Arguably that ad campaign anticipated one of the primary uses of the original Super 8.
Home bedroom movies, circa 60’s & 70’s. They are out there somewhere.
I’ll be curious to see how this pans out. There needs to be a whole ecosystem to support something like this. I don’t know how many old super-8 projectors are still viable to be picked up on Craigslist or garage sales…
Will they add audio, I wonder.
Maybe I’ll buy some overpriced cartridges for my old Chinon 506SMXL.
Or not…
If it’s 1977 all over again, do not buy a Chinon 506SMXL unless you have an Alexander Payne sized allowance and go to an Alexander Payne sized high school with an Alexander Payne sized circle of friends.
Doubly do not buy a Chinon 506SMXL if you go to one the dysfunctional rural high schools that brought Iowa’s open enrollment law in itself, have two teachers that should have been supportive in a world that made some intuitive sense but were real bitches about it, and the whole attitude surrounding the place was it’s not spelling, it’s not grammar, it’s not sports, it’s not 4H, it’s not normal, and it’s not a real talent that we support here.
The Super 8 format was designed with support for a single-channel magnetically-recorded audio track and the artist’s rendering in the WSJ looks like it might have a microphone as part of the top handle. So I’d say it will definitely have audio.
Does that processing cost include the film? Because a 50-ft super-8 cartridge is appx. $22 from B&H, and Dwayne’s in Parsons, KS will process for $12.
I was thinking the same thing. Kodachrome is dead, but part of what makes Super-8 such a desirable medium for artists was the quality of light and color, or lack thereof, that K40 provided as a film stock.
Their processing is said to include returning a digital version as well as the analog.
What’s the SD slot there for is the real question.
I doubt it includes the film. I don’t think Dwayne’s does scanning, do they? I couldn’t find it anywhere on their site.
Indeed!
I mean, if it’s got a digital viewfinder… does that mean it’s a digital camera that also happens to shoot film?
And that price? That must be with a fixed lens of dubious quality (which is not, I should point out, inherently a bad thing).
I’m interested.
That’s the other real question! The sensor sends the image to the little screen but is it of enough quality to do both?
Ricoh 6mm lens BTW, this PetaPixel article is a lot better about the tech: http://petapixel.com/2016/01/06/kodak-is-bringing-back-the-super-8-as-a-film-camera-with-digital-features/
At this price point I am less interested. Especially when I have to send it in to be developed. Blech.
A sterling example of why Kodak is dying.
No, Dwayne’s doesn’t do scanning, except commodity photo-cd scans (as far as I know; I haven’t used them since the end of Kodachrome). That still seems like a bit much even for a roll scan, but I guess it depends on the quality of the scan. And, there’s still the problem faced by all the camera makers, which is a huge supply of working used cameras that can be had for cheap.
unless it works.
Kodak would presumably not be foolish enough to do this(both because it is probably still the more expensive option, though probably not for too long as miniaturization continues; and because the people most excited about this product would rise up with pitchforks if they did); but it would be a rather delightful arrangement if, to skip the bulky prism arrangement needed to split light coming in through the lens to both feed the preview-screen sensor and expose the film, they went with a 100% digital on the image capture side; and then used an LED or laser diode arrangement to expose the film based on the image data from the digital sensor.
This wouldn’t be a terribly good idea; but it might actually be surprisingly doable. Durst’s “Lambda” photographic printer does exactly that: exposes conventional film according to a digital input, so that the result can be chemically processed for a product effectively identical to any other photo produced from a negative; I think there are a few competing products as well. The shrinking of contemporary laser printer optics makes me suspect that you could probably fit a laser-exposure apparatus for 8mm into a reasonably handheld device.
Might get you burned for heresy; but doable.
8mm film (average speeds) IS technically around 1080p.
Sounds dumb, but yeah, could work.
That’s just a perfect excuse to introduce lossy compression somewhere in the workflow, to provide the artifacts that today’s budding filmmakers are comfortable with while acclimatizing to the alien analog environment.
