14 ms·

Kodak resurrects Super 8

278 points by tarp 11y ago

namuol 11y ago
Well, this will surely at least be a collectible, some day.
ryandamm 11y ago
The death of film has more to do with distribution than acquisition; the pervasive switch to digital projection completely killed the last bastion of demand for film stock. (A typical film might requires 100s to 1000s as much stock for delivery to theaters as it needed for initial capture.) That said, you can't get the entire Super8 look with digital filters. There are optical properties (have to use the same lens and sensor size), and the way it handles highlights vs lowlights is different than digital sensors. (The 'rolloff' in the highlights, rather than clipping at saturation, is very desirable.) And it's true that film isn't entirely dead in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino shot his most recent film on 70mm stock. But that's nearly 100x the resolution of 8mm film, so they're not really comparable. OTOH, I recently saw Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom," which was shot on 16mm reversal (color, not negative) film stock for the look. In each case, the choice of film stock definitely affected the look of the film. It also affected the act of shooting the film; even if you can mimic a filmic look digitally (through digital acquisition and post processing), shooting digitally is very different than shooting film. I happen to prefer digital, but courses for horses. But yeah, for consumers, it's pretty much a hipster affectation. Good for Kodak, though! Also of note in the annals of hipster retro photography is 'The Impossible Project,' which revived Polaroid film: https://www.the-impossible-project.com/ https://www.the-impossible-project.com/ Also, 'lomography.'
WalterBright 11y ago
It'd be nice to see films shot in color again instead of blue and orange. http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and-blue/ http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange...
- platz 11y ago
  Go see Carol (shot on 16mm)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
lectrick 11y ago
Is there an actual double-blind study that proves that digital still cannot beat analog in certain realms? Because I'm having a hard time believing that this "analogue renaissance" isn't just pure marketing hokum.
- plaguuuuuu 11y ago
  If nothing else, it's a stylistic choice. Choosing how a film should look, the colours and tonality etc, is a creative process and has aesthetic and therefore subjective goals. You can't really say which one is 'better', only that they're different.
  - lectrick 11y ago
    Everything you described is at least theoretically digitizable.
    - leejo 11y ago
      This is the best thing i've read on the whole film vs digital debate: http://www.fototazo.com/2015/04/the-meaning-of-films-decline.html http://www.fototazo.com/2015/04/the-meaning-of-films-decline... # TLDR: most film advocates claim all the wrong reasons for shooting film, and i say this as someone who is primarily a film shooter. The most compelling reason to shoot film is because it gives you access to a range of camera and lens technology that is impossible to replicate with digital without significant compromise in quality and/or shooting style. Nolan shoots on IMAX cameras with modified Zeiss lenses that give an extremely shallow depth of field (witness some of the scenes in The Dark Knight Rises). Tarantino shooting on Super Panavision 70 could not be replicated on digital without extreme cropping of a wide angle digital source, which would change the depth/perspective, or stitching (difficult if impossible in motion picture shooting). See also panoramic cameras: Fuji 6x17, Hasselblad X-Pan. Large format and even medium format, because the available digital backs have not yet reached the size of a full 6x6 negative. The digital back manufacturers claim they are "full frame" but when used on actual full frame 6x6 cameras they are anything but (this is not a resolution/quality argument, it is a "oh, my 100mm lens is now actually cropped" argument).
mtw 11y ago
These are all meaningless words without a sample video
markbnj 11y ago
I grew up in upstate NY and visited Kodak's campus in Rochester in their heyday. It was impressive as hell to a ten year-old. I'm sure the idea that the massive works and the business they represented could almost completely evaporate never occurred to the people working there. It's a little melancholy in some ways. I wish I could see this as more than a desperate attempt to rekindle that dead business, but I can't. How much do the benefits of using analog processes to capture the light really matter when the vast majority of people will access the content downstream through digital delivery platforms? Somewhere along the line the information is going to get sampled and aliased. Tarantino getting all nostalgic for analog content that will be shown to viewers via $100,000 digital projectors is one thing, but most photographs are viewed on phones, and in web browsers.
salmonet 11y ago
Came across a tweet about the Sony MiniDisc Recorder/Player going for hundreds and even thousands of dollars on Ebay. Nostalgia apparently sells. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R4.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xsony+MZ.TRS0&_nkw=sony+mz-rh1&_sacat=0 http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m5...
- bambax 11y ago
  That's amazing. I have one that works absolutely flawlessly; I still need to transfer what I have on those disks before I try to sell it, but then... Why would people pay that kind of money for this?? Do they need it to play their old disks? Wouldn't it be cheaper to have them transferred to another media by a lab?
  - 72deluxe 11y ago
    My brother has a bunch of MiniDisc players and recorders. I do not understand why. He refuses to get an MP3 player or use his phone but will instead record audio in REALTIME from CDs etc. to MiniDisc. He says the battery life is really good. The psychoacoustic modelling on the audio is not, however!! He even bought a multitrack minidisc desk. Apparently it was going cheap. I understand why - with 4 tracks of audio, it'll record 15 minutes. No good for long jams. I do not understand the fascination with it at all. Even an old Tascam portastudio or the modern equivalents that record to SD card would be better.
    - stinos 11y ago
      The psychoacoustic modelling on the audio is not, however!! There were quite some improvements between older and the latest models though, and the latter could also use uncompressed and/or lossless schemes. the fascination with it at all. One thing I really liked about it is the handling of discs. I don't know why, but I just liked the feeling of opening the player, ejecting a disc and inserting another one with a satisfactory 'click'.
      - 11y ago
SwellJoe 11y ago
I watched the analog-to-digital-to-analog trend happen in professional audio (I was going to school for audio as ProTools was beginning to be a thing, we worked on analog tape machines...but the year after I finished my degree, they brought in digital ADAT machines for the small labs, and eventually went digital in the 24 track room, as well). It's amusing how superstitious people can be, especially in industries that are mostly subjective but happen to bump up against a lot of technology. Audio, photography, video, and now film have all been through this. The final product will be delivered digitally for 99.9% of consumers. Why fight it? Why spend so much money, time, and effort, to work with inferior media? I dunno. I worked on analog tape machines (I was even a hold out, for a while, having a 1" 16 track machine, as big as a mini fridge, in my house for several years after digital multitracks were the smart choice), but there really is no good argument for it today. There was a brief window where the best digital equipment was inferior to the very best analog equipment, but it didn't last long. Maybe five years. We may still be in that window for film when comparing 70mm film to the best digital equipment...but, on the low end? Hell no. This janky little camera from Kodak will be a joke compared to digital equipment in the same price range. And, the film/processing costs will be outrageous comparatively speaking, limiting ones options when shooting to a significant degree. In short: This is just hipster bullshit. Just like analog audio is hipster bullshit.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  It's the same thing as using Polaroid cameras with Impossible film, or vinyl records. It's to find some tangibility in an era of intangibles. The low fidelity is the point.
  - mobiuscog 11y ago
    Absolutely - the lack of anything tangible in the modern digital world is a huge problem, and slowly people are realising this. Humans aren't designed for a 'virtual' existence - the technologies may be very useful and empowering in many ways, but they shouldn't take over life and reality.
- plaguuuuuu 11y ago
  With photography, film and audio alike, it's easy to prove that digital has orders of magnitude more precision and accuracy. That's great, but it's not the whole picture. Mixing desks are said to colour the sound in certain ways, and in doing so, introduce harmonics and other sorts of imprecision that would be anathema to digital components, for which THD and SNR are paramount and utter precision is the ultimate goal. Then, in the end, people listen to the source material with their own ears, which have totally different frequency responses anyway and the eardrum is basically an analogue device that will color the sound in the end anyway :D But then you start getting into things like guitar sounds. It's not that digital guitars sound better or worse - all you can really say is that they sound different. The real issue is that there's no objective sound that it should have - the electronics, whether digital or analogue, are effectively part of the instrument. And in the same way that analogue amps and effects colour the signal in specific ways that a guitarist or engineer might prefer, film imparts its own aesthetic qualities that a director or cinematographer might prefer.
