I took my Yashica Super 40 out to the beach from the city to shot a test roll with it

[Orestes Roumeliotis]

I recently picked up this Yashica Super 40 from Ebay for $40. I'd have to say, it's a very underrated camera, the lens is fairly wide (for Super 8) at 9mm on the wide end and has an OK zoom range of 4x with 36mm on the long end although I can't say I really use zoom in video at all. It's relatively bright at F/1.8 and does auto exposure for 25/40, 40/64, 64/100, 100/160, 160/250 film.

No 500 you say? But have you ever shot Vision 3 500T on 8mm? As far as I am concerned this is a set and forget 50 speed camera, with no real intention of ever shooting anything other than Vision 3 50D to get the most out of a thumbnail sized film frame.

I wanted to know whether it was working, so I went out, run and gun, with a friend, down to the beach to test it, and surprisingly after 55 years it works probably as well as it did when it was bought by the original owner. But then, most of these cameras haven't been used much at all over the last 30 years, so I wouldn't expect much less, provided the battery compartment was clean.

I would say this camera was a good investment, it does everything you need from a Super 8 camera from a set and forget perspective, and the metering is actually about as accurate as most people would consider 100% accurate. I asked Richard to give me an over scan with this scan so I could take a look at the entire film frame, it looks relatively clean to me. I don't know of any Super 8 camera that has a 100% clean gate.

Richard's 2.5K scans are 4:3 ratio, but that's OK with me. The footage stays with the tradition of what Super 8 is. Super 8 was never intended to be viewed in 16:9 or to be a 16:9 film stock. You can crop it anamorphically, but on such a small frame it's just a waste of film.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi!

Looks like you had a lot of fun and like the camera was working like a charm. Thanks for sharing.

However, there are some very short sequences that look overexposed to me. The attached image shows one of them. But I don’t know whether this the car’s fault or the camera’s: This might as well have been some temporary reflections on the windscreen and not a problem of the automatic exposure system. Or it might have been some reflections on the camera’s lens (did you use sunshades?). On the other hand, the light meter might have been a little bit too slow to react to the new position of the sun (scene is in/after the curve) and might be „confused“ by the passing shadows of the cars/trees/bushes.

[Orestes Roumeliotis]

Hi!

Looks like you had a lot of fun and like the camera was working like a charm. Thanks for sharing.

However, there are some very short sequences that look overexposed to me. The attached image shows one of them. But I don’t know whether this the car’s fault or the camera’s: This might as well have been some temporary reflections on the windscreen and not a problem of the automatic exposure system. Or it might have been some reflections on the camera’s lens (did you use sunshades?). On the other hand, the light meter might have been a little bit too slow to react to the new position of the sun (scene is in/after the curve) and might be „confused“ by the passing shadows of the cars/trees/bushes.

Hi Joerg , there a couple of things here

1. The most obvious thing is that we were driving towards clouds around that corner, I think the sky would have been close to white, regardless of the situation, although, at the same time I can see a slight amount of banding on the cloud before then. Lets be honest if we know our exposure limitation that film has 12 maybe 13 stops of usable light. There may be more, but if we use 0 being the darkest dark and 13 being the lightest light, film is imperfect, it doesn't have the best latitude even when scanned on a Lasergraphics scan station which costs about $250k or so 🤣
2. I was not using a hood to protect from stray light, so it could have been many things, I was also shooting through glass of a car window (as the passenger obviously even if it doesn't look like it to Europeans/Americans, this is Australia, although I could have mirrored it as they often do when shooting in Australia to make North Hemisphere people happy.)
3. I should have a filter on it, the only other filter on the camera is the built in 85 filter (which is not relevant today if you are scanning film as you can quickly fix the white balance in post.
4. To be honest reviewing this again I think I could have actually done more to boost the contrast, and played around with the curves a bit more (in Adobe Premiere where I use full professional software for this purpose) to get a bit more contrast out of it, but I actually like the fact it looks flat, and kind of dreamy, as I think Super 8 is actually the best format for nostalgia, and road trips like this, so I like the kind of dreamy look.
5. If I'm honest using a lens hood, and even a polariser would have helped a bit with the contrast, as it would have reduced stray light and glare hitting the lens from all angles. It wasn't really the point as this was really just a test reel I've sliced and diced into 100 pieces to tell a bit of a "story."

I think either the servo for the light meter didn't quite keep up, it's another motorised piece, so it's a possibility, coupled with the lack of a lens hood as the other issue, and finally the limitations of film all conspired together.

