Who is still shooting on Super 8 or 16mm?

A forum to share ideas and opinions on the equipment and technical aspects of film, video and AV making.
tom hardwick
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Post by tom hardwick »

Talk of issues around K40's colour rendition and flaws has me quite taken aback, Bart. I tested a lot of Super-8 filmstock back when, and Kodachrome II and K40 weren't just head and shoulders above all the rest ~ they were on a different planet.

OK, I often felt the processing wasn't as tightly supervised as the film production and packaging, and having to trust the post for two trips was heart-stopping, but even now, 35 years later, I'm still in awe at what the Kodak R & D guys came up with.

They made Standard-8 and Super-8 possible. They made sync sound easy. They made capturing and keeping the past possible, whereas Orwo, Perutz, Agfa and even Ektachrome were only playing with a few years.

And here you are telling me 64T is the equal of a film produced in 1974. Well if film research is anything like any other research, a product that's 34 years newer should be leaps better, not just comparable to - which is what I suspect it is.

Kodak had a good run with Kodachrome and so did we all. I go along with Ned's line: all praise to them.

tom.
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Blue Audio Visual
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Post by Blue Audio Visual »

Fair enough Tom, I guess that what I should have said was "I personally believe that in terms of colour rendition it looks better than K40". It is fair to say that in some other respects it is inferior to K40, grain being an example. If you gave me the choice between shooting a cart of K40 and a cart of 64T, I'd choose the Kodachrome over the Ektachrome. I believe, however, that my choice would be influenced by nostalgia and sentimentality.

My point is that this is not a choice that people are presented with these days, as Kodachrome has gone to the 'great laboratory in the sky'. As there is no point crying over spilt milk, why not celebrate the positive aspects of the material available today, rather than gaze retrospectively and mournfully at the past?

You do a lot of Super 8 transfers Tom, I've met you and discussed business with you in our shop in the past, so I know that is your trade. Has anyone sent you any well exposed and well developed 64T yet to transfer? I'd be interested to see what comparisons you would make between the two. I'm not saying this in a 'lay down the gauntlet and challenge you' manner, but because I'd be interested in your opinion.

Bart
tom hardwick
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Post by tom hardwick »

No 64T has arrived for transfer yet Bart, but yes, I'd be very interested to see how it looked. As you say, colour is so subjective and can be influenced by the room lighting, screen colour, lamp design, camera A>D filter and of course lens colour shifts - in camera and projector.

But the biggest difference that strikes me most often is that Kodachrome (as advertised by Paul Simon) retains its colours so beautifully over the years, whereas all other films gently shift towards grizzly shades of magenta or cyan or even simply end up as all the reds.

Kodachrome was home friendly and didn't seem to care how it was stored, a huge plus point. The fact that the colours were lovely, the grain was the finest and the sharpness in a world of its own didn't hurt sales at all. It must've pained Fuji, who presumably rejoiced that their 35 mm film stock outsold Kodak's.

Colour shifts are not a total loss as the real-time colour correction combined with white and black balance filtration in my computer can correct whole swathes of footage at a click of the mouse. Of course this relies on my own set-up being neutral, and my colour eyesight being ok.

But whereas colour correction has saved the day many a time I wonder if any clients actually notice - after all, most films come to me from attic boxes that haven't been opened for years. And whereas I'm gob-smacked at how the PC has improved on the original, the client may well consider the results 'slightly greenish' when he plays his transfer DVD straight after watching the weather girl on BBC 1, and wonders why I didn't colour correct.

Grainy stock is ok I find - less objectional than colour shifts and wadges of fluff in the camera gate. The latter can sometimes be eliminated by zooming in on the image, but this of course introduces its own losses. It's all one big balancing act.

Some films have had a permanent curl to them, such that my gates don't seem able to hold them flat on projection. Splices come made with sellotape (good ones) and sticky plaster (bad ones). Cleaning the film often has it falling apart between the rewind arms. When a film comes from a real filmmaker and 400 feet of the stuff glides through my projector without a hitch, oh what a joy that is.

tom.
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Blue Audio Visual
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Post by Blue Audio Visual »

tom hardwick wrote: But the biggest difference that strikes me most often is that Kodachrome (as advertised by Paul Simon) retains its colours so beautifully over the years, whereas all other films gently shift towards grizzly shades of magenta or cyan or even simply end up as all the reds.
I guess that we are both approaching these issues from opposite ends of the spectrum. Me from the point of view of origination of material, you from the transfer business standpoint. The archival qualities of Kodachrome in its various guises are well documented and beyond reproach compared to other emulsions, as you point out. It is certainly a possibility that 40 year old Ektachrome 64T will have exhibited serious colour shift/fade. There is, incidentally, a large body of evidence that points to the fact that developed Kodachrome deteriorates significantly after repeated projection, though I assume that this is only really relevant to slides which may be exposed to light for many minutes at a time. In motion picture film the typical exposure per frame on projection is less than 1/18th second. Presumably the film would be shredded to pieces by repeated passage through the mechanism of a projector before any fading could ever happen.
tom hardwick wrote: Colour shifts are not a total loss as the real-time colour correction combined with white and black balance filtration in my computer can correct whole swathes of footage at a click of the mouse.
What real-time colour correction do you use? Is this something built into your video camera?
tom hardwick wrote:Cleaning the film often has it falling apart between the rewind arms. When a film comes from a real filmmaker and 400 feet of the stuff glides through my projector without a hitch, oh what a joy that is.
What is your personal preference for cleaning/lubricating film?

