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Forgotten Electronics of the 70s and 80s
Ant writes "This is where you can find photos of those unusual items which somehow missed our keen attention in the 70s and 80s. Be it a specialty product, electronic novelty or an utter boondoggle from a major electronics outfit of the day, we'll dig 'em up and talk about 'em."
The 80s Cult High Tech Wrist Watch
mirror of links off of main page
http://slushdot.org/mirror/forgotten_elec/
Got it before they took it down.
Fragile? Properly stored, Kodachrome Super-8 is an archival medium. Ektachrome can fade badly if not stored properly. And Super-8 film still has more "resolution" than current consumer video formats. It's worth preserving if it has important stuff on it.
Your projector might be at more fault than the film's mechanical fragility: if you're going to project your movies, get the projector cleaned and lubricated by a good camera technician every couple-three years or so. Consider finding a better projector than your dad probably bought back when.
Or spend the money to get the transfer done by a professional who knows what he or she is doing. Google on "super-8 telecine". And then store the originals carefully. A professional-grade telecine setup would probably run you a lot more than $1000.
Pointer #1: Don't do it at home.
It's already been pointed out that your film has excellent resolution and is worth keeping. But I'd disagree that it isn't "fragile", as someone else said. If something has to be stored very carefully in controlled temperature and humidity, that is fragile.
There are many reasons to do a film to tape transfer. It's hard to find projectors in 8 mm format, difficult to get them serviced if they break (as mine did -- no one could find the parts necessary), and they require a lot of care to make sure they don't damage your film. Also, with today's computers, it's much easier to edit your footage into a nice, watchable set of family memories rather than 200 reels of disorganized family history.
Here's what I'd suggest:
1. Stop getting them out and watching them every year. Dust and dirt in the film gate can scratch your film. If your plan is to transfer them, stop running them through a motorized feed.
2. Get a hand cranked editing station off eBay. Use it to go through your film and organize it for transfer. The transfer house will likely splice together reels and you should try to group them to maintain some timeline.
3. As someone else said, locate a good super-8 telecine shop. I plan on trying these guys in the near future. Send them one reel and see how they do. There are plenty of other places you can try; I happened to have that one bookmarked.
If you'd like to edit this stuff down, consider standard or mini-DV which you can then load into a NLE program. Choose the best quality format you can use, and dub from that if you want other copies. Don't have it dumped to mpeg2 on DVD; get some kind of master tape made in DV, Digibeta, BetaSP, whatever you can run. This may require you to do some research into how video formats compare to one another. I'm sure google can help.
You didn't say how many feet of film you're dealing with. Assuming your 200 odd reels are the 50' cassettes many consumer 8/s8 cameras used, you've got about 10,000 ft, roughly 14 hours or so. That's going to be $1000-$2000 to transfer. Based on a quick google search, transfers look to be $90-$185 per hour -- that's 680' of 8mm and 856' of Super 8mm.
Bottom line -- this isn't worth doing yourself. The quality won't be as good and if your equipment isn't professionally maintained you're likely to damage the film. My old equipment has already eaten some of my film -- don't risk your footage. Start now and maybe you can edit it all down to a nice family DVD by your Dad's birthday.
tp