History of 8mm (Pt. 1 of 2)

[Danny Grizzle]

On 12/12/02 8:03 PM, "Steven Rogers" <srogers1 at austin.rr.com> wrote:

> I hadn't thought about that in years. There was one called Fotomat.

That's the one. Photohut = Fotomat.

May my other recollections be as close. Already spotted one slip up in the
last submission. Rank Cintels were designed in late 60's, early 70's -- at
least that's when I became aware of them. The Kodak desktop flying spot
scanner was marketed in the mid-1970's.

Super 8 film was introduced in the late 1960's. Regular 8mm movie film,
still a common find in family keepsakes, can be distinguished because it has
a relatively large sprocket hole.

A little history:

35mm motion picture film was invented by Thomas Edison. This development was
made possible by George Eastman, who freed silver-based imaging from glass
plates, used previously by photographers such as Civil War era Matthew
Brady. With silver imaging on flexible substrates, it became possible to
move film for sequential exposure, and the movies were born.

35mm was the original gauge, a very early example of metric system adoption
in the U.S. Although camera lenses focal lengths were still measured in
inches, the film gauge was always 35mm.

Edison also determined the 4:3 aspect ratio, also known as the "Edison
rectangle". This standard has carried forward even until today as the basic
aspect of TV worldwide. Widescreen production was a 1940's & 1950's
phenomena, and was non-standard. There are some excellent websites around
that document various widescreen formats, some of which were used for only a
single film. (I can supply URLs, if anybody is interested.)

During these years, actors were on contract to studios, and each studio had
a camera department which actually manufactured all cameras and optics used
by that studio. Widescreen systems were patented, so competing studios
developed incompatible widescreen aspect ratios for competitive reasons, and
to avoid paying royalties.

The widescreen wars were horrible for exhibitors. Each movie house was faced
with the prospect of buying a different projection lens for each studio's
films. Panavision, today's giant of film-based motion picture production
equipment, was originally a manufacturer of projection lenses. The founder
invented a projection lens with variable anamorphic spread. He made a
fortune because all the theaters could buy one lens that would show films
from any studio.

Anamorphic lenses are used to film widescreen movies. Unlike normal
spherical camera lenses which we are all familiar, an anamorphic lens
includes an internal element cut from a cylinder. This bend light on one
axis only, resulting in a larger horizontal panorama being compressed into a
frame on film that is no different in size than a normal 4:3 aspect. No
change in the projector aperture or film gate -- everything is achieved
optically.

I forget the details of the story, but as the big studio system crumbled,
one of the majors got into financial difficulty. I believe the movie was
"South Pacific". At any rate, to improve their liquidity, this studio
determined to sell their camera department. This had a domino effect in the
industry. Panavision, until then an exhibitor supply house (exhibitors are
still not considered Hollywood insiders, are they?), was cash rich from the
success of their variable anamorphic projection lens, and became the
dominant motion picture camera system in the world by consolidating the
studio system camera departments. Basically, the studios decided to
outsource -- and standardize.

It was Thomas Edison who, through extensive testing, determined many things
that are foundation facts of the industry. He was faced with opposing
necessities: film stock was expensive. Edison quantified basic rules of
human perception. One is the phenomena known as "persistence of vision". Our
eyes register light in a chemical reaction on our retina. When light is
switched off, our eyes do not instantly register the fact. Edison determine
that if an electrical light is flashed exactly 48 times a second, the human
no longer perceive flashing or flicker, but instead "see" continuous
illumination. This is one reason why florescent fixtures are energy
efficient -- they switch on & off 60 times a second with AC line frequency,
but our eyes don't see it.

Edison worked backwards, and started making movies at 48 frames per second.
This used an enormous amount of film, and resulted in reel sizes too large
except to hold a few minutes. To save money, he experimented by positioning
a shutter in front of the projectors light beam. His purpose was to use as
little film as possible. He determined that if the image on each frame of
film was flashed multiple times on the screen, it made no difference in our
perception of fluid motion. Film with each frame flashed twice could be
photographed at 16 fps with no loss in fluid motion. 16 fps became the
standard frame rate, and lasted through the silent movie era. When sound
emerged in the 1930s, the soundtrack was rendered into optical tracks read
by a light, positioned in the edge area of the film. 16 fps was too slow for
good audio quality, so production frame rate was increased to 24 fps, with
each image flashed twice on screen instead of three times, the silent
standard. 24 fps is with us still today.

The people who invented TV were faces with the same biological facts about
persistence of vision and fluid motion. Since 60 Hz AC electrical
distribution line frequency was an important element of synchronization
prior to today's digital systems, our TV systems are built around 60 Hz.
Like Edison, 60 pictures a second proved too expensive, only in terms of
bandwidth and electromagnetic broadcast spectrum availability. 15 fps (1/4
of 60) was too slow for fluid motion, so 30 fps became standard.
Unfortunately, 30 fps is too slow for purposes of persistence of vision, so
the frames were interleaved into fields, increasing the actual display rate
to 60 fps, no different than added flashes of light using a rotating shutter
in Edison's movie projector.

BTW - Canon DV "Frame Mode" is simply playing with physics, no interleave
but progressive scan in lieu of 29.97 fps NTSC. In effect, Canon frame mode
is 15P... 1 frame short of Edison's 16 fps required for fluid motion. That's
why frame mode with Canon cameras is a bastard format which will forever
have an asterisk - *not appropriate for subjects in motion.

<<Concludes in Part 2>>