fomoz 11y ago
That's crazy amazingly awesome. Need to know how much it costs though, both camera and film/processing/cloud.
- Aloha 11y ago
  I'd expect the camera to cost 2-800 and the processing/film to be about 30 bucks a cartridge. Too bad they don't make a color reversal film anymore, so you can project it too.
smacktoward 11y ago
I'm strugging to figure out who exactly this thing would be for. Amateurs for home movies? Nope, digital will always be cheaper, and faster/more convenient to work with to boot. Aspiring filmmakers? Nope, if you want to shoot on film professionally you'll want at least 16mm to avoid the magnification/graininess Super 8 brings with it. People nostalgic for the blurriness of old home movies? Do any of these actually exist?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  > People nostalgic for the blurriness of old home movies? Do any of these actually exist? Look at all the people buying vinyl records and ask yourself that again.
  - LeUsername 11y ago
    Vinyl version even of the same album is often mastered with less of the Loudness War.
- TD-Linux 11y ago
  >avoid the magnification/graininess Super 8 brings with it. But how else will your viewers know that you were hip enough to shoot on film?
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  I could see someone trying to shoot a professional movie that wanted that effect for part of it, because that part was supposed to be someone playing a Super-8 movie. But I suspect that there's a Photoshop filter for that...
  - iwillreply 11y ago
    Gus van Sant did exactly this in Paranoid Park. The skateboard scenes in the movie were shot on Super 8, as inspired by the common style for home made skate films. Here's a short clip: https://vimeo.com/7170912 https://vimeo.com/7170912
  - 11y ago
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
Interesting. But it doesn't solve the worst problem I've ever had with analog film: The developer lost the rolls that had our honeymoon pictures on them. (As compensation, they were generous enough to offer us... blank replacement rolls. We were not impressed.) That's the advantage digital has - you don't mail the pictures anywhere. Nobody can lose them for you. (Yeah, you can still lose them yourself...)
- dietrichepp 11y ago
  Tip from the pros: if the pictures are irreplaceable, then divide them in half. Send half to the developer. If it gets ruined, you've only ruined half. This is how wedding photographers who shot on film avoided getting sued into oblivion by angry brides (and yes, there are many, many photographers who have been sued into oblivion by angry brides, contract or no contract).
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    Yeah. I figured that out from losing my honeymoon pictures... :-<
  - madaxe_again 11y ago
    Or alternately learn to do manual colour positive processing. It's really not hard, and with a big tank you can do half a dozen 120 reels at a time.
    - dietrichepp 11y ago
      YMMV, the machines are very consistent, it takes some serious discipline to match that consistency at home, and you can get color casts accidentally. The C-41 chemicals are also a bit more unfriendly and more difficult to dispose of properly (not sure about positive). So these days I only do non-chromogenic film at home, but I might have made a different choice in the 1990s. Speaking of which, Kodak doesn't even make E-6 film any more.
      - 11y ago
ethbro 11y ago
Hearing the name "Kodak" just makes me sad these days. From the wikipedia entry, "From the $90 range in 1997, Kodak shares closed at 76 cents on January 3, 2012".
- drglitch 11y ago
  As sad as that is, it's a pretty long life for a company that was killed by mis-management: they invented the digital cameras but chose not to cannibalize their incumbent analog business. To combat demise, they chose to fire people and become an IP shell. Last try at survival was to sell off most/all IP and license its name. The rest is history.
  - meric 11y ago
    We weren't in the company. It can be hard to tell. You could open a beauty therapy shop, and it's revenue increase every year, and suddenly after the introduction of cheap laser treatments and race-to-the-bottom competitors, in one year you could face a reduction of 70% of your revenue.[1] [1] Anecdote.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      Kodak certainly did a lot of things wrong--especially with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Part of their problem with digital was that they were arguably ahead of curve (and not quite on the right curve) with things like PhotoCD and providing equipment to photo shops to print customer photos. However, the bottom line is that it would probably have been very difficult for even the most brilliant management to replace the film, photo paper, and chemicals consumables business. That revenue basically doesn't exist in the digital world unless maybe you count inkjet ink--though that's trending down too. Fujifilm did end up doing OK by, among other things, applying their film making expertise to other industries like medical. But they had a tough run too. [1] The film business fell off a cliff that made CD sales look like a gradual decline. [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifilm-survived http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifi...
rfrank 11y ago
If Kodak is scanning all of the photos and putting them into the cloud themselves, does that mean they have rights to said images?
- smegel 11y ago
  What amazes me is the lawyers haven't been able to come up with some legalese that allows companies to transfer your data around their internal systems for your own use without stating "we can do whatever we want with your content".
  - Zikes 11y ago
    Copyright says you get to define that however you like. It's why we have so many options for code licensing. The problem here is that companies would much rather have the "we can do whatever we want with your content" option because it benefits them much more, and not enough users care enough to make them change it.
  - wmf 11y ago
    AFAIK this is a solved problem in B2B. e.g. AWS: "We do not access or use customer content for any purpose other than as legally required and for maintaining the AWS services and providing them to our customers and their end users. We never use customer content or derive information from it for marketing or advertising." SoftLayer: "As a Processor, SoftLayer will not access the Customer Content for any purpose beyond providing You with support as described above, and will not disclose it to any person or entity."
- Someone1234 11y ago
  No. Photographs belong to the person who pressed the shutter release. The actual format or medium of the photograph (digital, print, negative, whatever) is irrelevant to the copyright, which is created during the act of taking a photograph. So remember: Next time you hand someone your camera to take a picture of you, that person effectively owns the copyright on that image. Including a monkey[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie#Copyright_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie#Copyright_issues PS - Although I'm sure you have to give them a license to your copyrighted photo so that they can display it back to you on their website. It is standard industry practice. Doesn't mean they have redistribution rights or own the copyright however.
dietrichepp 11y ago
I see USB and... SD card slot on the back? HDMI and... 3.5mm audio? One of the most characteristic features of Super 8, at least to me, is the complete lack of audio (at least, on most Super 8 works). So if you went to a theater to see something on Super 8 there might be a live band playing the soundtrack. I wonder if Kodak is doing something like putting audio on the SD card and then storing digital synchronization marks on the film somehow. Edit: To be clear, I know you can already put audio on Super 8. It's just that most Super 8 films I've seen in the theater have had no audio or live audio. And yes, I looked at the specs. The specs don't mention anything at all, but the product rendering appears to show jacks for audio and data, and I'm wondering how that's incorporated.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Super 8 film could have an oxide strip for magnetic sound.
  - dietrichepp 11y ago
    Right, but most Super 8 works don't have sound.
- johansch 11y ago
  You're just imagining what the product could be like instead of reading the actual product/specs page? That's an interesting approach, but should probably label your fantasies accordingly. http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/consumer/Product/Product_Specs/?contentId=4294993082&TaxId=4294969683 http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/consumer/Product/Product_Specs... "FILM GAUGE: SUPER 8 ( EXTENDED MAX-8 GATE ) FILM LOAD: KODAK CARTRIDGES WITH 50 FT (15 M) SPEED: VARIABLE SPEEDS (9, 12, 18, 24, 25 FPS) ALL WITH CRYSTAL SYNC LENS MOUNT: C-MOUNT FOCAL LENGTH: FIXED / 6 MM, 1:1.2 – RICOH LENS (OPTIONAL ZOOM 6-48 MM LENS ) FOCUS / APERTURE: MANUAL FOCUS & IRIS" etc.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - dietrichepp 11y ago
