If vinyl could make a comeback, why not super 8mm?

[Shane C. Collins]

I will say there is a definite following for Super 8 when it comes to making home movies, and weddings, etc. I shoot about 4 or 5 rolls of Kodak's new Ektachrome 100D color reversal. The stock is beautiful projected! I gather family at the end of the year and we watch these movies on a projector. I really think they actually enjoy seeing themselves this way. The sound of the projector, the Super 8 colors, etc all add up to a unique experience. The fact Kodak brought this stock back means there's a small market to support it. Now I will say more people tend to use Super 8 negative stocks that get directly transferred to digital. I never really got this as Super 8 was meant for projection, plus those digital transfers will never look as good as the original. But hey each to his own I guess. The new color reversal stock is expensive, but if you use it for special occasions, etc one can justify the price. I think of it as documenting family, friends, etc in a way that is unique.

[Graham Ritchie]

Spot on Shane
I was watching some of our own home movies that were taken back in the 1970-80s. The vibrant color of Kodak film, looks as good today, as it was taken back then, projecting them on a Super 8 projector is really a must. Nothing I have seen would come close to Super8 film for capturing those moments you mention above.

[Brian Fretwell]

Interesting. That makes me think of the advertising etc. flexidiscs including those supplied with the Americom films. I assume they were not the same vinyl as normal records. I'll have to check.
Also by definition PET (Poly Elthyl Tetrathalate?) is not vinyl (Poly Vinyl Chloride) - but I'm being pedantic!

[Melvin England]

Much as it would be wonderful for super 8 to have a major resurgence, it is also reassuring, reading the above comments, to know that as super 8 collectors, we still have our heads screwed on properly and haven't allowed ourselves to be deluded into believing things could return to 1970's levels. We acknowledge we were and are a niche market and will always be. We have not got tunnel vision. We realise the 8mm picture normally could never compete with blu ray / 4k. We realise we can't match sound quality. We realise we cannot match price.

But.... HEY!..... it's super 8..... it's OUR hobby.....it's what we do..... it's what we love..... it's what/who we are......... AND THAT JUSTIFY'S EVERYTHING!

[Mark McLaughlin]

It’s kind of like this… who is driving the LP resurgence other then us audiophiles? Why do you see vinyl selling at Wal Mart et al? Because teens and young people think they’re cool. Can you imagine a teen now asking his friends to hang out while they thread up a super 8 film? It was odd when I was a teen when super 8 was raging. Even then when there wasn’t immediate streaming access or hardly video formats it was a hard sell. A teen playing a vinyl of the Stones or Daft Punk now is super cool.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Vinyl is, to be honest, pretty low - tech thing. You'd need only a small plant to start pumping out new LPs. OTOH you'll need $$$ (LOTS of it) to resurrect film manufacturing facility. Ask Film Ferrania for example - they'd probably had answers for that.

Or better yet - ask Kodak, who were too successful in downsizing themselves in order to survive during their hard times. Today they probably wanted to resurrect their plant for this "film comeback". But it's too late since they already had closed down & dumped most of their film manufacturing facility, and it's no longer feasible to restart everything form the ground up again.

Once gone it's gone, and we have to live with what's left from its heydays.

[Lee McCaffrey]

By that logic then colour film must be 'low tech' as Eastmancolor was introduced in the 50s, 3 strip Technicolor was earlier than that, in the 30s (around the same time as vinyl phonograph LPs).
Unfortunately anyone wanting to start 'pumping out' LPs in their own plant will find that equipment is hard to obtain as it's so in demand, they will probably have to buy new so looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars. And again you would need good quality stampers produced from a lacquer cut by a skilled audio engineer, which is a whole other thing, otherwise you're just producing dreck

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

In that case should we count Edison's phonograph as well?

For LP pressing plant it could be (at least in theory) in varying scale, from small production run/made to order thing, to true mass-produced facility capable of 100,000 pressing a day or so. I'm yet to see this kind of diversity in photo film industry. For specific product such as Super8 it would be even less.

