Our resident retrofood critic Giles Perkins has revealed a "pre-prototype" of what could turn out to be an amazing Super 8mm video transfer system. Matthew Greene is hard at work pairing the Red One Camera with the surprisingly affordable MovieStuff Video Workprinter. The result should be high-resolution single frame capture at up to 30 frames per second. The Red One supports resolutions up to 4K (4092 horizontal pixels), far outstripping the resolution and bit depth of Blu-ray hi-def video (and 8mm film, for that matter).
The MovieStuff Workprinter is a film projector modified to offer frame-by-frame digital capture. Unlike companies who recommend projecting film on the wall and videotaping the result, Moviestuff's equipment digitizes each movie frame sequentially using a digital camcorder connected to a Windows or Macintosh computer. Over 1000 units have been shipped, with prices starting at a mere $1395.
WorkPrinter owners usually mate their equipment with a decent standard definition prosumer camcorder, but Matthew Greene has chosen to integrate the Red One HD camera, which offers cinematic quality at a starting price of under $20,000 - a mere fraction of the price of comparable high-end digital cinema cameras. The Red One is capable of significantly outstripping the resolving power of Super 8 film, enabling HD transfer that captures the magical look and grain of Super 8.
I can't wait to see footage captured with this setup, which brilliantly combines technologies developed four decades apart.
Red One and Super 8mm at last! [onSuper8.org]



The threading is much simpler than most projectors, which makes me fear for the safety of any film I'd run through it. All of those extra gears and spindles that you see on larger projectors are there to take the strain off of the film as it runs through the projection path. Not the kind of thing I'd want to eliminate to reduce costs.
Marvelously Miniscule 35mm slide projector
The Cine-Kodak Eight featured a wind-up spring motor and a simple parallel viewfinder built into the handle on top of the case. Everything was completely manual -- you set the exposure by hand and fancy zoom lenses were still decades away. None of that mattered, because aspiring filmmakers suddenly had an affordable and compact camera to shoot home movies. It remained on the market until 1947.
There are lots of practical reasons to not have a bright red video camera (think of all the charging bulls it might attract!), but that doesn't mean that your editing equipment can't be! Let's look back some 50 years to Kalart's 8mm film editor - in bright red plastic! This is pretty daring - remember that photo equipment was almost always in serious gun-metal finishes, or dour black. What a great way to perk up the drudgery of editing your home movies!
The box promises that through editing you can transform your own films into polished "movieland" type productions with this simple device. The Kalart even goes so far as to simplify advancing and rewinding the film by just using one crank. Using a complicated internal mechanism, you use a single crank to move the film forwards and backwards. To be honest, I find the single crank thing more confusing than anything - and the gimmickry that makes it work isn't always the most reliable.
Several cameras - such as the Quarz 2x8 Super-3 above - did away with the cartridge completely and accepted Double Super 8 film on reels. Double Super 8 (DS8) is a hybrid format that uses 16mm wide film to
capture Super 8 sized frames. One half of the film is exposed, the
reels are flipped, and the other half is shot. The 16mm strip is cut
into two 8mm-wide reels after processing. It was a clever system.
The Bolex H16 is one of the most popular 16mm movie cameras ever made. The original H16 was introduced in 1935 and the modern spring-operated SBM model can still be purchased new. Bolex cameras remain extremely popular among film students and experimental filmmakers, because they're capable of capturing images that put sterile "High-Def" camcorders to shame. It's even possible to convert vintage cameras to shoot modern widescreen Super 16mm format.
The Bell & Howell 2709 was a hand-cranked 35mm camera that
became the mainstay of Hollywood silent movie production upon its introduction
in 1911. In fact, nearly every major Hollywood production of the era was shot on a
2709 or its competitor, the Mitchell Standard. Unbelievably, this model
remained in production into the 1950s, although I suspect many of the
later units were used for animation purposes, rather than hand-cranked
live action.
There is hope for stop motion animators who want to shoot with digital equipment, thanks to modern digital still camera technology and some clever software. Programs like Stop Motion Pro are capable of controlling a wide variety of digital cameras, including some affordable point-and-shoot models. The program costs anywhere from $70 to $595, depending on the features you require. The basic package is suitable for hobbyists, while the more costly versions add uncompressed image storage, unlimited resolution and multi-monitor output.