pacomerh 11y ago
This is amazing news, the quality of the super 8 has a lot of character.
lcrs 11y ago
With modern film stocks and scanners Super8 can look remarkably good. It'll be interesting to see how Kodak's scanning service compares to scans like these, both of which were shot with another new Super 8 camera, the Logmar Digicanical: https://vimeo.com/129700087 https://vimeo.com/129700087 https://vimeo.com/groups/super8/videos/87243287 https://vimeo.com/groups/super8/videos/87243287
k-mcgrady 11y ago
Interesting. Today I've come across quite a few stories on analogue tech. This + new Technic SL-1200 models + new vinyl pressing machines being produced due to vinyl demand continuing to grow + record players and instant film cameras being incredibly popular on Amazon this Christmas. I wonder if we'll see this occur to other analogue tech too?
- mmahemoff 11y ago
  There will always be a big market for items of nostalgia, whether it's taking photos, playing music, enjoying ancient video games, or banging out letters on a typewriter. All good fun as long as people don't spout pseudoscience about its inability to be emulated with modern equipment.
  - alrs 11y ago
    Until the nostalgic die. Things are going to be rough for Rickenbacker when Beatlemania breathes its final gasp ca. 2030.
  - colechristensen 11y ago
    It isn't just nostalgia. Digital music can't simulate having a physical album cover, an e-ink screen won't ever be similar to a printed page, no music encoding will physically prevent loudness-wars mastering the way a vinyl record will (the needle would just jump out of the track), no printer will ever be able to fool someone into thinking a document was written on a typewriter. You can tell the difference if a piece of mail was signed by a human with a pen instead of a printer, and it means something. The limitations of analog media are very often their strengths, especially in corner cases. The limitations of a medium are often a significant driver for the creative process and losing them or approximating them makes lots of things worse. Normally people (morally) opposed to analog media spout just as much pseudoscience in defense of their position. (normally people arguing about such things on the Internet are idiots anyway)
    - kalleboo 11y ago
      What gives those things value IS the nostalgia though. A computer printed page has clear crisp letters with advanced fonts and typography compared to a typewriter with smudged, fixed-width fonts. E-ink books allow for notes, search, bookmarks and much more. The new is with few exceptions objectively better.
nickbauman 11y ago
I wish they would have resurrected 9.5 mm instead. 9.5 mm was an amazing format in that the emulsion went from edge to edge with no pulldown claw sprocket. Instead it used a single sprocket hole between the frames. It was still very cheap film but more than 50% larger emulsion than Super8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9.5_mm_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9.5_mm_film
- Aloha 11y ago
  Unlike 9.5, they never stopped commercial manufacture and processing of Super8 so all of the commercial infrastructure is still there - its less of a revival, and more a introduction of a new Super8 camera.
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    Good point, but 9.5 is still kinda amazing format, if only.
    - sitkack 11y ago
      What does it take to make film? The camera can't be that difficult. All those Nikon and Canon lenses for small sensors would be ideal.
      - dietrichepp 11y ago
        Black and white film? It's very hard, but doable. Probably comparable difficulty to building your own computer out of logic ICs. You'll buy cellulose acetate stock, a bunch of chemicals, and build a coating machine yourself. You'll also need some chemical engineering skills. Your film might be comparable to that from the 1950s. Alternatively, you can buy a film factory when it gets shut down, but these tend to produce film in large batches, and it might be difficult to repair the machines. People have done this before. Color film? Basically impossible. Probably comparable difficulty to building your own ICs. Only a handful of companies were ever successful at it.
- 11y ago
sparky_ 11y ago
Interesting to see history repeating itself a bit: "When you purchase film you will be buying the film, processing and digital transfer". Kodak was pursued by the DoJ in the 1950s and ultimately ruled against in an antitrust suit for doing the exact same thing with Kodachrome, the market leader in color (still) photography at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing
- Turbo_hedgehog 11y ago
  Looks like the consent decrees were terminated in 1995. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1300513.html http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1300513.html
  - sparky_ 11y ago
    Interesting.
- acomjean 11y ago
  Kodachrome was slide film. Very few labs would process it, though the colors were bright and some people really liked it. E6 was the process that most slide film used (even some of kodaks). Slide film was always a challenge to expose just right, its dynamic range is pretty narrow compared to negative film. Its what you needed to use for movies though. I can't see this new revival being more than a niche market. Sending film away and waiting a week might not cut it in todays market when phones shoot hd and can edit. There are a bunch of these. The "imposible project" [1] bringing back polariod film being another. Polariod though has the advantage of being instant. [1]https://www.the-impossible-project.com/ https://www.the-impossible-project.com/
  - dietrichepp 11y ago
    Home movies used a positive process, but TV and cinema would typically be shot using a negative process. Kodak has discontinued all of their reversal films except one (and it's black & white).
zzzeek 11y ago
dumb question. as someone who shot plenty of super 8 about 35 years ago, what I don't see here is the projector? That was the part that sort of sucked (not to mention editing). You still need a projector to consume this media, right? Or is it just teleported through some hipster USB device now...
- serge2k 11y ago
  They include processing and digital transfer. it's teleported to some hipster cloud storage now.
- ghaff 11y ago
  It's color negative film anyway. Probably gives better quality scans and is a bit cheaper. [Edit: And actually I don't believe Kodak makes a reversal Super 8 film any longer, although others do.]
  - mng2 11y ago
    Yeah, Kodachrome processing stopped about 5 years ago, since the chemicals were too nasty. I think Kodak still sells B&W reversal though.
sssilver 11y ago
> There are some moments that digital just can't deliver Isn't this the mindset that drove them into the ground in the first place?
n_plus_one 11y ago
Here's a nice solution in search of a problem.
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  I speculate that there is latent demand for it between older people that miss it and younger people that are tired of pure digital and want something more organic and different. Personally though, I would rather have something similar to analog that doesn't require the cost and time/complexity. I wonder how many folks will buy these to go with them: http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/nolab-digital-super-8-cartridge-make-film-cameras-go-digital http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/nolab-digital-super-8-cartri...
  - ghaff 11y ago
    >younger people that are tired of pure digital and want something more organic and different Which I actually sort of appreciate (in my less cynical moments). Though, if it's just that they've never shot anything on film, I'm sure they have friends or co-workers with old still cameras gathering dust. Borrow one, shoot a roll of film, send it off to be processed, and the urge will probably have gone away by the time you get your prints back. You can get those prints scanned too if you like.
- PhantomGremlin 11y ago
  Here's a nice solution in search of a problem. An old boss of mine used to say something similar: "That's a cure for no known disease".
liquidise 11y ago
As someone who went to school in Rochester, NY (RIT), i love to see Kodak making a move that could possibly return them to a relevant position in the film industry. Rochester was once a proud city that has been beaten down by missing the innovation train. I hope this and other initiatives help to return it to some of its former luster.
bprater 11y ago
You may have not noticed it, but the benefits of film have been going extinct this decade. Check out how many feature films are shot digitally versus on film. Unless you are Spielberg, you are shooting digitally. Currently, there are small digital cameras like the Blackmagic Pocket Camera (BMPCC) camera, under $1k, which have a capability to shoot images that are so similar to 16mm film that the average consumer couldn't tell. The bottom-line today: if you want the 8mm vibe, you oversample your image when shooting (16mm or 35mm digital) and then degrade the image in post-production to 8mm.
- robbrown451 11y ago
  You may not have noticed it, but a quite popular movie was recently shot on film. (The Force Awakens)
- pierrec 11y ago
  This is pretty indisputable. Yes, recent and popular movies are still being shot on film, which very well reflects the fact that old habits die hard, and that creatives, producers and investors easily let their own biases and "shibboleths" get in the way of hard data. I suppose one argument might be that the additional hurdles of the traditional workflow can be a constraint that boosts creativity.
