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Tips from Chris

If you have a question for Chris, you can email him here

Welcome to my first entry in to this forum on film making. I had intended to start off by talking about super 8 and film in general but there are already so many good sites that talk about the history of super 8 that it doesn't make any sense to re-invent the wheel. Instead I think I'll start off by talking about the very basics- what film stock to buy?

So you've decided that you want to shoot film. Where to start? Let's take a quick look at the different sizes of films and the prices. You could shoot super8, 16mm, or 35mm. If you're a hobbyist like me, we should probably rule out 35mm all together. The price for the film alone is going to be more than most of us make in a month not to mention the price of the cameras.

So that leaves super8 and 16mm. 16mm is going to give you a lot more choice of film stocks, but it's also going to cost you more for the film stock. It also doesn't last as long. With 16mm you get 40 frames per foot of film, with super8 you get 70. 16mm is usually shot at 24 frames per second which comes to 36 feet of film for every minute. Super8 is usually shot at 20 frames per second, so a 50 foot cartridge is going to give you about 3 minutes of footage, versus a 100 foot reel of 16mm that will also give you about 3 minutes of footage. The price difference is that a 50 foot cartridge of super8 costs $14 from Dwayne's Photo in Kansas as where 16mm runs about $44 for a 100 foot reel. Finally, you'd have to get the films processed. Processing for super8 is $9 per cartridge and $24 per 100 feet of 16mm.

My quest for finding affordable film lead me to several projects. I've been designing and building a film splitter to split 35mm into super8 film and then re-perforating it. You can buy a 100 foot bulk reel of ektachrome 35mm film for about $50, so if you split it you could get six 50 foot cartridges of super8 out of that, making your cost per reel less than $10. So as I work more on this I'll pass along the information. The advantage to being able to split and perforating your own film is that your choices of filmstock are greatly expanded. Also, by shooting color negative film or black and white you can process it yourself for a much reduced price, saving not only on the cost of processing chemicals but eliminating the need to send it to the lab and having to pay shipping to get it there and get it back. This step alone can save you about $8 depending on where you get it processed.

Of the different super8 films currently available most likely if you're shooting color film to project you're probably going to be shooting the new Ektachrome 64T. One of the things I've learned recently (I'm still new to shooting film myself) is that the exposure notch on the 64T cartridge is different than that of the old Kodachrome 40 cartridge. If you're using an older camera then you'll have to compensate for that by manually adjusting the iris on your camera. For my camera I have to stop down 2/3 of a stop for the correct exposure.

If you're using an old camera you'll want to check out this link and download the super8 cartridge notch ruler. The notch in the cartridge tells the automatic exposure system in your camera what speed the film is and what setting to use to properly expose it, it can also have a notch for the daylight filter as well.

That's it for the first installment. Please e-mail me with your questions, comments, or suggestions and we'll get started.

Chris

If you have a question for Chris, you can email him here

Read more about Chris at his website Builderofstuff.com