[MacDV] History of 8mm (Pt. 2 of 2)

[Steven Rogers]

On Thursday, December 12, 2002, at 09:49 PM, Danny Grizzle wrote:

>  . . . Amateur filmmaking exploded. Consumer brands were Kodak, many 
> others. There were also some extremely nice cameras made by Nikon, 
> Canon, Nizo, Beaulieu, Sankyo, Elmo, and many, many others. Some 
> brands, like Canon and Elmo, had extensive product lines, 5 or more 
> models.

My parents had a Bolex (inexplicably) just like the one the main 
character is shown with in Cinema Paradiso. A little bit of nostalgia 
and realism when I saw it in the movie.

> About film-to-video transfers: I am finding that the plastic film base 
> of my parents old 8mm movies is having sever dimensional stability 
> problems. With age, the film base is shrinking at an uneven rate, 
> causing the film to twist in crazy ways.

The oldest I've done is std 8mm from 1957. It was a little bit brittle 
in spots and a few sprocket holes were broken, but otherwise in 
reasonable shape. The color looked fairly decent, but detectably faded. 
Most 8mm or super 8 I've seen from around the 70's looks pretty much 
like new, so that's about my guess at the deterioration time. If your 
film is 30 years old, you have plenty of time. If its 50 years old, it 
may not be a disaster, but you should start making plans to do 
something pretty soon. (of course, it depends a LOT on how it was 
stored) You want to copy it before the film becomes so brittle that 
projection ruins it.

And DON'T throw the old film away after transfer, no matter how bad off 
it is.

To me, its interesting to imagine what it will be like for future 
generations now that so much of "ordinary life" is captured for 
posterity. If these disks really do last 100 years, then the stuff 
we're copying now that's 50 years old will be 150 years old then. That 
would be like having a home-movie from the civil war now.

SR