- beamatronic 11y ago
  Or unless you are Quentin Tarantino; see Inglorious Basterds (2009) to see what rich colors film can provide.
  - kalleboo 11y ago
    > Sean Mattini .... digital colorist assist Edited and color graded on digital intermediate
    - jankins 11y ago
      The image retains characteristics of film even though it goes through DI, even color quality. (Quality in the sense of 'different', not strictly 'better'.) I think it's the principle of "you can't work with what's not there" - film (especially talking several years ago vs. today) will capture a different and usually wider dynamic range, and lend a different starting point that that might not be possible or easy to simulate.
Animats 11y ago
Amusingly, it's also a video camera, since the viewfinder is an LCD display. Not clear if the manual aperture and shutter time settings affect the viewfinder. You can feed video into the display (why?) but it's not clear if you can get video out of the camera. The film costs $50 to $75 per cartridge, for a running time of 3.5 minutes. Market: wannabe hipsters and old guys in the movie industry. Kodak makes movie film only because the major studios, at the urging of some older directors, pay them to do so.[1] (Pro movie film sales were down 96%) The studios have to pay for a certain amount of film whether they take it or not. This leaves Kodak with a paid-for, underutilized film production plant and film development facilities. That's probably why Kodak is doing this. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-to-continue-making-movie-film-1423106264 http://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-to-continue-making-movie-f...
- op00to 11y ago
  The vie finder is digital because people are used to a digital viewfinder and not an optical one anymore.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Um. 1. DSLR users are not. 2. The whole point of this exercise is to make a product for people who want a retro (and largely impractical) film movie camera. What people are used to is [EDIT: 100% digital cameras].
- ghaff 11y ago
  >You can feed video into the display (why?) I'd guess it's cheaper/easier than using glass especially to support swivel. Unclear if there's a prism in the light path though or if they're getting the image to the sensor in some other way. It would seem to take away from the whole retro vibe though.
- ryandamm 11y ago
  This is probably what's called a 'video assist' in the film industry: when the film is being pulled through the gate, it's shielded from the light by a spinning mirror. In a fully-analog camera, that mirror reflects the light up to a ground glass target in the eyepiece, so the cinematographer sees the light that isn't recorded onto the film. With a video assist, that light is simply captured by a sensor (yes, exactly like in a video camera) and presented to the user on a video display. Some use a beam-splitter to deliver the analog view to the cameraperson while still sending some photons to the video tap. Note, in both cases, the light that hits the film itself is never visible to anyone until after development -- the camera crew gets to see the photons that are rejected, which can do weird things when you go to unusual shutter speeds (the image gets darker in the viewfinder as you increase the exposure)... though I believe there were some 16mm Bolexes that simply used a beamsplitter, so the viewer saw the same scene as the film stock -- but don't quote me on that.
DonnyV 11y ago
This is going to fail HARD.
newday 11y ago
Cool, I'm switching to coding with punchcards.
- 72deluxe 11y ago
  Might be a startup idea to sell hole punches then eh?
lazylizard 11y ago
c mount? i mean "c mount"!!!!! yes!
deleted 11y ago
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marincounty 11y ago
Wow--surprised! Never thought I would see another film camera again. I didn't want to get into the film/digital debate, but I have no life--so here goes: I can still tell the difference between film and digital. It could be I'm too used to film? It could be I'm partially color blind? Whatever the reason, I like the look of film. Recent example. I watched Dumb and Dumber Too. Yes--it was bad on a lot of levels, but what really suprised me was the look of the movie. It just looked cheap. Say what you want about a Farelly brothers movie, they always looked great. I then looked into it, and one of the Farelly brothers was given the choice between film, or digital. The producers brought him to a digital lab, where the techs applied the film "look" program to make the digital look like film. Farley couldn't tell the difference. I sure could? They went with digital. If this is their last digital film--they will have settled to controversy--in my little world. I just have a feeling their next movie will be in film? As to digital photography. When digital finally hit the practical point, I went digital. For myself, it was the Canon 20D, I bought the camera, and three very expensive lenses. Yes, it took great pictures. Great pictures to what? I wasen't a photographer before digital? I didn't know better. Actually, as a kid, I was a photographer. I used a Pentax K1000, and a Canon 350D. A few years ago I found a stash of negatives. I had them blown up, and asked a couple of family members to pick the best pictures. These were nature pictures. All picked my kid pictures. Maybe I was a better photographer as a kid? I don't know. If I was going to "gear" up again, I think I would stay with film. Not because I think it's that much better, but because the used lenses, are so cheap right now. A used Canon F 2.8 300mm lens is under a grand used. The digital Canon 2.8 300mm lens is a minimum of $3500 used(usually beat up.). To anyone who honestly wants to get into photography, but funds are tight, look into film. Hell, I wouldn't even bother with color. I would set up a bathroom darkroom, and set up shop. I guess it's easy for me to throw around this advice. I'm not going back to chemicals in the sink. I have bought the digital equipment, and probally won't go back to film. Oh yea, whatever you do stick with prime lenses. That was my biggest mistake. Buy whatever camera bare. Buy the lenses(glass--if you want to sound like one of those guys--I never wanted to be in that club.) Buy your primes separately. Try to keep your digital camera not in [fully auto] all the time, but then again, I sometimes wonder why. My ex-girlfriend is a professional photographer--takes studio pictures of old stuff. She loved to brag about it. "I'm a professional Photographer. Did you know, I take pictures for a living?" Yes--it was worse than going to the dentist, but maybe I was being too critical? She has never been in manual mode, TV, or even AV mode. She doesn't know about F stops, or exposure times. I think she got lucky though. I told her the pictures were Spectacular, but I really though they were too Photoshopped. As to her job--well it's a lot about who you know at big corporations. Good luck--
jlebrech 11y ago
it makes a lot of sense for film makers who want to film in 4K without forking out for a Red camera, just paying per minute of film instead. If you like in hollywood tho, it's probably cheaper to rent a 4k camera for your next blockbuster.
S_A_P 11y ago
I feel like we're out of ideas, so we revert to nostalgia. I just saw that Technics just re-reintrouduced the SL-1200 and now Kodak is reintroducing the Super 8. All so that we can feel the analog warmth. I think this is just the effect of software taking over the world. We cant have these tangible things anymore that have their own character, quirks, and defects(that when new infuriate users only to be remembered fondly 20 years later) We recently bought my 9 year old an instant camera. Each pack only has 10 pictures. She blew through that in about 30 minutes because she was so used to the "infinite" digital pictures she could take. To add insult to injury, she kept taking the film pack out and exposing the pictures, and couldn't figure out why they were blank.
NovaS1X 11y ago
This is good for digital in ways I think people won't notice quite yet. As an amateur photographer I tend to see film users a lot. I shoot digital but I'd like to shoot film too. The reality is that there are some artifacts that film gives you that you can't replace in digital yet. In art, if the effect or feeling that you want is given on a certain tool then that is the tool for the job. In photography, if this is film, then film is the right tool for the job. There's also the large factor of workflows. People get used to a workflow that influences their style and it's important to them to maintain that workflow. What is measurably better in technical terms is not important. What I see happening is that market trends like this will push digital forces to perfectly re-creating classic films. The difficulty with re-creating film with filters or presets is it's notoriously hard to do and usually not perfect. Fujifilm is a perfect example of this with their film simulation modes on their X-Mount camera lineup. I suspect that the film trend is going to push photography giants into creating more accurate emulation of film baked into their workflows and devices rather than the current trend of generic hipster Instagram filters or playing in Lightroom for a few hours (and still not getting the effect you want). Whether you're a professional or a 16y/o girl with a K1000 and mix-matched 80's leg warmers film still does have a place amongst people and this will in turn affect the development of digital processing.

