8 mm film

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8mm film is a motion picture film format in which the filmstrip is eight millimeters wide. It exists in two main versions: regular, normal, or standard 8mm (a.k.a. Double 8 Film) (the subject of this article) and Super 8. There are also two other varieties of Super 8 which require different cameras but which produce a final film with the same dimensions.

"Standard 8" 8mm film on a reel
"Standard 8" 8mm film on a reel

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[edit] Standard 8

The standard 8mm film format was developed by the Eastman Kodak company during the Great Depression and released on the market in 1932 to create a home movie format less expensive than 16mm. The film spools actually contain a 16mm film with twice as many perforations along each edge than normal 16mm film, which is only exposed along half of its width. When the film reaches its end in the takeup spool, the camera is opened and the spools in the camera are flipped and swapped (the design of the spool hole ensures that this happens properly) and the same film is exposed along the side of the film left unexposed on the first loading. During processing, the film is split down the middle, resulting in two lengths of 8mm film, each with a single row of perforations along one edge, so fitting four times as many frames in the same amount of 16mm film. Because the spool was reversed after filming on one side to allow filming on the other side the format was sometimes called Double 8. The framesize of regular 8mm is 4.8mm x 3.5mm and 1m film contains 264 pictures. Normally Double8 is filmed at 16 frame/s.

Common length film spools allowed to film about 3min to 4.5min at 12, 15, 16 and 18 frames per second.

Kodak ceased selling standard 8 mm film in the early 1990s, but continued to produce the film, which was sold via independent film stores. Black and white 8 mm film is still manufactured in the Czech Republic, and several companies buy bulk quantities of 16mm film to make regular 8mm by re-perforating the stock, cutting it into 25 foot (7.6m) lengths, and collecting it into special standard 8 mm spools which they then sell. Re-perforation requires special equipment. Some specialists also produce super 8mm film from existing 16mm, or even 35mm film stock.

[edit] Super 8

Main article: Super 8mm film

In 1965, Super-8 film was released and was quickly adopted by the amateur film-maker. It featured a better quality image, and was easier to use mainly due to a cartridge-loading system which did not require re-loading halfway through. Sometimes, the improvement was not as apparent, since the film gate in some cheap Super 8 cameras were plastic as was the pressure plate, which was built in to the cartridge, whereas the standard 8 cameras had a permanent metal film gate that better kept the image in focus.

There was another version of Super-8 film, Single-8, produced by Fuji in Japan. It has the same final film dimensions, but the cassette is different. The Kodak system was by far the most popular. Super-8 was at one point available with a magnetic sound track at the edge of the film but this only made up 5-8% of super-8 sales and was discontinued in the 1990s.

There has been a huge resurgence of Super-8 film in recent years due to advances in film stocks and digital technology. Film can handle far greater variations in contrast than video cameras and thus has become an alternative for acquisition. The idea is to shoot on the low cost super-8 equipment then transfer the film to video for editing. In recent years, the format itself has been further improved by enlarging the aperture of the camera to expose into the now obsolete sound track region allowing for a wide-screen image. This has been given the title "super-duper-8" or "max-8" and is gradually gaining popularity despite the availability of affordable digital video cameras.

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[edit] External links

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