New GK reloadable super8 cartridge

[aj]

Many thanks to all responses.

I recall from about 30 years ago (late 70s), using a retail Super8 backwinder. Cost me about $70 at the time (what's that in today's money?). You took the cart out of the camera, put it in this device, and turned the knob. I used a change bag as well. Only went back a finite amount due to S8 cart design. And a Canon I used back then did in-camera backwinding for "lap dissolves" between shots - the cart limiting this to a second or so. I think the cart limit on backwinding was 75 frames from memory.


C

These plastic rewinders show up on occasion. Sometimes as EWA (East West Agency - iron curtain era ) othertimes as a housebrand of HAMA etc.

If you want to rewind full length in a one-time cartridge you would need to crack the anti-reverse. Then you could attempt to make an opening in the righthand-side and then grip the core-ring and rewind the film. In the dark of course. After that close the side again and double-expose the film.

[aj]

I was interested but......I checked the price G-K is asking:

Reloadable super 8 cartridge 74,00 EUR
(incl. 19% tax excl. Shipping costs)

http://www.cinevia.eu/

I think I might stick to trawling for the old re-loadable Soviet cartridges. So far I have recently bought eight (and that includes a Lomo S8 camera) for the price of one re-loadable G-K cartridge.



\

Crazy. I hope for GK the casting molds are the ones used for the one-time cartrdige. The Euro 74 leaves some Euro 50 for the manual labour which supposedly takes 40 minutes.

[carllooper]

I spoke with Lasse from Logmar. In theory the camera could be run in reverse - through a change in the software, but in practice it's uncertain what the result would be - could very well damage the camera.

So for the time being the Logmar is a forward only camera.

C

[nikonr10]

I spoke with Lasse from Logmar. In theory the camera could be run in reverse - through a change in the software, but in practice it's uncertain what the result would be - could very well damage the camera.

So for the time being the Logmar is a forward only camera.

C

Strange to think that with all this new tech in a new camera at big bucks /for me anyway ! / can not do what camera's of the 70/s in spec. ie The beaulieu 4008 zm , leicinal special , or Nikon r10 etc , And all have a veiwfinder !

What is good about this gk cartridge is that as ,AJ pointed out you can load the take up core in day light , which makes it that much more easy , At a price ?

[S8 Booster]

I spoke with Lasse from Logmar. In theory the camera could be run in reverse - through a change in the software, but in practice it's uncertain what the result would be - could very well damage the camera.

So for the time being the Logmar is a forward only camera.

C

why would you reverse the film run in the camera?

unless you intend to project a reversal film there is no reason to run the film backwards?

for transferred films all can be done in post editing.


shoot.....

[carllooper]

why would you reverse the film ... for transferred films all can be done in post editing.

Very good question.

Apart from a camera steadiness test, or wanting to keep the process work to a first generation effect (in an optical printing pipeline), it's really just the concept of doing it that's of interest. It's similar to the concept of shooting an entire film on a single cart although perhaps not quite as direct as that concept.

Reasons are funny things I think. Sometimes it's just the challenge of something more than any real reason. Needn't mean there isn't any reason: could just be that the reason isn't as easy to express or understand as the doing. And sometimes there just isn't any reason at all. One finds oneself able to proceed without such a thing! There's a strange power in such.

In my case it's probably something to do with getting away from my digital-only workspace (where everything and anything is possible) and working within a particular constraint: mechanics. If only to learn more about such - how to solve certain problems mechanically, as much as computationally. There's a bit of to and fro here. It's not just one or the other, but an interplay between them.

For example, I'm interested in building this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv5B63HeF1E

And then to go onto one of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwKucXHto0w

Both of which involve mechanical and computational processes, which work off each other to solve a certain problem: the positioning and orientation of a physical object (in my case it would be a film camera and heavy ones as well). I've solved the computational side of driving such things, and just working through the physical building of them, ie. what parts would be best to get, or have machined, etc.

C

[nikonr10]

why would you reverse the film ... for transferred films all can be done in post editing.

Very good question.

Apart from a camera steadiness test, or wanting to keep the process work to a first generation effect (in an optical printing pipeline), it's really just the concept of doing it that's of interest. It's similar to the concept of shooting an entire film on a single cart although perhaps not quite as direct as that concept.

Reasons are funny things I think. Sometimes it's just the challenge of something more than any real reason. Needn't mean there isn't any reason: could just be that the reason isn't as easy to express or understand as the doing. And sometimes there just isn't any reason at all. One finds oneself able to proceed without such a thing!

In my case it's probably something to do with getting away from my digital-only workspace (where everything and anything is possible) and working within a particular constraint. If only to learn more about such - how to solve mechanical problems as much as computational ones.

C

For me it's apart of making a film as a handmade film , not cooked up in some digital effect ? but chemical and organic that has been done by oneself <
from start to finish <

[carllooper]

For me it's apart of making a film as a handmade film , not cooked up in some digital effect ? but chemical and organic that has been done by oneself <
from start to finish <

Yes, absolutely. The handmade. That's a big thing for me as well. Perhaps the biggest.

C

[carllooper]

Strange to think that with all this new tech in a new camera at big bucks /for me anyway ! / can not do what camera's of the 70/s in spec. ie The beaulieu 4008 zm , leicinal special , or Nikon r10 etc , And all have a veiwfinder !

Some of those cameras, of which you speak, when brand new, and translated into today's dollars, would retail about the same, if not more, than the Logmar does today. Or to put it another way, if you convert the price of the Logmar today, into 70s prices, you'll find it quite comparable to the retail price of those S8 cameras in their day.