278 points by tarp 11y ago

Well, this will surely at least be a collectible, some day.

The death of film has more to do with distribution than acquisition; the pervasive switch to digital projection completely killed the last bastion of demand for film stock. (A typical film might requires 100s to 1000s as much stock for delivery to theaters as it needed for initial capture.) That said, you can't get the entire Super8 look with digital filters. There are optical properties (have to use the same lens and sensor size), and the way it handles highlights vs lowlights is different than digital sensors. (The 'rolloff' in the highlights, rather than clipping at saturation, is very desirable.) And it's true that film isn't entirely dead in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino shot his most recent film on 70mm stock. But that's nearly 100x the resolution of 8mm film, so they're not really comparable. OTOH, I recently saw Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom," which was shot on 16mm reversal (color, not negative) film stock for the look. In each case, the choice of film stock definitely affected the look of the film. It also affected the act of shooting the film; even if you can mimic a filmic look digitally (through digital acquisition and post processing), shooting digitally is very different than shooting film. I happen to prefer digital, but courses for horses. But yeah, for consumers, it's pretty much a hipster affectation. Good for Kodak, though! Also of note in the annals of hipster retro photography is 'The Impossible Project,' which revived Polaroid film: https://www.the-impossible-project.com/ https://www.the-impossible-project.com/ Also, 'lomography.'

WalterBright 11y ago

It'd be nice to see films shot in color again instead of blue and orange. http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and-blue/ http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange...

platz 11y ago
Go see Carol (shot on 16mm)
deleted 11y ago
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lectrick 11y ago

Is there an actual double-blind study that proves that digital still cannot beat analog in certain realms? Because I'm having a hard time believing that this "analogue renaissance" isn't just pure marketing hokum.

plaguuuuuu 11y ago
If nothing else, it's a stylistic choice. Choosing how a film should look, the colours and tonality etc, is a creative process and has aesthetic and therefore subjective goals. You can't really say which one is 'better', only that they're different.
- lectrick 11y ago
  Everything you described is at least theoretically digitizable.
  - leejo 11y ago
    This is the best thing i've read on the whole film vs digital debate: http://www.fototazo.com/2015/04/the-meaning-of-films-decline.html http://www.fototazo.com/2015/04/the-meaning-of-films-decline... # TLDR: most film advocates claim all the wrong reasons for shooting film, and i say this as someone who is primarily a film shooter. The most compelling reason to shoot film is because it gives you access to a range of camera and lens technology that is impossible to replicate with digital without significant compromise in quality and/or shooting style. Nolan shoots on IMAX cameras with modified Zeiss lenses that give an extremely shallow depth of field (witness some of the scenes in The Dark Knight Rises). Tarantino shooting on Super Panavision 70 could not be replicated on digital without extreme cropping of a wide angle digital source, which would change the depth/perspective, or stitching (difficult if impossible in motion picture shooting). See also panoramic cameras: Fuji 6x17, Hasselblad X-Pan. Large format and even medium format, because the available digital backs have not yet reached the size of a full 6x6 negative. The digital back manufacturers claim they are "full frame" but when used on actual full frame 6x6 cameras they are anything but (this is not a resolution/quality argument, it is a "oh, my 100mm lens is now actually cropped" argument).

mtw 11y ago

These are all meaningless words without a sample video

markbnj 11y ago

I grew up in upstate NY and visited Kodak's campus in Rochester in their heyday. It was impressive as hell to a ten year-old. I'm sure the idea that the massive works and the business they represented could almost completely evaporate never occurred to the people working there. It's a little melancholy in some ways. I wish I could see this as more than a desperate attempt to rekindle that dead business, but I can't. How much do the benefits of using analog processes to capture the light really matter when the vast majority of people will access the content downstream through digital delivery platforms? Somewhere along the line the information is going to get sampled and aliased. Tarantino getting all nostalgic for analog content that will be shown to viewers via $100,000 digital projectors is one thing, but most photographs are viewed on phones, and in web browsers.

salmonet 11y ago

Came across a tweet about the Sony MiniDisc Recorder/Player going for hundreds and even thousands of dollars on Ebay. Nostalgia apparently sells. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R4.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xsony+MZ.TRS0&_nkw=sony+mz-rh1&_sacat=0 http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m5...

bambax 11y ago
That's amazing. I have one that works absolutely flawlessly; I still need to transfer what I have on those disks before I try to sell it, but then... Why would people pay that kind of money for this?? Do they need it to play their old disks? Wouldn't it be cheaper to have them transferred to another media by a lab?
- 72deluxe 11y ago
  My brother has a bunch of MiniDisc players and recorders. I do not understand why. He refuses to get an MP3 player or use his phone but will instead record audio in REALTIME from CDs etc. to MiniDisc. He says the battery life is really good. The psychoacoustic modelling on the audio is not, however!! He even bought a multitrack minidisc desk. Apparently it was going cheap. I understand why - with 4 tracks of audio, it'll record 15 minutes. No good for long jams. I do not understand the fascination with it at all. Even an old Tascam portastudio or the modern equivalents that record to SD card would be better.
  - stinos 11y ago
    The psychoacoustic modelling on the audio is not, however!! There were quite some improvements between older and the latest models though, and the latter could also use uncompressed and/or lossless schemes. the fascination with it at all. One thing I really liked about it is the handling of discs. I don't know why, but I just liked the feeling of opening the player, ejecting a disc and inserting another one with a satisfactory 'click'.
    - 11y ago

SwellJoe 11y ago

I watched the analog-to-digital-to-analog trend happen in professional audio (I was going to school for audio as ProTools was beginning to be a thing, we worked on analog tape machines...but the year after I finished my degree, they brought in digital ADAT machines for the small labs, and eventually went digital in the 24 track room, as well). It's amusing how superstitious people can be, especially in industries that are mostly subjective but happen to bump up against a lot of technology. Audio, photography, video, and now film have all been through this. The final product will be delivered digitally for 99.9% of consumers. Why fight it? Why spend so much money, time, and effort, to work with inferior media? I dunno. I worked on analog tape machines (I was even a hold out, for a while, having a 1" 16 track machine, as big as a mini fridge, in my house for several years after digital multitracks were the smart choice), but there really is no good argument for it today. There was a brief window where the best digital equipment was inferior to the very best analog equipment, but it didn't last long. Maybe five years. We may still be in that window for film when comparing 70mm film to the best digital equipment...but, on the low end? Hell no. This janky little camera from Kodak will be a joke compared to digital equipment in the same price range. And, the film/processing costs will be outrageous comparatively speaking, limiting ones options when shooting to a significant degree. In short: This is just hipster bullshit. Just like analog audio is hipster bullshit.

nitrogen 11y ago
It's the same thing as using Polaroid cameras with Impossible film, or vinyl records. It's to find some tangibility in an era of intangibles. The low fidelity is the point.
- mobiuscog 11y ago
  Absolutely - the lack of anything tangible in the modern digital world is a huge problem, and slowly people are realising this. Humans aren't designed for a 'virtual' existence - the technologies may be very useful and empowering in many ways, but they shouldn't take over life and reality.
plaguuuuuu 11y ago
With photography, film and audio alike, it's easy to prove that digital has orders of magnitude more precision and accuracy. That's great, but it's not the whole picture. Mixing desks are said to colour the sound in certain ways, and in doing so, introduce harmonics and other sorts of imprecision that would be anathema to digital components, for which THD and SNR are paramount and utter precision is the ultimate goal. Then, in the end, people listen to the source material with their own ears, which have totally different frequency responses anyway and the eardrum is basically an analogue device that will color the sound in the end anyway :D But then you start getting into things like guitar sounds. It's not that digital guitars sound better or worse - all you can really say is that they sound different. The real issue is that there's no objective sound that it should have - the electronics, whether digital or analogue, are effectively part of the instrument. And in the same way that analogue amps and effects colour the signal in specific ways that a guitarist or engineer might prefer, film imparts its own aesthetic qualities that a director or cinematographer might prefer.

fomoz 11y ago

That's crazy amazingly awesome. Need to know how much it costs though, both camera and film/processing/cloud.

