Logmar, Kovats and Hingsberg

[carllooper]

Carl" When I take my son to the play area/ I tell him to watch out for the bigger boys " As there can get rough , And can be not so kind to the younger one's .
All Image's carry nostalgia in some form ? as we are looking at the past, Be it film / Photo's , etc.

The Logmar open's up alot of new door's , Still it's a super 8 camera which use's film from that 1965 format ? ,

I can really understand the windows it opens up for a new way to work with Light and Shadow be it film in this Age . INK and Paint .

I hope I wasn't coming across as a bully. Or that I was positioning the camera as some sort of war machine. If so, I'd be more than happy to switch sides and take up a simple sling shot as a weapon of choice against any such use (or abuse).

Regarding nostalgia, I do have a particular aversion to such. I can't handle such very well. Music videos I can handle. Title sequences as well. But nostalgia - it makes me very ill. Do images always carry nostalgia in some form? Perhaps they do but I don't think it's something intrinsic. Or if it is, I'd rub it out.

The way I'd put it is this:

Images are fundamentally ghosts, whereas the nostalgic is a corpse. Ghosts are an aspect of the past haunting the present, whereas nostalgia is an aspect of the present which longs for the past, the gone, mythologising the past as gone, to find some sort of eternity in the archive, a shoebox, the graveyard. Ghosts are very different. They act, rather than die. They haunt. Ghosts are the allies of history (rather than the allies of nostalgia), expressing that aspect of the past which survives (rather than vanishes), and for reasons of their own, rather than reasons we might otherwise like to give it.

C

[Tscan]

While the Logmar camera has terrific registration, it was undone by crappy perfs by Kodak which, ironically, required software stabilization to fix.

That's kind of my problem with the camera; it's Super 8. It has some great features and am VERY HAPPY they are building it, but for me, I'd rather shoot with my well-tuned Beaulieu 4008 (thanks to Bjorn) for significantly less and use my Zoom audio recorder if I need sound. The format itself just doesn't lend itself to "perfection" and what I like about it is the imperfections.

Well, that's the thing. Even if you have a perfectly tuned Beaulieu, you are likely to get registration issues because of contemporary BKC's. If the film transport of the Logmar were the same as any other Super 8 camera, it would still be subject to random jitter. So the real value of the Logmar isn't the electronics but the isolated film transport that dependably creates stable images from BKC's. If removing the electronic wizardry would lower the cost of the Logmar without sacrificing the superior transport, my guess is it would sell much better because what most Super 8 shooters want is simply a dependable camera. But I know that the most expensive part of producing that camera is the machining; not the circuitry and electronics. So, in many ways, the electronics help sweeten the deal by adding capabilities that make the $5000 price tag less painful.

Roger

Exactly, the 2 main things that make this camera desirable to me is the solid transport and wider frame for better HD conversion. Other than that, a spring motor would be just fine with me. That said, i'm better off with my Rex4 and cropping it. If I really need sync dialog, I have easy access to S16 gear. I'm glad it exists, but i wouldn't spend more than $2k on new S8 rig. Maybe they will spin off simpler versions for cheaper at some point, or i'll find a used one some day. Since it is here, it will be fearured at the Cine Gear Expo Super 8 50th birthday. Good promo for the format and the camera.
http://motion.kodak.com/motion/About/Ne ... un02_1.htm

[nikonr10]

Carl" When I take my son to the play area/ I tell him to watch out for the bigger boys " As there can get rough , And can be not so kind to the younger one's .
All Image's carry nostalgia in some form ? as we are looking at the past, Be it film / Photo's , etc.

The Logmar open's up alot of new door's , Still it's a super 8 camera which use's film from that 1965 format ? ,

I can really understand the windows it opens up for a new way to work with Light and Shadow be it film in this Age . INK and Paint .

I hope I wasn't coming across as a bully. Or that I was positioning the camera as some sort of war machine. If so, I'd be more than happy to switch sides and take up a simple sling shot as a weapon of choice against any such use (or abuse).

