Question 2: 8mm still film

[dharmabum1949]

Is there any difference between super 8 motion picture film and 8mm still film? Most importantly is there a difference in the size and placement of the sprocket holes? Does 8mm still film come in some sort of cartridge as well? A friend of mine has an 8mm spy camera that shoots stills, im interested in loading short strips of film, maybe 2 feet or so into the still camera and shooting a sort of discontinuos stop motion peice. I envision the peice being composed of 1/2 or 1/4 second shots of strong linear form that flash just quickly enough for the lines to interact with eachother. The first thing i would be shooting would be intersecting steal support beams.The reason I would like to do this is that i find i never have my s8 camera on me when i see things that would work for this project and because the still camera is so small, i could have it in my pocket at all times, it even has a flash so i could shoot in any situation, even in the middle of the night.

[dharmabum1949]

I probably didn't explain myself well enough, the camera that im speaking of may very well be war surplus, its all metal, is about the size of my hand and shoots 8mm stills. It even has a compact flash that unfolds into about 3 times its size. Have you ever seen Dr. Strangelove? The camera that the Russian ambasodor uses to take pictures of the "big board" is in all likelyhood an 8mm still camera. I dont have a stop motion feature on my s8 and i was going to use a freinds 16mm camera but the catch is broken and as soon as you wind it it starts shooting. A freind of mine had just recently shown me his 8mm still camera and the idea popped into my head that i could use it. I figure its small enough for me to carry around all the time and it has a flash so i could shot things as I see them. My idea is to do really discontinuos explorations of form through repitition of similar linear shapes. For instance, imagine a few wires and cables running all snakelike through eachother on the ground. What I would do is arrange them into differnt forms and take a picture of each one. I would then project them at a slow enough frame rate for the viewer to only breifly see each image, the impression left on the viewer would be created by the way that these repeating lines and forms affect them as they whiz by just slow enough for them to catch an idea of what they might be. The reason i was postin on the board is because i have a feeling im going to need to incase my super8 film in something in order to load it into the still camera and i was hoping for someone to be able to help me out with that problem. I have no idea how film for still8 cameras is incased. Im pretty much positive that I can expose my s8 film like this but im afraid if the film isnt properly secured in some sort of cartridge that the exposures wont be in the correct place on the frame.

[dharmabum1949]

oh yeah i should also have said that i intend to splice together the short strips of film shot in the still camera and then project them as motion picture film

[BolexPlusx]

Well,
If it is old enough to be war surplus and by that you mean WWII, then it can't be the same as Super-8, because that standard didn't exist until 1965.

It could be like regular 8, but that comes 16mm wide until it's slit post processing. So even if the sprocket holes are the same, you'd need to figure out a way to slit it down to 8mm (in the dark, no less) to fit the camera.

[Matt Pacini]

What the hell is an 8mm still camera?
I've never heard of one, although for a while, Kodak was selling the Vision200T Super 8 stock as "surveilance stock", so maybe that's what your camera is.
Wild...
THere's no reason you can't use a SUper 8 motion picture camera as a still camera, in fact I've entertained the idea of using mine that way, and printing some 8x10's of the result.
Might be interesting.
You can get like 3,600 pictures our of one 50ft $11.00 roll of film, so economically, it's a damn good idea!

Matt Pacini

[Greg Crawford]

Did you bring the microfilm, comrade?