Aloha 11y ago
I'd expect the camera to cost 2-800 and the processing/film to be about 30 bucks a cartridge. Too bad they don't make a color reversal film anymore, so you can project it too.

smacktoward 11y ago

I'm strugging to figure out who exactly this thing would be for. Amateurs for home movies? Nope, digital will always be cheaper, and faster/more convenient to work with to boot. Aspiring filmmakers? Nope, if you want to shoot on film professionally you'll want at least 16mm to avoid the magnification/graininess Super 8 brings with it. People nostalgic for the blurriness of old home movies? Do any of these actually exist?

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
> People nostalgic for the blurriness of old home movies? Do any of these actually exist? Look at all the people buying vinyl records and ask yourself that again.
- LeUsername 11y ago
  Vinyl version even of the same album is often mastered with less of the Loudness War.
TD-Linux 11y ago
>avoid the magnification/graininess Super 8 brings with it. But how else will your viewers know that you were hip enough to shoot on film?
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
I could see someone trying to shoot a professional movie that wanted that effect for part of it, because that part was supposed to be someone playing a Super-8 movie. But I suspect that there's a Photoshop filter for that...
- iwillreply 11y ago
  Gus van Sant did exactly this in Paranoid Park. The skateboard scenes in the movie were shot on Super 8, as inspired by the common style for home made skate films. Here's a short clip: https://vimeo.com/7170912 https://vimeo.com/7170912
- 11y ago

AnimalMuppet 11y ago

Interesting. But it doesn't solve the worst problem I've ever had with analog film: The developer lost the rolls that had our honeymoon pictures on them. (As compensation, they were generous enough to offer us... blank replacement rolls. We were not impressed.) That's the advantage digital has - you don't mail the pictures anywhere. Nobody can lose them for you. (Yeah, you can still lose them yourself...)

dietrichepp 11y ago
Tip from the pros: if the pictures are irreplaceable, then divide them in half. Send half to the developer. If it gets ruined, you've only ruined half. This is how wedding photographers who shot on film avoided getting sued into oblivion by angry brides (and yes, there are many, many photographers who have been sued into oblivion by angry brides, contract or no contract).
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Yeah. I figured that out from losing my honeymoon pictures... :-<
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  Or alternately learn to do manual colour positive processing. It's really not hard, and with a big tank you can do half a dozen 120 reels at a time.
  - dietrichepp 11y ago
    YMMV, the machines are very consistent, it takes some serious discipline to match that consistency at home, and you can get color casts accidentally. The C-41 chemicals are also a bit more unfriendly and more difficult to dispose of properly (not sure about positive). So these days I only do non-chromogenic film at home, but I might have made a different choice in the 1990s. Speaking of which, Kodak doesn't even make E-6 film any more.
    - 11y ago

ethbro 11y ago

Hearing the name "Kodak" just makes me sad these days. From the wikipedia entry, "From the $90 range in 1997, Kodak shares closed at 76 cents on January 3, 2012".

drglitch 11y ago
As sad as that is, it's a pretty long life for a company that was killed by mis-management: they invented the digital cameras but chose not to cannibalize their incumbent analog business. To combat demise, they chose to fire people and become an IP shell. Last try at survival was to sell off most/all IP and license its name. The rest is history.
- meric 11y ago
  We weren't in the company. It can be hard to tell. You could open a beauty therapy shop, and it's revenue increase every year, and suddenly after the introduction of cheap laser treatments and race-to-the-bottom competitors, in one year you could face a reduction of 70% of your revenue.[1] [1] Anecdote.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Kodak certainly did a lot of things wrong--especially with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Part of their problem with digital was that they were arguably ahead of curve (and not quite on the right curve) with things like PhotoCD and providing equipment to photo shops to print customer photos. However, the bottom line is that it would probably have been very difficult for even the most brilliant management to replace the film, photo paper, and chemicals consumables business. That revenue basically doesn't exist in the digital world unless maybe you count inkjet ink--though that's trending down too. Fujifilm did end up doing OK by, among other things, applying their film making expertise to other industries like medical. But they had a tough run too. [1] The film business fell off a cliff that made CD sales look like a gradual decline. [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifilm-survived http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifi...

rfrank 11y ago

If Kodak is scanning all of the photos and putting them into the cloud themselves, does that mean they have rights to said images?

smegel 11y ago
What amazes me is the lawyers haven't been able to come up with some legalese that allows companies to transfer your data around their internal systems for your own use without stating "we can do whatever we want with your content".
- Zikes 11y ago
  Copyright says you get to define that however you like. It's why we have so many options for code licensing. The problem here is that companies would much rather have the "we can do whatever we want with your content" option because it benefits them much more, and not enough users care enough to make them change it.
- wmf 11y ago
  AFAIK this is a solved problem in B2B. e.g. AWS: "We do not access or use customer content for any purpose other than as legally required and for maintaining the AWS services and providing them to our customers and their end users. We never use customer content or derive information from it for marketing or advertising." SoftLayer: "As a Processor, SoftLayer will not access the Customer Content for any purpose beyond providing You with support as described above, and will not disclose it to any person or entity."
Someone1234 11y ago
No. Photographs belong to the person who pressed the shutter release. The actual format or medium of the photograph (digital, print, negative, whatever) is irrelevant to the copyright, which is created during the act of taking a photograph. So remember: Next time you hand someone your camera to take a picture of you, that person effectively owns the copyright on that image. Including a monkey[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie#Copyright_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie#Copyright_issues PS - Although I'm sure you have to give them a license to your copyrighted photo so that they can display it back to you on their website. It is standard industry practice. Doesn't mean they have redistribution rights or own the copyright however.

dietrichepp 11y ago

I see USB and... SD card slot on the back? HDMI and... 3.5mm audio? One of the most characteristic features of Super 8, at least to me, is the complete lack of audio (at least, on most Super 8 works). So if you went to a theater to see something on Super 8 there might be a live band playing the soundtrack. I wonder if Kodak is doing something like putting audio on the SD card and then storing digital synchronization marks on the film somehow. Edit: To be clear, I know you can already put audio on Super 8. It's just that most Super 8 films I've seen in the theater have had no audio or live audio. And yes, I looked at the specs. The specs don't mention anything at all, but the product rendering appears to show jacks for audio and data, and I'm wondering how that's incorporated.

ghaff 11y ago
Super 8 film could have an oxide strip for magnetic sound.
- dietrichepp 11y ago
  Right, but most Super 8 works don't have sound.
johansch 11y ago
You're just imagining what the product could be like instead of reading the actual product/specs page? That's an interesting approach, but should probably label your fantasies accordingly. http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/consumer/Product/Product_Specs/?contentId=4294993082&TaxId=4294969683 http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/consumer/Product/Product_Specs... "FILM GAUGE: SUPER 8 ( EXTENDED MAX-8 GATE ) FILM LOAD: KODAK CARTRIDGES WITH 50 FT (15 M) SPEED: VARIABLE SPEEDS (9, 12, 18, 24, 25 FPS) ALL WITH CRYSTAL SYNC LENS MOUNT: C-MOUNT FOCAL LENGTH: FIXED / 6 MM, 1:1.2 – RICOH LENS (OPTIONAL ZOOM 6-48 MM LENS ) FOCUS / APERTURE: MANUAL FOCUS & IRIS" etc.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dietrichepp 11y ago

pacomerh 11y ago

This is amazing news, the quality of the super 8 has a lot of character.