Re. backwinding - it may be something they look into ahead of the retail version. The current crop of cameras are beta versions. And prior to that the camera was open to community input on what else the camera might possess - one of which was the suggestion that it support a magazine (which it now does support) - but nobody in the community (including myself), as far as I know, thought of suggesting backwinding capability.

Re. viewfinder. Yes, it doesn't have an optical viewfinder, which is somewhat unfortunate. But by the same token, those 70's cameras didn't have a digital viewfinder. Nor did they have pin registration. Nor an SD card for storing sound, etc.

So it's not too strange ... in terms of price. And indeed the price, you would think, should be so much more, considering there's no mass market to bring the price down. As there was for 70s cameras. So if anything is strange - its that its not as expensive as it otherwise might have been. A lot of that has to do, I think, with innovations in manufacturing since the 70s. And I imagine this will continue. Small run manufacturing capabilities.

Of course it also depends on what you (the customer) value. There's no reason you can't get what you're after using an S8 off ebay. I've seen brilliant works made on the simplest of cameras. Easily. Indeed I've seen brilliant works which didn't involve a camera at all.

Its the artist which ultimately makes a work, using whatever tech they can find, buy or otherwise make. I've heard brilliant sound tracks made on a toy piano. Hell, a didgeridoo produces the most marvellous sound I've ever heard and it's little more than a hollowed out piece of wood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g592I-p-dc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnwKpQeza3A

C

[S8 Booster]

apart form the obvious differences between the Logmar and the old Canons and the Nikons (R8 R10) those cameras (and a few others) would do rewind and transitions.

however the Kodak (silent carts only) would only accept approx 100 frames backwind due to cartridge limitations. (Nikon patent)

The Canons like 1014 and 814 XLS would to crossover transitions only while the Nikons would do transitions and/or a flat dual exposure for 100 frames.

as far as i see it that it the limit for the carts. not much to hurray vs post digital editing if 100 frames it the limit for any silent cart anyway.

a formidable improvement in that case would be the Fuji Single 8 carts which would accept full rewind. so where have you been - in that case Logmar?

pick up a Canon, Nikon or Fuji for the rewind job?

shoot...


oh well, i dont know really.. :

http://youtu.be/2sm_qdeconI
http://youtu.be/ylk6VMBLrvM

[nikonr10]

apart form the obvious differences between the Logmar and the old Canons and the Nikons (R8 R10) those cameras (and a few others) would do rewind and transitions.

however the Kodak (silent carts only) would only accept approx 100 frames backwind due to cartridge limitations. (Nikon patent)

The Canons like 1014 and 814 XLS would to crossover transitions only while the Nikons would do transitions and/or a flat dual exposure for 100 frames.

as far as i see it that it the limit for the carts. not much to hurray vs post digital editing if 100 frames it the limit for any silent cart anyway.

a formidable improvement in that case would be the Fuji Single 8 carts which would accept full rewind. so where have you been - in that case Logmar?

pick up a Canon, Nikon or Fuji for the rewind job?

shoot...


oh well, i dont know really.. :

http://youtu.be/2sm_qdeconI
http://youtu.be/ylk6VMBLrvM

For Me super 8 film in the cartridge form is very limited as we know by design ? fuji single 8 carts designs where way better , and then you have DS8 which gives you more freedom !
Now for fuji s8 no film any more or have to load in cart ? DS8 not much choice in film then the bulk of a big body etc ,
Which now leave me with film in a super 8 cartridge , what can I do with it and also keep costs down ? The reloadable cartridge gives that much more freedom to create ?

[carllooper]

Yeah - Super8 isn't the best fit for any experimental, manual or freedom inspiring filmmaking. But like any tech, one can still do such with it.

I find a bolex 16mm camera a really good fit for such film making - but not entirely.

Super8 emerges within that world which would eventually give us home video and digital cameras - where the camera is treated as something that could and eventually would do most of the work for you. Less of a tool and more of an assistant cameraperson. And why not? A lot of conventional film making is built on top of solutions that a camera itself can be made to solve - if with a little tweaking still required. Auto-exposure, auto-focus, auto-processing (save and load), auto-screening. Auto upload to facebook: auto-audiences. Auto-everything.

News photography in particular is the sort of world such cameras would fit into, whether for the nightly TV news (using 16mm versions of such cameras), or the lounge room get together to watch last years trip to Disneyland (Super8 versions of such). A particular kind of documentary film making where a well worn workflow allowed all these assumptions about cameras and their usage to become formalised and freezable, into hardware and software.

But it's not just news photography that benefits from this (or a notion of film making that suffers from this). There is certain kind of dramatic art that's possible as well - not the Hitchcockian scripted and well planned one where there's ample time made available for manual fine art operation of the camera, and the performers get plenty of downtime to chat amongst themselves - but more that improvised drama - half news - half fiction - where the moment isn't (just) a function of a well organised team of professionals/artists clicking in clockwork with each other, but also a function of the ability to tap into peculiar and unique moments otherwise lost, were the system more manually oriented.

A speed thing.

And of course the more banal reasons - business reasons - time is money etc. but that side of things, while perfectly arguable, makes me eyes glaze over (most of the time). Only because I spend what feels like decades on some back burner projects, if only off and on, for which I know full well there is no adequate time-is-money model that would ever be capable of coping with such insanity, but for which the work itself otherwise emerges from a kind of speedy-in-the-moment field work (strangely enough).

C