Image quaility of old Super8-Silent vs. Super8-Sound

[son-of-bubba]

I've been transferring old R8 and S8 silent for a few years now.

Recently I began transferring old S8-Sound and I've noticed that the image quality is generally inferior to both R8 and S8-Silent.

Perhaps it is just a result of my small sample size but if anyone has any information or ideas I would be interested.

Thanks in advance.

Pat

[thebigidea]

a lot of those s8 sound carts were shot with awful automatic cameras indoors with extremely poor lighting. S8 sound can look amazing outdoors or with proper lighting, but most people just shot stuff by the Christmas Tree with a 40 watt bulb.

Whereas with the regular-8 the home movies tended to be outdoors with good exposures...

[Angus]

The Kodachrome film is exactly the same as that used in the silent carts...so as long as you're comparing K40 silent with K40 sound (and not KII with K40) there's no reason for the sound film to look inferior....

...unless it was shot with an inferior camera. There were many sound cameras, especially the early ones, aimed at people who knew nothing about photography...the "point and shoot" brigade.

[super8man]

There's also a chance you could be comparing Kodachrome (reg8) to Kodachrome II (K12 process reg 8 and 1965 super 8 to late 1970s) and Kodachrome 40 (k14 process super 8 in the late 1970's through to current) - I forget the transition dates.

Bottom line, from a "pure" kodachrome "look" perspective, I think Kodachrome from the 1950s is incredible. Sure there is no green, but aahh those blues and reds! WOW!

Later K 14 really takes a decent lens and good contrasty scene to make it sparkle and shine.

My humble opinions of course.

Cheers,
Mike

[BK]

My philosyphy:

1) Perhaps that pinch roller for smoothing out the frame by frame pull of the claw at the film gate for the sound recording head, contributes to the slight unsteadiness of the image.

2) Most of the low end sound cameras had simple optics which offers a fine picture, but the majority of them are low light models with a larger shutter opening which contributes to blurry images when filming fast motion or with panning shots.

3) That super 8 sound cartridge design, not exactly the best. That's why I switched to a Fuji single 8 sound camera for my home movies back then and never looked back.

Bill

[son-of-bubba]

Thanks Guys !

I appreciate the confirmation that the film quailty was the same between Super8-silent and Super8-sound.

I'd bet the issue is your suggestion about camera quality.

Pat

[wado1942]

Or maybe sound film, having thick, yet uneven coatings of iron oxide on each side of the image contributes to gate weave and focal problems.