New type camera idea!

[paulcotto]

I was just thinking. What if you took a DS8 camera and made the gate as wide as the 16mm film? Then you would get a widescreen camera with 1/2 the economy of Super-8 (about 5 minutes per 100 foot roll). The pull down would be the same as super-8mm but the frame width would be wider than super-16 because of the smaller super-8 perforations. I wonder if it's been tried before. It would maximize the useable area of the 16mm film If you only perforated one row of Super-8 perfs you could even go wider!

What do you think?

Regards,
Paul Cotto

[Guest-]

The same could be done for regular 8mm.

[Guest-]

What kind of lenses would be needed for this conversion?

[Basstruc]

That's exactly what I said in the 8mm->16 thread

[MovieStuff]

This was discussed about a year ago on Mike's forum. I think I labled the topic "Hyper8" or something like that. My idea was to use a double 8mm camera which would lend itself to the task better as the frame already exists between the sprocket holes. Of course, DS8 could work but the image wouldn't be as wide, but probably plenty wide enough. DS8 or D8, I think the idea is terrific.

Roger

[paulcotto]

I guess it's been thought of before, oh well. I was thinking a modified K-3 would be perfect. Just reduce the pull down to .1664 like super-8. I remember a patent I looked at to do that with regular-16mm film. I guess it never caught on..... If I can get a K-3 cheap I might have a look inside to see if it could be done. I had a K-3 that I put a Tobin motor on but I sold it on ebay 2 years ago. That was a tricky job but far easier that some of the repairs and mods I have done to military jets

regards,
Paul Cotto

[ds21z]

Steal this Idea! Anyway, interesting concept,,,,,of course you would have to modify a projector also.

Anyway, look at this link:

http://home.earthlink.net/~frankostein/ ... oPage.html

Seems a good idea that I may try someday.

Cheers,

Ds21z
LA, CA

[mattias]

i think i was one of the "founders" of that thread. ;-) we quickly concluded that if you're content with not being able to edit the actual film but only screen it unedited or transferred to video, a better idea is to just mask a 16mm gate to half height, shoot regular double perf 16, flip the spool and shoot again. same result with less expensive stock and that can be transferred to video by anyone with a 16mm gate on their telecines, i.e. everybody in the galaxy and their grandmothers.

/matt

[sk8s]

The Canon DS8 would be the best choice for this type of modification. The lens on the DS8 most likely would not properly cover the entire wide frame. Since the Canon Scoopic 16mm camera and the DS8 are pretty much the same camera, a careful melding of the two seems the best answer. The scoopic lens will cover the entire frame. The DS8 movement is made for super 8. The camera bodies are the same.

As a bonus. The scoopic can be modified to use CP 16 style 400' magazines. Modifed scoopics show up every now and again on ebay. DS8 film comes on daylight spools that will work in the CP mag. 200' and 400' daylight spools do exist. (A bit rare these days). It seems that one should be able to obtain 400' of ds8 film on a standard 16mm core. You gould keep it on the core and simply use a changing bag or have it would onto a 400' daylight spool. This seems to be very possible.

-Rob Skates

[Carlos 8mm]

Ok. Let's see:

Super 8 frame sizes: 4,23mm X 5,69mm --->5,69mm x 2= 11,38 mm

---> 11,38/4,23=2,69 ---> aspect ratio = 1: 2,70 approx.

Really wider !


Carlos.

[Carlos 8mm]

Hey guys,
I was thinking :idea:
Why not convert a 16 mm camera who works horizontally as the old French Dimaphot camera using Double Super 8 film?. (Similar to the Jukka's design, but without using S8 cartridges) This way the frame size is very close to 9,5 mm format. less wider than Paul's idea but built in a such way that can be use Super 8/Double Super 8 film in daylight magazines similar to those that existed for Double 8mm and 9,5mm. This way it's possible to use anamorphic lenses if we want a wider frame or not.

What do you think?

Carlos

[David M. Leugers]

Just a historical note that this has been done a long time ago with Bolex H-8mm. I read about it maybe twenty years ago. It never caught on because of the difficulty in making a projector at the time that could project the image. Same for running the film sideways like Vistavision. I think it may be feasible, but if widescreen HDTV is 16:9, what real advantage would a 2:66 to 1 aspect ratio do you unless you project it? I think a good scope camera lens to adapt the S-8mm frame to 16:9 would be far more useful. Just my two cents.


David M. Leugers

[mattias]

if widescreen HDTV is 16:9, what real advantage would a 2:66 to 1 aspect ratio do you unless you project it

what's the problem with that? 1.85 and 2.35 movies are transferred letterboxed to 16:9 all the time. no movies are ever shot in 16:9 in any film format. and even if you crop the sides you get more negative than with regular and super 8 at half the price of 16, at least with the flip scheme and regular 16mm stock. d8 perfed stock is more expensive which would make that scheme almost as expensive as just shoting 16 and cropping, and wouldn't give you quite as much negative area.

/matt

[mattias]

ok, i've decided to do this. so which camera is the easiest to get a custom made gate for? i'm thinking k3 or bolex h16 (rex or not). will a h8 gate fit a h16? if that's the case i could just get one and file it wider, right?

thanks,
matt

[Herb Montes]

I thought of doing this with my Kodak Cine Special some time ago. It would be easy to mask the gate since the camera can use split screen masks. I've been trying to find a mask set for my Cine Special but I could also make one. The only thing that held me back was projecting it. I did look into modifying an old silent 16mm projector for this.

Thing is double perf 16mm film is getting hard to find. Fuji no longer makes it and Kodak is pushing their single perf stock for Super 16mm production. Even the short end companies only sell single perf. :?