lcrs 11y ago

With modern film stocks and scanners Super8 can look remarkably good. It'll be interesting to see how Kodak's scanning service compares to scans like these, both of which were shot with another new Super 8 camera, the Logmar Digicanical: https://vimeo.com/129700087 https://vimeo.com/129700087 https://vimeo.com/groups/super8/videos/87243287 https://vimeo.com/groups/super8/videos/87243287

k-mcgrady 11y ago

Interesting. Today I've come across quite a few stories on analogue tech. This + new Technic SL-1200 models + new vinyl pressing machines being produced due to vinyl demand continuing to grow + record players and instant film cameras being incredibly popular on Amazon this Christmas. I wonder if we'll see this occur to other analogue tech too?

mmahemoff 11y ago
There will always be a big market for items of nostalgia, whether it's taking photos, playing music, enjoying ancient video games, or banging out letters on a typewriter. All good fun as long as people don't spout pseudoscience about its inability to be emulated with modern equipment.
- alrs 11y ago
  Until the nostalgic die. Things are going to be rough for Rickenbacker when Beatlemania breathes its final gasp ca. 2030.
- colechristensen 11y ago
  It isn't just nostalgia. Digital music can't simulate having a physical album cover, an e-ink screen won't ever be similar to a printed page, no music encoding will physically prevent loudness-wars mastering the way a vinyl record will (the needle would just jump out of the track), no printer will ever be able to fool someone into thinking a document was written on a typewriter. You can tell the difference if a piece of mail was signed by a human with a pen instead of a printer, and it means something. The limitations of analog media are very often their strengths, especially in corner cases. The limitations of a medium are often a significant driver for the creative process and losing them or approximating them makes lots of things worse. Normally people (morally) opposed to analog media spout just as much pseudoscience in defense of their position. (normally people arguing about such things on the Internet are idiots anyway)
  - kalleboo 11y ago
    What gives those things value IS the nostalgia though. A computer printed page has clear crisp letters with advanced fonts and typography compared to a typewriter with smudged, fixed-width fonts. E-ink books allow for notes, search, bookmarks and much more. The new is with few exceptions objectively better.

nickbauman 11y ago

I wish they would have resurrected 9.5 mm instead. 9.5 mm was an amazing format in that the emulsion went from edge to edge with no pulldown claw sprocket. Instead it used a single sprocket hole between the frames. It was still very cheap film but more than 50% larger emulsion than Super8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9.5_mm_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9.5_mm_film

Aloha 11y ago
Unlike 9.5, they never stopped commercial manufacture and processing of Super8 so all of the commercial infrastructure is still there - its less of a revival, and more a introduction of a new Super8 camera.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  Good point, but 9.5 is still kinda amazing format, if only.
  - sitkack 11y ago
    What does it take to make film? The camera can't be that difficult. All those Nikon and Canon lenses for small sensors would be ideal.
    - dietrichepp 11y ago
      Black and white film? It's very hard, but doable. Probably comparable difficulty to building your own computer out of logic ICs. You'll buy cellulose acetate stock, a bunch of chemicals, and build a coating machine yourself. You'll also need some chemical engineering skills. Your film might be comparable to that from the 1950s. Alternatively, you can buy a film factory when it gets shut down, but these tend to produce film in large batches, and it might be difficult to repair the machines. People have done this before. Color film? Basically impossible. Probably comparable difficulty to building your own ICs. Only a handful of companies were ever successful at it.
11y ago

sparky_ 11y ago

Interesting to see history repeating itself a bit: "When you purchase film you will be buying the film, processing and digital transfer". Kodak was pursued by the DoJ in the 1950s and ultimately ruled against in an antitrust suit for doing the exact same thing with Kodachrome, the market leader in color (still) photography at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing

Turbo_hedgehog 11y ago
Looks like the consent decrees were terminated in 1995. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1300513.html http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1300513.html
- sparky_ 11y ago
  Interesting.
acomjean 11y ago
Kodachrome was slide film. Very few labs would process it, though the colors were bright and some people really liked it. E6 was the process that most slide film used (even some of kodaks). Slide film was always a challenge to expose just right, its dynamic range is pretty narrow compared to negative film. Its what you needed to use for movies though. I can't see this new revival being more than a niche market. Sending film away and waiting a week might not cut it in todays market when phones shoot hd and can edit. There are a bunch of these. The "imposible project" [1] bringing back polariod film being another. Polariod though has the advantage of being instant. [1]https://www.the-impossible-project.com/ https://www.the-impossible-project.com/
- dietrichepp 11y ago
  Home movies used a positive process, but TV and cinema would typically be shot using a negative process. Kodak has discontinued all of their reversal films except one (and it's black & white).

zzzeek 11y ago

dumb question. as someone who shot plenty of super 8 about 35 years ago, what I don't see here is the projector? That was the part that sort of sucked (not to mention editing). You still need a projector to consume this media, right? Or is it just teleported through some hipster USB device now...

serge2k 11y ago
They include processing and digital transfer. it's teleported to some hipster cloud storage now.
ghaff 11y ago
It's color negative film anyway. Probably gives better quality scans and is a bit cheaper. [Edit: And actually I don't believe Kodak makes a reversal Super 8 film any longer, although others do.]
- mng2 11y ago
  Yeah, Kodachrome processing stopped about 5 years ago, since the chemicals were too nasty. I think Kodak still sells B&W reversal though.

sssilver 11y ago

> There are some moments that digital just can't deliver Isn't this the mindset that drove them into the ground in the first place?

n_plus_one 11y ago

Here's a nice solution in search of a problem.

purpled_haze 11y ago
I speculate that there is latent demand for it between older people that miss it and younger people that are tired of pure digital and want something more organic and different. Personally though, I would rather have something similar to analog that doesn't require the cost and time/complexity. I wonder how many folks will buy these to go with them: http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/nolab-digital-super-8-cartridge-make-film-cameras-go-digital http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/nolab-digital-super-8-cartri...
- ghaff 11y ago
  >younger people that are tired of pure digital and want something more organic and different Which I actually sort of appreciate (in my less cynical moments). Though, if it's just that they've never shot anything on film, I'm sure they have friends or co-workers with old still cameras gathering dust. Borrow one, shoot a roll of film, send it off to be processed, and the urge will probably have gone away by the time you get your prints back. You can get those prints scanned too if you like.
PhantomGremlin 11y ago
Here's a nice solution in search of a problem. An old boss of mine used to say something similar: "That's a cure for no known disease".

liquidise 11y ago

As someone who went to school in Rochester, NY (RIT), i love to see Kodak making a move that could possibly return them to a relevant position in the film industry. Rochester was once a proud city that has been beaten down by missing the innovation train. I hope this and other initiatives help to return it to some of its former luster.

bprater 11y ago

You may have not noticed it, but the benefits of film have been going extinct this decade. Check out how many feature films are shot digitally versus on film. Unless you are Spielberg, you are shooting digitally. Currently, there are small digital cameras like the Blackmagic Pocket Camera (BMPCC) camera, under $1k, which have a capability to shoot images that are so similar to 16mm film that the average consumer couldn't tell. The bottom-line today: if you want the 8mm vibe, you oversample your image when shooting (16mm or 35mm digital) and then degrade the image in post-production to 8mm.

robbrown451 11y ago
You may not have noticed it, but a quite popular movie was recently shot on film. (The Force Awakens)
pierrec 11y ago
This is pretty indisputable. Yes, recent and popular movies are still being shot on film, which very well reflects the fact that old habits die hard, and that creatives, producers and investors easily let their own biases and "shibboleths" get in the way of hard data. I suppose one argument might be that the additional hurdles of the traditional workflow can be a constraint that boosts creativity.
beamatronic 11y ago
Or unless you are Quentin Tarantino; see Inglorious Basterds (2009) to see what rich colors film can provide.
- kalleboo 11y ago
  > Sean Mattini .... digital colorist assist Edited and color graded on digital intermediate
  - jankins 11y ago
    The image retains characteristics of film even though it goes through DI, even color quality. (Quality in the sense of 'different', not strictly 'better'.) I think it's the principle of "you can't work with what's not there" - film (especially talking several years ago vs. today) will capture a different and usually wider dynamic range, and lend a different starting point that that might not be possible or easy to simulate.

