Nightfly
Screenwriter
Posts: 909
Online Status:
|
Post by Nightfly on May 31, 2021 11:30:24 GMT
I had the same thing for a while in 1980. A Russian Quarz camera second hand from the local camera shop for about £15. You got about 35 seconds of footage per wind, but if you were using it for single frame animation, 35 seconds was a long time. The chap at the shop threw in a little film splitter in case I ever wanted to develop my own film (which I wouldn't have had a clue about). It used Standard 8mm film which I believe is even harder to get these days than Super 8. Never tried movie film developing but did 35 mm and large format stuff, including colour which is challenging as you have to work in total darkness. With black and white you can have a red light on. It was amazing seeing these pictures appear in front of your eyes. I tried B&W still developing during an activities week at school once, but the results put me off - purely down to my own failure to master it. However, my first lesson in photo processing came much earlier at the age of 5 from the Dad of the kid down the street. During the holidays we fancied drawing so opened a full pack of photographic paper in daylight thinking it was drawing paper. We couldn't understand why the guy was so mad. "But we've only used two sheets - the rest are still OK!"
|
|
Sparky
Producer
Status? Would that be Credit or in Society?
Posts: 2,784
Online Status:
|
Post by Sparky on Jun 1, 2021 7:25:05 GMT
You'll love it. In the late 70s I used to get "Movie Maker" magazine aimed at amateur filmmakers and used to see the 8mm version of the Bolex camera Oliver used advertised regularly. I might be wrong, but the one he was using looked like a spring wound mechanism drive as opposed to battery powered. Thinking back to Vision On, they must have had a network of similar garden shed animators working for them as I'm sure a lot of those wouldn't have been made in house. My dad had a clockwork 8mm camera, you had to go into a semi-dark room and change the film over half way through, they then spliced it in half after developing to make one continuous film. Our first camera was picked up at a car-boot for about £5 - a "Standard 8mm" clockwork thing. I still have it - and it works.
The "Standard 8mm" negative was 16mm, as you say, you'd expose one side, spin the film around and expose the other side. When it was processed, they would split the film and join the two lengths together.
"Super 8mm" - had smaller perf holes, a larger frame area and came in a cartridge, later on they added a magnetic stripe so you could dubb sound on. I still have our first "Super 8mm" camera too - which was a bit more sophisticated; as it had a rewind facility - so you could wind film back and double expose it - handy for superimposing your own captions.
It also had a more useful Light Meter too.
I'd never dare processing my own film! Yikes.
|
|
Nightfly
Screenwriter
Posts: 909
Online Status:
|
Post by Nightfly on Jun 1, 2021 8:48:57 GMT
My dad had a clockwork 8mm camera, you had to go into a semi-dark room and change the film over half way through, they then spliced it in half after developing to make one continuous film. Our first camera was picked up at a car-boot for about £5 - a "Standard 8mm" clockwork thing. I still have it - and it works. The "Standard 8mm" negative was 16mm, as you say, you'd expose one side, spin the film around and expose the other side. When it was processed, they would split the film and join the two lengths together. "Super 8mm" - had smaller perf holes, a larger frame area and came in a cartridge, later on they added a magnetic stripe so you could dubb sound on. I still have our first "Super 8mm" camera too - which was a bit more sophisticated; as it had a rewind facility - so you could wind film back and double expose it - handy for superimposing your own captions.
It also had a more useful Light Meter too.
I'd never dare processing my own film! Yikes. The most popular 8mm film stock I remember was Kodachrome K40 and I just managed to get a cartridge that had been lying around for 10-15 years processed at the only lab in the world left that could process it before they closed in 2010. It was only by chance that I had seen an article online that warned of the end of Kodachrome. I still have my old reels and a collection of my Father-in-Laws Std 8 reels and managed to get a projector working last year with an idea of transferring them to digital. I believe it can be done by adjusting the projector speed to eliminate flicker, though I didn't have much success when I tried. A project for the winter I think
|
|
Sparky
Producer
Status? Would that be Credit or in Society?
Posts: 2,784
Online Status:
|
Post by Sparky on Jun 1, 2021 15:43:21 GMT
Our first camera was picked up at a car-boot for about £5 - a "Standard 8mm" clockwork thing. I still have it - and it works. The "Standard 8mm" negative was 16mm, as you say, you'd expose one side, spin the film around and expose the other side. When it was processed, they would split the film and join the two lengths together. "Super 8mm" - had smaller perf holes, a larger frame area and came in a cartridge, later on they added a magnetic stripe so you could dubb sound on. I still have our first "Super 8mm" camera too - which was a bit more sophisticated; as it had a rewind facility - so you could wind film back and double expose it - handy for superimposing your own captions.
It also had a more useful Light Meter too.
I'd never dare processing my own film! Yikes. The most popular 8mm film stock I remember was Kodachrome K40 and I just managed to get a cartridge that had been lying around for 10-15 years processed at the only lab in the world left that could process it before they closed in 2010. It was only by chance that I had seen an article online that warned of the end of Kodachrome. I still have my old reels and a collection of my Father-in-Laws Std 8 reels and managed to get a projector working last year with an idea of transferring them to digital. I believe it can be done by adjusting the projector speed to eliminate flicker, though I didn't have much success when I tried. A project for the winter I think Kodak have begun producing 8mm film stock again - (not cheap either), which now includes Processing and Digitising. The K40 stuff was good - especially if it was stored correctly.
As for transferring...
Flash Scan will produce the best results (but is quite expensive).
To do it using a video camera - ideally, you'd need a video camera with a manual mode; and a shutter setting of 1/25 - that'd help with the flicker. However - providing there isn't sound, you can slow the projector down to match the shutter speed. The frame rate can then be corrected in any video editing software to get it back to what it should be. Standard 8mm was 18 Frames Per Second. Also a projector with a double bladed shutter would help hugely. Most 8mm projectors are single bladed. I saw a chap on youtube machine his own 5 bladed shutter and fitted it in a projector - he had a lathe (and the balls) to do it correctly.
I did some stuff a few years back, best results were in a dark room with a picture size roughly smaller than A5 paper.
Ideally, you'd need to get the camera centre of the picture, but this isn't always possible. To get round it, I projected the image to a sheet of A4 set at 45deg angle from the projector - so the image was oblique, but the camera being the opposite angle corrected the image, and there.
Another trick I tried using a converted 16mm projector involved replacing the projection lamp with a daylight LED lamp and small dimmer. I removed the projector lense and filmed the gate. This gave a pin sharp image that needed to be reversed (as it was upside down).
If you struggle - send a message (or start a seperate thread) - I can try and help you avoid the pitfalls and cursing I went through!
|
|