Bart
tom hardwick
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Post by tom hardwick »

Good points you raise Bart, and now that film is shot, processed and digitized all in short order makes their archival properties less demanding. All my VHS tapes recorded 20 years ago have the same colours then as now, and that wasn't even digital.

No colour correction done in camera on film transfer, although a manual white balance before transfer begins can help matters. My Canopus Storm2 card has quite magical CC properties, where my cursor can be moved around inside a stationary frame from the film and at any point I can say, 'Yes, apply that CC to the entire clip'. The CC is also variable over time (key framable) - very useful I find.

Cleaning the film is my Nr 1 priority. Most film arrives looking as if it has been edited on the carpet with the family dog 'helping'. Cleaning preps are akin to rubbing down your front door prior to the paint application. I have geared rewind arms spaced a good metre apart on the work bench and I use a 'million times washed cotton hankie' with FC50 Film Cleaner. £8.50 direct from 01249 714555 if that helps. But that's only because I've run out of 2:22 cleaner - the best in the biz.

Of course the client still sees the shadow of the hairs in his camera gate. I just hope he doesn't sit there thinking that tom didn't clean his film very well before transfer.

tom.
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FILM THURSO
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Post by FILM THURSO »

We do tell people about film. One of our young members buys the occasional cartridge of 64T and he's only 20 years old. He has used K40 and has the same opinion- better resolution and better value for money. We haven't stopped promoting film to our members we've just stopped using film because we have been priced out.
We fully relate to all our members about why one might choose film or video in their various forms for their projects. The basic fundimental is to make the film in the way that suites the project or as near to it as budget and resources will allow. The various plus points are not missed out but we have to be realistic to our members- the whole film business costs.
Incidentally we just put together a breakdance movie from 21 year old VHS masters done on a Ferguson Videostar camera- aparently one of the best of it's time. We had to do a heck of a lot of picture restoration from tapes that have rarely been run and are stored in good conditions. We made a movie from old films between 1932 and the present with no requirement for color corrections even on the 1940s color material. Messy film is just standard care by those who don't work with it the whole time. If we all looked after film as keenly as we film makers, then there would be very little work needed on old film or video excepting natural fades and shrinkages. Color dies fade with exposure or chemical content in the air, magnetic recordings can degrade with damp conditions or proximity to the likes of a light switch or speaker cone. Even electrical storms can chip away at the image quality on a safely stored magnetic recordings. Digital tapes are unbelievably easily currupted by the tinest spec of dirt or electro static. Film and video are both subject to shrinkage and chemical breakdown of the supporting base.
We have to be realistic that all recording mediums have their faults as well as their plusses. When we want a high res film and the manufacturer discontinues the only decent one- we say that's a fault. If all film was high res and we wanted a gritty blue (like Fuji RT200 unfiltered) then K40 would be a fault.
So we currently can't get a decent enough high res film to restore our (and we have a lot) 35mm and 9.5mm footage- are we wrong to complain about what is on offer.
We haven't said 64T is untter crud, we have said it doesn't give us what we need in a super 8 stock in any respect.
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FILM THURSO
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Post by FILM THURSO »

This thread is like my local newspaper (?) in which most news isn't news. It's just a carefully written free advert! It's time we charged by the column inch! :lol:
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Dave Watterson
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Post by Dave Watterson »

Funny no one mentions that the way you physically store either films or video tapes can cause problems ... not just the atmospheric or electrical problems "Thurso" sensibly mentioned but gravity.

Store them flat on a shelf and sections of film can slide out of alignment on the spool if there is any slackness, then when picked up and run that can cause abrasion. Much the same can happen with video cassettes.

Store them up on end and the weight of one part pressing on the next layer down can cause adhesion between layers of a film and magnetic transfer between layers of a video tape.

But for most of us such concerns are academic.

As for serial advertising - if it helps people and comes with useful info attached, who cares? What we don't much care for are straight commercial ads ... but who in their right business mind is in the non-commercial movie world?!?! The dealers and specialists who do so much for us do it for love rather than money. Their profits come from other parts of the businesses.

Cheers

Dave
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FILM THURSO
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Post by FILM THURSO »

Stickey emulsion, Ah yes. We came into a collection of hours and hours of mag units from a private collection which had been stored in a farm shed that had slowly collapsed over a number of years. Whilst the tapes will play it was painful to watch them run as the emulsion stuck to the backside of the mag base. :shock:
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