Question regarding super8 and exposure

[jritzmann]

Hello-
I have a rather odd question, but I'll need ya'll to bear with me.

My question centers around how a super8 camera, most notably, a Nalcom FTL super8 camera (from the 70's) would capture it's frames. In the description of the camera, it's listed as "split frame focus".

Now allow me to give you a senario:
A man has a ball on a string. It's at the bottom of frame, and he begins to shoot with the camera. He moves the ball as the camera rolls, towards the top of the frame. As the ball gets largely off frame, nearly a sliver left at the top of frame, he shuts off the camera. He then moves the ball again to the bottom of the frame, and restarts the camera.

Stop motion right? No biggie. The ball appears to "jump" lightspeed to the bottom of the frame.

Here's the question. When looking at such a film frame by frame, there is one or two frames possibly that show the ball sliver at the top of the film, while also showing the ball at the bottom of the frame. There's no evidence that the film was spliced, and there is no darkening of a double exposure.

So, is there an artifact of how a super8 records a stop motion frame like this? Does it actually put on the film, maybe what we'd consider 2 "frames" at once? Does this have to do with the "split frame" in "split frame focus"?

I thank anyone for any information at all.
Thank you,
Jeff

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ August 05, 2005 01:47 PM: Message edited by: jritzmann ]</font>

[cameraguy]

Split frame focus is just for focussing the image with the viewfinder prior to shooting.