Animats 11y ago

Amusingly, it's also a video camera, since the viewfinder is an LCD display. Not clear if the manual aperture and shutter time settings affect the viewfinder. You can feed video into the display (why?) but it's not clear if you can get video out of the camera. The film costs $50 to $75 per cartridge, for a running time of 3.5 minutes. Market: wannabe hipsters and old guys in the movie industry. Kodak makes movie film only because the major studios, at the urging of some older directors, pay them to do so.[1] (Pro movie film sales were down 96%) The studios have to pay for a certain amount of film whether they take it or not. This leaves Kodak with a paid-for, underutilized film production plant and film development facilities. That's probably why Kodak is doing this. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-to-continue-making-movie-film-1423106264 http://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-to-continue-making-movie-f...

op00to 11y ago
The vie finder is digital because people are used to a digital viewfinder and not an optical one anymore.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Um. 1. DSLR users are not. 2. The whole point of this exercise is to make a product for people who want a retro (and largely impractical) film movie camera. What people are used to is [EDIT: 100% digital cameras].
ghaff 11y ago
>You can feed video into the display (why?) I'd guess it's cheaper/easier than using glass especially to support swivel. Unclear if there's a prism in the light path though or if they're getting the image to the sensor in some other way. It would seem to take away from the whole retro vibe though.
ryandamm 11y ago
This is probably what's called a 'video assist' in the film industry: when the film is being pulled through the gate, it's shielded from the light by a spinning mirror. In a fully-analog camera, that mirror reflects the light up to a ground glass target in the eyepiece, so the cinematographer sees the light that isn't recorded onto the film. With a video assist, that light is simply captured by a sensor (yes, exactly like in a video camera) and presented to the user on a video display. Some use a beam-splitter to deliver the analog view to the cameraperson while still sending some photons to the video tap. Note, in both cases, the light that hits the film itself is never visible to anyone until after development -- the camera crew gets to see the photons that are rejected, which can do weird things when you go to unusual shutter speeds (the image gets darker in the viewfinder as you increase the exposure)... though I believe there were some 16mm Bolexes that simply used a beamsplitter, so the viewer saw the same scene as the film stock -- but don't quote me on that.

DonnyV 11y ago

This is going to fail HARD.

newday 11y ago

Cool, I'm switching to coding with punchcards.

72deluxe 11y ago
Might be a startup idea to sell hole punches then eh?

lazylizard 11y ago

c mount? i mean "c mount"!!!!! yes!

deleted 11y ago

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marincounty 11y ago

Wow--surprised! Never thought I would see another film camera again. I didn't want to get into the film/digital debate, but I have no life--so here goes: I can still tell the difference between film and digital. It could be I'm too used to film? It could be I'm partially color blind? Whatever the reason, I like the look of film. Recent example. I watched Dumb and Dumber Too. Yes--it was bad on a lot of levels, but what really suprised me was the look of the movie. It just looked cheap. Say what you want about a Farelly brothers movie, they always looked great. I then looked into it, and one of the Farelly brothers was given the choice between film, or digital. The producers brought him to a digital lab, where the techs applied the film "look" program to make the digital look like film. Farley couldn't tell the difference. I sure could? They went with digital. If this is their last digital film--they will have settled to controversy--in my little world. I just have a feeling their next movie will be in film? As to digital photography. When digital finally hit the practical point, I went digital. For myself, it was the Canon 20D, I bought the camera, and three very expensive lenses. Yes, it took great pictures. Great pictures to what? I wasen't a photographer before digital? I didn't know better. Actually, as a kid, I was a photographer. I used a Pentax K1000, and a Canon 350D. A few years ago I found a stash of negatives. I had them blown up, and asked a couple of family members to pick the best pictures. These were nature pictures. All picked my kid pictures. Maybe I was a better photographer as a kid? I don't know. If I was going to "gear" up again, I think I would stay with film. Not because I think it's that much better, but because the used lenses, are so cheap right now. A used Canon F 2.8 300mm lens is under a grand used. The digital Canon 2.8 300mm lens is a minimum of $3500 used(usually beat up.). To anyone who honestly wants to get into photography, but funds are tight, look into film. Hell, I wouldn't even bother with color. I would set up a bathroom darkroom, and set up shop. I guess it's easy for me to throw around this advice. I'm not going back to chemicals in the sink. I have bought the digital equipment, and probally won't go back to film. Oh yea, whatever you do stick with prime lenses. That was my biggest mistake. Buy whatever camera bare. Buy the lenses(glass--if you want to sound like one of those guys--I never wanted to be in that club.) Buy your primes separately. Try to keep your digital camera not in [fully auto] all the time, but then again, I sometimes wonder why. My ex-girlfriend is a professional photographer--takes studio pictures of old stuff. She loved to brag about it. "I'm a professional Photographer. Did you know, I take pictures for a living?" Yes--it was worse than going to the dentist, but maybe I was being too critical? She has never been in manual mode, TV, or even AV mode. She doesn't know about F stops, or exposure times. I think she got lucky though. I told her the pictures were Spectacular, but I really though they were too Photoshopped. As to her job--well it's a lot about who you know at big corporations. Good luck--

jlebrech 11y ago

it makes a lot of sense for film makers who want to film in 4K without forking out for a Red camera, just paying per minute of film instead. If you like in hollywood tho, it's probably cheaper to rent a 4k camera for your next blockbuster.

S_A_P 11y ago

I feel like we're out of ideas, so we revert to nostalgia. I just saw that Technics just re-reintrouduced the SL-1200 and now Kodak is reintroducing the Super 8. All so that we can feel the analog warmth. I think this is just the effect of software taking over the world. We cant have these tangible things anymore that have their own character, quirks, and defects(that when new infuriate users only to be remembered fondly 20 years later) We recently bought my 9 year old an instant camera. Each pack only has 10 pictures. She blew through that in about 30 minutes because she was so used to the "infinite" digital pictures she could take. To add insult to injury, she kept taking the film pack out and exposing the pictures, and couldn't figure out why they were blank.

NovaS1X 11y ago

This is good for digital in ways I think people won't notice quite yet. As an amateur photographer I tend to see film users a lot. I shoot digital but I'd like to shoot film too. The reality is that there are some artifacts that film gives you that you can't replace in digital yet. In art, if the effect or feeling that you want is given on a certain tool then that is the tool for the job. In photography, if this is film, then film is the right tool for the job. There's also the large factor of workflows. People get used to a workflow that influences their style and it's important to them to maintain that workflow. What is measurably better in technical terms is not important. What I see happening is that market trends like this will push digital forces to perfectly re-creating classic films. The difficulty with re-creating film with filters or presets is it's notoriously hard to do and usually not perfect. Fujifilm is a perfect example of this with their film simulation modes on their X-Mount camera lineup. I suspect that the film trend is going to push photography giants into creating more accurate emulation of film baked into their workflows and devices rather than the current trend of generic hipster Instagram filters or playing in Lightroom for a few hours (and still not getting the effect you want). Whether you're a professional or a 16y/o girl with a K1000 and mix-matched 80's leg warmers film still does have a place amongst people and this will in turn affect the development of digital processing.