Regarding nostalgia, I do have a particular aversion to such. I can't handle such very well. Music videos I can handle. Title sequences as well. But nostalgia - it makes me very ill. Do images always carry nostalgia in some form? Perhaps they do but I don't think it's something intrinsic. Or if it is, I'd rub it out.

The way I'd put it is this:

Images are fundamentally ghosts, whereas the nostalgic is a corpse. Ghosts are an aspect of the past haunting the present, whereas nostalgia is an aspect of the present which longs for the past, the gone, mythologising the past as gone, to find some sort of eternity in the archive, a shoebox, the graveyard. Ghosts are very different. They act, rather than die. They haunt. Ghosts are the allies of history (rather than the allies of nostalgia), expressing that aspect of the past which survives (rather than vanishes), and for reasons of their own, rather than reasons we might otherwise like to give it.

C

Carl kind of agreed with you , The only thing is who eye's makes it Nostalgic/Sentimental or Intrinsic ? After all it's your own story ! That why we call it His story .
Well Kodak are playing the History part of super 8 film for it's 50's birth day /along with the new Logmar . So you are not alone

[carllooper]

Carl kind of agreed with you , The only thing is who eye's makes it Nostalgic/Sentimental or Intrinsic ? After all it's your own story ! That why we call it His story .
Well Kodak are playing the History part of super 8 film for it's 50's birth day /along with the new Logmar . So you are not alone

Ha ha. Yes, "His Story", but interestingly we don't call history: "ourstory" or "mystory". History (or herstory) is something that emerges outside of our immediate gaze. It's always some one elses story, but even that's not quite correct because we often don't know to whom we might ascribe the story. It's often anonymous. We go to the museum and find artefacts that tell a story, but not one with any particular name attached to it. And the story is not one we invent for it, but which it tells us. Or at least that is the story in which we're really interested. What is it's story rather than what is our story. But it's also an incomplete story. Fragmentary, and it can't do anything else but be that way.

I don't really get into Kodak's hype, but it is reassuring they still are hyping, even if it is just hype. Means they're still busy.

C

[Tommy]

I believe it was in 1979 that Arri did introduce a professional Super 8 pin registered camera ( utilizing double S 8mm roll film) at photokina. It looked alot like the 16mm Arri S, unfortunately, it never went into production.

[doug]

Coming back to my previous post, I was serious about hoping for 35mm and 16mm versions of Logmar. I wonder if this is still on the cards. I think there are no professional film cameras being made now in either of these gauges ? So I'm thinking as time goes on, say in another 3 years, a lot of the present cameras will be getting problems mechanically and electrically. So it makes sense now to plan for a new film camera, unless one of the current manufacturers like Arri does something again. And if a pin-regd Logmar could be kept quite small and quiet, maybe that's the answer, especially with the onboard sound facility. Regarding a 16mm camera, I would like to see one that accepts super-16 as well as ultra-16.

[dsl15746]

Hi Doug,

We are not planning to develop 16mm cameras anymore, it was previously on our roadmap however we think that this market is already served with existing cameras so we choose to invest in 35/65mm platforms which can also be seen from our webpage: http://www.logmar.dk/career/ - this is however a long haul and we will not have a camera for these formats available any time soon. (estimate 2017 launch)

Best regards
Lasse R.
Logmar Camera Solutions IVS

[Tscan]

Hi Doug,

We are not planning to develop 16mm cameras anymore, it was previously on our roadmap however we think that this market is already served with existing cameras so we choose to invest in 35/65mm platforms which can also be seen from our webpage: http://www.logmar.dk/career/ - this is however a long haul and we will not have a camera for these formats available any time soon. (estimate 2017 launch)

Best regards
Lasse R.
Logmar Camera Solutions IVS

You guys really got the most out of S8 with this camera. Someone could actually do an independent feature with this and the Vision3 stocks, and i really hope somebody does. However, if you do design other MP cameras, would there be any plans for a simpler, cheaper S8 camera? Maybe a silent model with the same registration and wide gate? There may be potential for higher volumes of a simpler, cheaper camera for avid shooters and artists shooting more for the imagery than narrative. where all the high tech isn't really necessary, but more focused on solid registration and HD friendly gate.

