Clip: Did Kodak n Fuji Shoot Themselves In The 80´s FooT?

[S8 Booster]

achilles: could SS8 have survived if Kodak and Fuji had set up a proper scan/transfer service at the time VHS "Killed Bill?"

ive been editing some nostalgy stuff from some of my trips to Japan and i am (now even more) stunned by the lousy image quality of VHS video at the time.

prior to my visit there in 87 someone in last minute stuffed a JVC VHS-C cam in me hand.

in this clip - 8.7 MB limited availability due to server restrictions:
VHS-C 1987 / K40 1989 / K40 2003
are put together in a sequence showing approx the same "target".

Click image for a bigger VHS view:


clip quality may not reveal the complete truth. the VHS is partially worse and the K40 is partially better viewed from original "tape"

alhough some reservation is to be taken for a number of variables - like different seasons and light conditions - have a look:

could Kojuiji have enhanced the battle of 8mm for home moviemaking to a draw by a transfer service at the time?

s8HÔÔt :?:

[VideoFred]

At the time, people just did not (want to)see this huge difference in quality. Everyone was so excited by the fact there was no development needed anymore, and there was sound, too.

But the most important was: you could watch it on your TV!
So maybe you have a point, here.

Kojuji (Kodaji? Fudak?)could (both) have done more efford in those days, to show the exellent qualitys of their film systems. But they didn't

Too late, now.
Interesting comparison.

Fred.

[jpolzfuss]

Hi,

I do have several empty reels (mainly Schneider) from the early 80s that came with a "ColorFox"-ad (or was it "ColourFox" or "ColourFuchs"?) that said that they could add sound-stripes and copy Super8-films to Super8 or VHS/Video2000 ... . And I remember seeing the same ads in some local photoshops and some old magazines.
In other words: There have been such ads in the 80s and it didn't helped much.

[Angus]

As Fred says, you have to remember this was a time when the vast majority of people had never seen themselves on TV. It was very new and a huge selling point of the early camcorders. Plus, 80´s TV´s weren´t always as large as today and it is quite possible a 22 inch picture from VHS-C looked OK compared to 3 foot wide super 8.

And convenience...no dimming the room or setting up a screen, no fetching the noisy projector...camcorders gave instant results that required no processing and you could have sound...all for the cost of a high end super 8 camera...

[S8 Booster]

....all for the cost of a high end super 8 camera...

which they already had :?:



s8hôôt

[VideoFred]

Another thing to keep in mind:
In those days they could not get the transfer quality we have now.
At least not for customers use.

:twisted: PARADOX: :twisted:

We had to wait for digital age to have decent film transfers for customers use.

Fred.

[S8 Booster]

Another thing to keep in mind:
In those days they could not get the transfer quality we have now.
At least not for customers use.

:twisted: PARADOX: :twisted:

We had to wait for digital age to have decent film transfers for customers use.

Fred.

sort of but then again it would have been VHS vs VHS.
SS8 should still look better by a quante leap.

s8hôôt

[timdrage]

wow, the VHS stuff looks crazy... could be kind of cool actually as an effect, looks almost cartoon-like with the garish blobby colours... but yeah, pretty bad to say the least compared to the S8!

[BK]

achilles: could SS8 have survived if Kodak and Fuji had set up a proper scan/transfer service at the time VHS "Killed Bill?"

Don't forget electronic technology at that time was still very primitive by todays standards, and hi resolution scans weren't really possible.

Besides the masses were brained washed into thinking that they could shoot hours of tape for the price of a couple of super 8 sound carts, and quality wasn't an issue, technological marvel , convenience and cost is.

And...Kodak and Fuji were too busy fighting a war...for the share of the stills film market, and jumping on to the video bandwagon with their own equipment.

Bill

[AKIO]

Thank you for posting.
I enjoyed and I'm glad for your visiting Japan.


Is there Asakusa?
You might more often visited than me.
:lol:

Needless to say, I like film's picture rather than VHS!

[S8 Booster]

Thank you for posting.
I enjoyed and I'm glad for your visiting Japan.


