8mm Forum: BLOWN Away!!

This is topic BLOWN Away!! in forum General Yak at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Martin Jones (Member # 1163) on December 16, 2014, 03:40 PM:

Today I transferred a couple of 50ft reels of Standard 8 taken in
about 1984. I hadn't seen them since then and dug them out from the back of a cupboard.
The first was Kodachrome; as expected it sparkled with the usual sharp images and vibrant colour. Then I turned to the other.... and saw the word "AGFA" on the box. My heart sank: I had transferred 1600ft of Agfa Moviechrome Super 8 earlier in the month and suffered splodge, colour shift ad faded colour on reel after reel. And I knew that the content of this reel was of a very dear family friend, long since dead, who was so important to us in the early years of our marriage... so I knew my wife would be so disappointed.
WOW!!!!!! I could not believe my eyes: the only reel of Standard 8 AGFA film I had EVER exposed was every bit as sharp and vibrant as we have come to expect from Kodachrome, and our old friend was up there on the screen as if it were only yesterday instead of 50 years.
If only AGFA had continued to use the same formulation when they went into Super 8 production... if only!
The transfer of that film was the culmination of the enormous task of transferring to computer 30 years of Standard and Super 8 filming to the point when we started to use VHS, then Video 8, Hi8, MiniDV, and now HD. Less than half the film has been through editing and other post processing...... and I haven't even started on the Video!
So the nightmare goes on, but today's transfer of that one AGFA reel was a real light in the darkness.
Onwards and upwards!

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on December 17, 2014, 06:48 AM:

When I got married in 1959 it was filmed on standard 8 Gevacolor as it was cheaper than Kodachrome, but now it's gone pink. If only I had spent a trifle more on the Kodachrome.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on December 17, 2014, 12:50 PM:

That's very interesting about the faded AGFA super 8! I'm not sure, but I think that it was Winbert who had/has (?) a print of the 400ft digest "Raiders of the Lost Ark" that the color had really went bad on, and now I'm wondering if some of the printings of this digest used a "bad batch of AGFA super 8 stock?

Posted by Martin Jones (Member # 1163) on December 17, 2014, 01:50 PM:

The AGFA Super 8 stock I'm referring to is Reversal MovieChrome used in camera and processed to Positive for projection. Released digests would have been printed from Colour Negative onto Colour Positive stock...... completely different material.

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