Super 8 Projection Accessories

[David Kilderry]

I was searching for something today so pulled plenty of equipment down off the shelves. One thing I've enjoyed collecting over the years has been Super 8 projector accessories. You know the ones you might have seen in a catalog or magazine and never seemed to see again. My guess is very few of some of these items were actually sold. Here are some of my Elmo ones. Elmo produced a few more items too including extended projection arms, but I have never seen a pair of those for sale.

Shown above:

Elmo 1200 foot empty reels
Elmo Stereo demonstration film
Elmo Extension Speaker
Elmo Daylight Viewer attachment
Elmo Projection lens
Elmo Film Counter
Elmo Sound Mixer
Elmo Super 8 camera boom extension mic

[Matthieu van der Sluis]

Nice post.
Looking good and in clean condition.

[Steve Klare]

Hi David,

Your Elmo audio mixer really interests me (I use a small, modern mixer panel myself.)

Please post some pictures of it?

Thanks!

[Kim Trampus]

I have the extension speaker. It needs a new grill on it but it still sounds good.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Nice!

Here's the Elmo Synchronizer R-1, which works with the ST-1200 and the SR-1 cassette recorder.

[David Kilderry]

Hi David,

Your Elmo audio mixer really interests me (I use a small, modern mixer panel myself.)

Please post some pictures of it?

Thanks!

It had a battery leak before I obtained it, so probably no longer works. It had a price sticker on the box from the photo store for $85.

[Steve Klare]

Thanks David,

Do you think this is intended to blend sound tracks for recording, or to be used like mine: taking the outputs of several projectors and selecting one, controlling its volume and sending it out to an amplifier?

-could even be both, I guess.

[David Kilderry]

I am pretty sure it was meant to mix various inputs for recording.

Like others have mentioned, the manufacturers spent a huge amount of time and money in developing the sound recording facilities on Super 8 projectors. Whilst I did add sound and mix some tracks many years ago, I think the majority wanted to run home movies as shot in-camera or run packaged films like cartoons, digests and features. The potential of these projectors on the sound recording and mixing side was only fully utilised by a few.

[Douglas Meltzer]

If I had an Elmo back in the '70s I would have used this for sure. Back then, I did recordings on my trusty Bell & Howell 489Z.

[Graham Ritchie]

A few years back Mike Kent from Film Making had a DIY project, in making a four channel mixer, to this day I still use it. Later on I came across a Elmo mixer and thankfully the batteries were not left in it but never used it, and as such its still in very good condition. One item I did pick up last year, was the Elmo remote control for the GS1200. One of the things I enjoy is going over old Movie Maker, Film Making, and Super-8 Filmaker magazines. This brilliant ad appeared in the October 1975 issue of Super-8 Filmaker

[Steve Klare]

Sometimes we take for granted what the ST-1200 represented back when it was introduced. In The Super-8 Book, in the chapter on projectors, Lenny Lipton seems very excited about the ST-1200 (HD in particular) as a state of the art in Super-8 projection and production. Basically it was the GS in the time before the GS itself first showed up.

[David Kilderry]

Sometimes we take for granted what the ST-1200 represented back when it was introduced. In The Super-8 Book, in the chapter on projectors, Lenny Lipton seems very excited about the ST-1200 (HD in particular) as a state of the art in Super-8 projection and production. Basically it was the GS in the time before the GS itself first showed up.

Yes, the ST 1200 HD 2 track was an excellent projector. I probably have used it more than my GS 1200s. I force myself to use the GS 1200s in order to keep them running as they don't like sitting unused for too long.




You've got the works there Graham! Your own private Elmo sound recording studio with those three units.

[Graham Ritchie]

Grandson with a Elmo camera.

Many moons ago I did my own striping with a Rexette, the stripe is still good to this day its still hanging on

[Brian Harrington]

I am pretty sure it was meant to mix various inputs for recording.

Like others have mentioned, the manufacturers spent a huge amount of time and money in developing the sound recording facilities on Super 8 projectors. Whilst I did add sound and mix some tracks many years ago, I think the majority wanted to run home movies as shot in-camera or run packaged films like cartoons, digests and features. The potential of these projectors on the sound recording and mixing side was only fully utilised by a few.

I agree. As a kid, I never knew anyone who shot their own sound movies. I never knew anyone who even had a sound projector. (Except me.) I had a friend who had an old late-50s/early 60s B&H silent projector, similar to one I had. Another friend had some packaged silent movies, but no projector, so he brought them to my house to watch. Maybe one friend whose family shot maybe one 8mm movie.

The fastest way to get rid of dinner guests over-staying their welcome was to ask if they wanted to see home movies of your last vacation! The Facebook/Instagram/Tiktok of the 60s and 70s!

[Steve Klare]

Yes, Super-8 sound was rare to the point of being exotic when I was growing up! I knew many people (basically everybody) who shot stills and some of them shot slides. A very few had R8 or S8 cameras and projectors, and none of those had sound.

The marketing people at Polaroid were begging Edwin Land to dump Polavision. They told him the entire home movie market represented about 3% of the total amateur photography market and it wasn't worth the R&D he was laying out on instant movies even if he DID take the entire market away from Kodak and everybody else. (Then, a short time later, VCRs and Video cameras showed up...)

How large a cut of that already tiny 3% Percent could Super-8 Sound actually have amounted to?

As big a fan of 8mm film as I am, the very first Super-8 sound I ever experienced was my own in 2002! Once I showed a film to my extended family: They said "What's the speaker for?", and I said "Sound!" -and they were kind of shocked!

For some reason, video seems to demand sound, but film leaves it optional. A company that sold a silent-only Super-8 film back in the day would almost always dub a soundtrack to it when they transitioned it to VHS.

Maybe it's the idea that film-based motion pictures are somehow closer to being "photos", but video is closer to "television" and unless something is wrong, TV always has sound.


Most people were pretty content to run their movies as they came back from the Lab: warts and all. The dear lady across the street that introduced me to Super-8 as a little kid strung together 8 cartridges worth on a 400 Foot reel and NEVER edited out anything!

-we should be grateful she didn't know about 600, 800 and 1200 Foot reels!