Is there Asakusa?
You might more often visited than me.
:lol:

Needless to say, I like film's picture rather than VHS!

ohayo gozaimasu AIKO san.

thank you for the kind comments.

i visit your beautiful country about every second year and enjoy it a lot.

you are right the film clip is from Asakusa x 3

i usually stay in Tokyo a couple of days at the beginning and end of each visit while my main stay is at Chino in Nagano Prefectrure.

other places i have visited are Kyoto, Nara, Toba/Mikomoto Pearl Island, Hiroshima, Miyajima Island, Nagano City, Matsumoto City, Yatsugatake Mountain Range to mention a few.

i currenty edit a film with material from all my visits i have brought my film cam with me to share the memories on a DVD which i am making for my friends over there.

this clip is an extract from the material on that DVD.

i am going to post 1 more astonishing clip "in japan only" from the same material later.

s8hÔÔt

[ekta-clone]

The mid/late 80's were NOT a good time for any kind moving pictures.
Video looked like crap, 35mm looked like crap too because everyone was using fast grainy films (think Terminator).
Early 90's were a real bloom of cinema technology with EXR stocks, a comeback of cinemascope etc.

[jaxshooter]

The mid/late 80's were NOT a good time for any kind moving pictures.
Video looked like crap, 35mm looked like crap too because everyone was using fast grainy films (think Terminator).
Early 90's were a real bloom of cinema technology with EXR stocks, a comeback of cinemascope etc.

Back in 1981,I managed to get some decent transfers from super 8 kodachrome to one inch video from a place called Windsor Total Video.I don't remember what they used or even where they were,but what I got back was good enough to make a TV spot for a martial arts school that was doing well at the time.It did well enough that they hired me again to shoot another spot in 16mm.

You have to keep in mind that super 8 was designed primarily as home movie consumerist format.No longer a format for the masses,it was demoted to the realm of yesteryear's toy.New electronics was what was being hawked then so it helped if those who sold the new gear could show a bad super 8 transfer to a customer so that he could boast of improvement.It worked,I remember crappy vidicon, nuvicon and saticon tube cameras being sold with portable VHS decks by sales people who had no clue of what image quality was.They sold for outrageous amounts of money then.Average cost of a camera/deck unit was around 1200 bucks US.

[Angus]

In 10 years time people are going to ask why we ever accepted the VHS cassette for recording TV material...because it's bulky and the picture quality is awful...and compared to discs they're expensive, and the mostly mechanical machines needed to record/play them expensive too.

Remember super 8 was almost exclusively used by amateurs the way camcorders are today. So few pro telecine houses bothered with it...and those that did would have charged expensive rates - moreso than today. The early transfers available to people who actually used super 8 gear would have been off-wall systems using the video capture equipment of the time (tube cameras - most likely early amateur gear)...or something like the Elmo Transvideo units which were projectors with CCDs in the lens barrel...these worked but produced extremely poor images by today's standards.

So, it would have been difficult and expensive to get a decent telecine transfer of super 8 material unless you had links to the broadcast industry...and then it would have ended up on 1" open reel tape or perhaps U-Matic - not a format you could play at home. The transfers to VHS were utterly abysmal in those days...think off-wall transfer with a 1985 camcorder...

THat is not to say you cannot get good images from a tube camera...of course you can...but the domestic cams available twenty years ago were generally utter shite as far as colour reproduction goes.

[tlatosmd]

VHS has about 300 lines. If I encode or originate MPEG or Divx videos at 320*240, they still look better than what Video8 tapes from the early 80s do. So it can't be blamed on resolution.

It's not mere sharpness issues due to resolution that make modern appearance of old Video8 footage look the way they do. I suppose it's native video degradation over the years, along with bad connection copies aka 'captures' (such as composite) from original tapes. I remember when I shot Hi8 on fresh tape, I couldn't tell it apart from miniDV on the camera's LCD and in its viewfinder, but when we captured it via composite directly into a graphic card at college, it looked pretty much like early 80s Video8, both on PC monitor display and direct PC-to-TV out. It can't only be the difference from the camera's LCD being smaller, video noise was significantly added while we simultaneously lost a lot of brightness so the final result pretty much looked like Booster's example still.

That's why I believe it's only video's loss over the years plus bad copy connections that make old video recordings look as they do. It makes you able to understand why back then people actually happily traded S8 for Video8, fact being it didn't look much different back then as miniDV does today. While today, they think the difference they see between their old Video8 and VHS tapes on the one hand and modern-day miniDV on the other would in fact be a matter of resolution and technological progress while it's actually but video aging symptomes.