Old Double 8mm Home Movies and Old 35mm Slides: Surprisingly Similar

[tfunch24]

My paternal grandfather passed away in December and since I'm the only one in the family that goes for 8mm home movies, I got all his old home movies and old 35mm slides. I finally got around to watching them this week and I was surprised.

My grandfather would often shoot R8 and take slides of the same exact scenes. What really surprises me is the similarity between the Regular 8mm and the 35mm slides. The 35mm slides are more detailed and the color is more intense, of course, but the Regular 8mm home movies look very similar--the colors are virtually the same, and they're only *slightly* less intense than that of the slides.

I expected a greater gulf in color intensity, detail, contrast, etc. between the two formats.

Judging from the virtual lack of grain and Technicolor-like colors, I'm assuming my grandfather shot everything on Kodachrome.

Tom

[c_77]

My grandfather used to take mostly slide photographs too. I'd love to see some of them. Interestingly, my mom says she is disappointed that he took slides rather than regular snapshots.

I'm not too surprised that they look similar because Kodachrome has such a tight grain. I read on a super 8 website somewhere that it doesn't even look too bad blown up to 35mm and projected (though I would never try it).

I also read that the resolution of super 8 is something like 1350 lines. I don't understand this, does ALL film have 1350 lines or does that pertain to the gauge size? I suppose I don't understand, "lines of resolution". Does 35mm have an even greater resolution?

[tfunch24]

The resolution of Super 8 (and Regular 8) is about 800 lines. 16mm is about four times that and I don't know what the resolution of 35mm is--only that it is a much, much, much more. The 1350 lines of resolution is a myth.

Tom

[Mike Buckles]

My grandfather's reg 8mm home movies are the same as what you've described...even 36 years later, the reds are vivid, all colors bold and saturated...really nice! my picture you see here is me in his movies, although I just copied it from digital camcorder, so the color and sharpness aren't done justice. Kodachrome is amazing! mikeyb

[tfunch24]

It's a pity that an inexpensive slides-to-video transfer device does not exist (Hmmm...the Moviestuff SlidePal?) It would make doing side-by-side comparisons so much easier.

I'm upgrading to a WorkPrinter so I'm between telecine machines at the moment. Otherwise, I'd upload a few clips--there's a lot of Europe, particularly 1966 Denmark, Italy, and France.

Just one question: Aside from the obvious frame and sprocket hole size, does Double 8mm Kodachrome differ from Super 8mm Kodachrome? If you were to shoot the same scene using 40, one on R8, the other on S8, would there be a difference in color, saturation, contrast, etc.?

I've never noticed a difference, but, frankly, I've never bothered to really look.

Tom

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ February 09, 2003 06:49 PM: Message edited by: tfunch24 ]</font>

[lightfeat]

Hey Tom

For slides to video, why not just do it the same as with a workprinter, but project from a Kodak carousel or whatever, instead of the workprinter itself, directly into the prism? I've never even seen a workprinter but I can't see why it wouldn't work. You'd probably have to move to the next slide manually, and manually mouse click to capture, I guess.

Alternatively, there's a load of commercial slide scanners out there, and files could be converted to video easily, but that won't really be a side by side comparison, if that's what you want.

Lucas

[tfunch24]

Roger would be the best person to field this question, but I think the condenser lens would be too small for slides. The condenser lens requires a projector (8mm or otherwise) that can project a diffused 3 inch wide image. I know for sure that my Argus 300 slide projector does not fit this requirement...though I'm sure someone could make it work with the proper slide projector.

Tom

[MovieStuff]

Actually, a slide projector will work great but not with the standard lens. Also, the light source has to be changed out to a diffused source. I've actually built one for a guy up north but I haven't put it on my website because I've really got my hands full with WorkPrinter orders for the moment.

Here is what I built: I took a standard Kodak slide projector and replace the lamp assembly with a diffused, low heat lamp. The lens was replaced with a flat field enlarging lens mounted in a gutted standard Kodak projection (crap) lens. This was mated to a condenser lens assembly. Now, here is where it gets really interesting. The guy wanted it to be automated so that he could automatically transfer an entire rotary tray full of slides onto video fairly quickly and have them all as separate files. As he was satisfied with whatever auto exposure would give him, this made my job easier, though I did have to do some thinking.

What I came up with was the exact same method that I use for the WorkPrinter. The projector he provided came equipped with an interval timer, which was handy. I added a tie in that would make a contact closure each time a new slide came up in the gate and set the interval time for about 1 second. His computer was set up in the "stop motion capture" mode and I provided one of my standard modified PS2 mouses so that the projector could "talk" to the computer. Each time a slide came up in the gate, the mouse would capture a single frame as part of a standard AVI file.

When finished, he merely placed that AVI on the timeline and exported it as a numbered Targa sequence and that automatically separated all the images into individual numbered files that conveniently matched the numbers on the slide tray for reference. If there were any that he felt auto exposure was wrong on, he could easily go directly to that slide and re-transfer it manually, without any searching. I played with it quite a bit before sending it to him. It was really pretty efficient and the focus was always dead on. I'm actually thinking of building another one to use here in our shop.

Roger

PS: Oh, yeah. It's a blast watching the resulting AVI go screaming by with all those different images at 30 per second. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Paul L.]

Wouldn't a slide scanner be better for this? I would imagine that you'd get much higher quality.

[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Paul L.:
Wouldn't a slide scanner be better for this? I would imagine that you'd get much higher quality.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes, the quality is better off a slide scanner but not much better if you use a broadcast 3 CCD camera, especially for use on video. Also, a scanner is considerably slower than the method I outlined and this guy had LOTS of slides, like thousands, to deal with. Using a scanner would be insane in a production line environment. The method I outlined would allow all slides in a tray to stay together in a "master AVI file" that would preserve their order in case there was any doubt as to the order of images and automatically outputting them as stretchable targas that were numbered meant he could just drag the folder onto the timeline and release and the targas would fall into place for easy manipulation. In all, a scanner would produce a slightly better image but would introduce a whole variety of other factors that would slow down the production process. I always use a slide scanner for print work though as the resolution there needs to be the best.

Roger