Once again - if Kodak can't immediately increase their production for this film resurrection, I can see no one else would be capable of that.

[Brian Fretwell]

Also it seems that near me the shops offering paper prints from digital still cameras have gone over to fast inkjet printers from real optical/chemical printing, so even less emulsion and development chemical manufacture

[Lee McCaffrey]

Where I live was home to 'Truprint' where people would send their camera film in the famous green envelope to be processed and printed. They saw the tide was turning and managed to pivot into digital printing from files uploaded online, but still use C41 colour paper so they can print and process in bulk still. I think they still do a small amount of 35mm film processing but mostly disposable cameras.
Remember when China bought up the last of the IB Tech machinery? The thinking was that for a country the size of China that dye transfer in great volume would deliver cheaper prints than chromogenic ECP printing, but in reality they simply couldn't get it to work, an undeniably high-tech country!
Also Kodak do still produce film, a lot of it is to order. B&H list the various Vision3 positive sticks (16/35/70mm), certain orders are for a minimum of 300 reels with a lead time of approx. 2-4 weeks (although I imagine that may be higher with the supply chain problems around the world). That's approximately 12 million feet of film. Kodak won't ramp up production unless they had a cast iron guarantee of a sustained increase in their orders. Don't forget a bunch of filmmakers had to pay Kodak to stay open at one point!
I did hear Orwo were considering producing motion picture stock, whether that includes positive or super 8mm I couldn't say.

[Brian Fretwell]

I believe that there was also an attempt to restart Technicolor (when it was owned by Carlton IIRC) IB printing in the US but the plant they tried could not deliver the number of prints needed in the time they were required. The Julia Taymay film Titus (1999) was one that did get printed that way, the region 1 dvd even looks as if it is from a Technicolor print. I don't remember if the plants was mothballed or scrapped.

[Osi Osgood]

To this day, I have always been fascinated with how that audio groove is made in the first place. Take a look at a microscopic image of those grooves sometime. These patterns and how these "canyons" in the vinyl, along with the "amplification" provided to reproduce said audio. What I found even more fascinating, was those early selectovision video discs. Remember those, folks? The actual disc was in a flat cartridge, which you shoved into the player, which took the disc out of the sleeve and, when the side was done, you'd re-insert the plastic sleeve, retrieve the disc, flip it over, re-insert the disc, and enjoy side two! Now, I understand as to how the "canyons" on a vinyl LP could produce audio, but these selectovision discs were also vinyl. So, how were they able to place VIDEO on this vinyl as well, as, for all intents and purposes, it appears to be vinyl and as I learned way back then, it could develop skips and scratches like your standard LP vinyl.

[Shane C. Collins]

Spot on Shane
I was watching some of our own home movies that were taken back in the 1970-80s. The vibrant color of Kodak film, looks as good today, as it was taken back then, projecting them on a Super 8 projector is really a must. Nothing I have seen would come close to Super8 film for capturing those moments you mention above.

Modern versions of Ektachrome appear to be holding up well in regards to colors, contrast, etc. I have a few home movies dating back to 2006 that look as good as the day they were shot. I've read the E6 process development many years ago improved the longevity of Ektachrome film. The early prints, and home movies dating back to the 70's and early 80's didn't seem to hold up as well. There's a common misconception that all Ektachrome fades this way and that seems to simply not be true. I guess I'll know in about 20 or 30 years how these modern films hold up.

[Dave Bickford]

I've read the E6 process development many years ago improved the longevity of Ektachrome film.

I developed a few rolls of 35mm Ektachrome transparencies using the E6 process in the early 1980's. They look just as good today as they did 40 years ago.

[Steve Klare]

I shot a lot of the 160ASA Ektachrome type G in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

It's just as grainy as ever (...no surprise, I guess!), but the colors look fine.

(For some reason, the people, the cars and the clothing all look quite different from today!)