[dsl15746]

Hi "Tscan"

The cost of manufacturing our camera and the low production volumes (we only build 50 at a time) means that we will never be able to make them cheaper unless we started manufacturing batches of 500 or 1000 pieces each time.

The electronics inside our S8 camera is about 600€ in total, so as you can imagine it doesn't have any impact on the "end user" price except making it more eatable.

We would most likely never be able to get the price down to or below the 2.000€ mark as long as we keep manufacturing our camera in Europe which we plan to continue doing.

Best regards
Lasse

[JeremyC]

Lasse,

I showed these latest scanned results of your camera to a friend of mine who was an engineer in Post Production houses for over 20 years in London's Soho (a real engineer, not someone who has only ever used a keyboard and thinks that makes them an engineer). After watching it he was silent for a minute and I asked him, "so 16 mm or 8 mm". He looked at me and replied, "you are going to tell me that's 8 mm". When I said yes he told me he has never seen 8 mm like that. And we were only watching the You Tube stuffon a crappy PC screen, not a grade 1 monitor or anything like that.

[Will2]

I just thought of something...wouldn't Kodak require a royalty of some sort for these cameras? Or have all the patents run out so it's open season?

[carllooper]

Lasse,

I showed these latest scanned results of your camera to a friend of mine who was an engineer in Post Production houses for over 20 years in London's Soho (a real engineer, not someone who has only ever used a keyboard and thinks that makes them an engineer). After watching it he was silent for a minute and I asked him, "so 16 mm or 8 mm". He looked at me and replied, "you are going to tell me that's 8 mm". When I said yes he told me he has never seen 8 mm like that. And we were only watching the You Tube stuffon a crappy PC screen, not a grade 1 monitor or anything like that.

I made a cropped version of Friedemann's work (to 16:9), removing the dirty frame, and the result was even more mind blowing. There was no longer anything to say what it was shot on. As I watched it again it no longer mattered. I could be drawn into the world otherwise depicted, quite happy to stay there indefinitely, admiring the bark on the trees, the play of chickens, the colour of the flowers, the play of peoples faces, the beauty of the natural word. In some domains of criticism such a 'seduction' is regarded as a bad thing, but not in my books. In my books the prisoners in Plato's cave are not fools - they know exactly what is going on. It's the system which locks them up in the first place, sitting outside in the blinding light, that is the real problem.

When you do know the technical background and consider what could have easily worked against getting the results otherwise obtained, there is certainly a valid astonishment that such obtains.

I think it boils down to a question of belief. If one doesn't believe one can get better technical results out of pushing a particular medium, perhaps because listening too much to all of the conventional wisdoms regarding the technical limitations, then one won't even try to push such in the first place. The "limitations" effectively become a self fulfilling prophecy. A norm.

Of course, given any such self fulfilling limitations, there's nothing stopping one from obtaining great work, just by other means, eg. through exploitation of those same limitations - working with them rather than against them. Introducing other techniques, that while working within the limitations, amplify the scope of a work in alternative ways.

C

[Nicholas Kovats]

65mm ????! Wow! I heartily admire your ambitions. So exciting. If you are able to keep the size to a minimum with small loads in the spirit of Super 8 engineering ...that would be utterly awesome. Ok. Back to breathing normally.

Hi Doug,

We are not planning to develop 16mm cameras anymore, it was previously on our roadmap however we think that this market is already served with existing cameras so we choose to invest in 35/65mm platforms which can also be seen from our webpage: http://www.logmar.dk/career/ - this is however a long haul and we will not have a camera for these formats available any time soon. (estimate 2017 launch)

Best regards
Lasse R.
Logmar Camera Solutions IVS