates. So should be okay.. will play with projection speed I guess. What is the difference between cmos camcoder and ccd?

Didnt see they don't black and white process.. hmm.

cmos grabs a whole frame at a time; ccd grabs a frame line by line by line. Why do you care? The easier example is a flash bulb going off--the fraction of a second the flash illuminates the scene, you'll see that part bright and the other part dark. look at this http://vimeo.com/3385757

But you'll run into the same problem with the projector--some fraction of the time, there will be light projected the other fraction will be dark--your eyes won't see it but the camera will.

There will still be an issue with CCDs but less so than cmos. Your camera will probably advertise why kind of sensor it uses right on the unit.

Sounds like there are other places in OZ that'l do the B&W.

Now I'm thinking about buying one of those Bolexs I see on craigslist from time to time... Yeah, like I have time or money for that...

<fraction of a second later> No, no I'm not. One of my peeves with film is the frame rate. I'd rather have more frames per second than less. But you with yr 25fps television would probably not notice.

Do you know what frame rate you'll be shooting? Standard 18fps or 24fps?

was that a lead in to what you were explaining or were you really asking why I cared? I care because you just said it's important... if you were asking.


No idea as I said I dont have the cameras atm, and Im guessing it will depend on that. :(

Yes, that was an attempt to be conversational--I did assume you wanted to know. Perhaps, 'why does this matter?' would have been better.

Good luck with yr experimenting. Let us know how you make out.

ektachrome is reversal and reversal means a positive image like slide so here you'd be talking e6-c41 cross processing. you have a majority of reversal film so that's what im talking about.

a friend of minewho used to work in film made this cool as shit movie where the reds looked insane and the sky was a weird ominous color and it was just brilliant. it was reversal film cross-processed and since that's what you've got i'd say it's worth trying it yourself.

by the way i clicked your link and that lab you're using (or just buying from?_) does telecine to miniDV. that's the way to go if you don't wanna be cutting tiny film strips. plus you can add further shit digitally. plus you can distribute without making film prints.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?wi3nydhuzdv

CHEERS TO YOU! This will help you in your quest.

What I meant was.. ektachrome doesn't use the same chemistry to process as either slide;e6 or neg;c41 process. Just wasn't sure WHAT chemistry it did use. Apparently though now it is fairly standard to process ektachrome in e6.. I guess previous chem(long list of types used) is discontinued or not used by most labs, or non die hareds.. and thus modern ektachrome64t/100d is suited for e6 process.? :( There are sites where people suggest otherwise though.. and note ECN-2 rather than c41 for x process... and that there is also e6 specific for cinematic footage film stock rather than still.. and I wonder which is the chem process the lab I have access to, uses. Think I will need to email the group perhaps and list my q's in order to get an idea of what my options are. They do list a lab in Melb that does b/w though so yey.

this film on youtube lists ecn-2 as x process for ektachrome and has super blown out reds. Was it anything like that? --->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q83bSsDmf90

hehe its fine. Sometimes I seem to have bouts of aspergers :P

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/bu...ed=1&th&emc=th

i really dont know all the details cuz i work in video and when i need film shot i get someone to do it.

my friend's movie looked way better-- that film in the youtube looks overexposed and therefore the lovely color saturation of ektachrome is lost. hence the need for good metering.

the reason i know this is cuz i recently did some test shots on ektrachrome to see if it was worth it to shoot in film over video. actually shot in film too-- but the ektachrome looked fucking awesome when it was well exposed, washed out when not. negative film is a bit more tolerant of extremes. as you can see i have no theory, only empirical knowledge of this shit.

but for xperiment, try stuff.

i could email my friend and ask him what processed he used exactly-- he'd do weird shit like bury the can of film for 3 months etch-- but the thing is that even if i know, his video is on dvd and i'd have to rip it and blah blah . just experiment! go for it.

& here is nanolab's telecine page

http://www.nanolab.com.au/telecine.htm

never did end up doing this but still want to. I found 8mm of me as a baby a few months ago and it made me want to try again.

Bump if anyone else since has knowledge to share.

Eh. Shoot video and turn it into grungey 8mm look in post.

It'd be a lot cheaper.

but its just not the same :(

nor anywhere near as fun/

I'll grant you that it is different. But I would argue that it is not necessarily less fun.

It would be different if you were actually messing with actual film but with cartridged 8mm, what's the point?

But then, I've always considered myself less of a shooter than an editor. (And even then, I haven't even turned the computer on in weeks--shee-it!)

My video camera had a zillion ways to tweak the image but I always shot fairly neutral so I could mess with it in post.

sometimes I do math problems for fun. :(

fun comes in odd shapes and sizes when you are phoenix.

The big question is: what is your goal?

Is your goal to follow a process or create a result?

Certainly, there is something to be said for following a process--to see how much fun it can be look at the US Congress' 'debate' on health care. Film has a long and storied tradition behind it. In the hands of someone with a lot of money, you can do a lot of interesting things with it. And golly, gee, whiz, I loved the process of working with 16mm. Again, mostly regarding post. After years of pushing electronic buttons to see my work, there is something engagingly visceral in grabbing the film, cutting it, and seeing the results.

But for most people, the role of filmmaking is to tell a story. And video has become the great equalizer in this regard. Over ten years ago, that Sony VX1000 made low cost, high quality results extremely affordable. Now, for the same amount or less, HD production is feasible.

I think most filmmakers want to use the technology that allows them to realize their story in the most unobtrusive manner possible. Certainly others like the challenge of either working in a cutting edge environment or an archaic one.

I think, if process is your goal, then posting questions here is useless. You should go out and just shoot stuff and see what happens. Learning about what other people have done will only get in your way of being creative in YOUR style.