I have the full 5 gigabyte version on my desktop it looks about the same. The only thing I've done with this footage is added a bit of extra contrast because 50D is a notoriously flat film. I mean, being a flat film is good on the one hand, for grading, but on the other hand this film is anemic in the sense that it is quite pale without a sufficient contrast boost to bring it back up. But with a 4k scan, as you're seeing it on YouTube (basically, minus their terrible compression) there should be enough latitude to boost the contrast to a reasonable level.

Thanks for the technical feedback I appreciate it.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi!

No worries, I still remember that you Australians are not driving on the right side. (I was in Australia approximately three decades ago. Man, I’m old! )

In any case: removing the windscreen and the glass from all other windows might have improved the quality. Please suggest this to the driver before your next trip.

As you’ve been shooting 50D in D(aylight), you should not need any filter at all (maybe except for ND- or skylight-filters or for artistic reasons). (The Wratten85 is only needed for shooting T in D.)

[Dave Bickford]

Orestes Roumeliotis, what film stock did you use? I’ve been told to enable the backlight setting for best exposure if using the current Kodak Ektachrome stock. Also, did you need to insert the key to disable the “daylight filter”? (The new Ektachrome is daylight balanced. Original was tungsten balanced).

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Dave, the used filmstock is Kodak Vision3 50D.

[Shane C. Collins]

Orestes Roumeliotis, what film stock did you use? I’ve been told to enable the backlight setting for best exposure if using the current Kodak Ektachrome stock. Also, did you need to insert the key to disable the “daylight filter”? (The new Ektachrome is daylight balanced. Original was tungsten balanced).

Yes, that was me that gave the recommendation to use the "backlight" function when filming with Ektachrome (7294). The new stock performs better between 64-80 ASA.

Orestes your film looks good by the way! I'm usually not one for digital transfers of Super 8, but I enjoyed watching yours. As you know I am a Super 8 projection purist. I know not many of us left these days, LOL. I'm happy to see your Yashica is working well. I will be trying out my Yashica here soon, and will report back in a month or two.

[Orestes Roumeliotis]

Orestes Roumeliotis, what film stock did you use? I’ve been told to enable the backlight setting for best exposure if using the current Kodak Ektachrome stock. Also, did you need to insert the key to disable the “daylight filter”? (The new Ektachrome is daylight balanced. Original was tungsten balanced).

I used the much older Vision 3 50D from the 1990s when Kodak changed from Vision 2 to Vision 3. The labs that are local to me in Australia no longer process E6 in their labs so I'll be stuffed if I send my film internationally with the way x-ray scanners are these days. Although the new Ektachrome (which I have shot in 35mm) doesn't react the same way as traditional slide film, I still don't like the dynamic range of slide film and as I am not projecting anyway, I fail to see the point in using slide film either way these days...

I can get ECN2 or C41 developed in Australia in under a week, give or take, there are still some C41 labs I use that do same day processing. E6 is a pain, it can take weeks for a lab to develop it, and then even if I did have it developed, Richard doesn't do plain scans. It's a waste of time for him to use a machine that expensive (as a Lasergraphics) to do straight scans... So he only does scan + develop.

Yes, that was me that gave the recommendation to use the "backlight" function when filming with Ektachrome (7294). The new stock performs better between 64-80 ASA.

Orestes your film looks good by the way! I'm usually not one for digital transfers of Super 8, but I enjoyed watching yours. As you know I am a Super 8 projection purist. I know not many of us left these days, LOL. I'm happy to see your Yashica is working well. I will be trying out my Yashica here soon, and will report back in a month or two.

Shane, I was born in the 1980s, I never really used Super 8 the first time around, I mean, I knew OF it but by then the market had transitioned to VHS/Beta Max on digital sensors (the precursor to Hi8), recording on magnetic tape. For most people this is (was) a better deal than only being able to use their film once, having to pay for it to get developed, having to pay for processing fees and so on. It's not so bad if you're doing E6 in your back yard shed (as we call it over here) for the purpose of projection it just wasn't my thing.

I learned the skill of cutting and editing back in the day, one of my family friends dad's worked for Channel 9 here in Australia and did editing the old fashioned way, on reel to reel and then recording it back onto VHS tape. That was a very different time, my dad later went on to study what they called "computer based Arts and design" in the very early 2000s which was the precursor to non-linear editing, which is where I learned to use Premiere Pro.

As you know when you shoot Super 8 it's very rarely linear.... and it requires a lot of splicing to make a coherent narrative out of the shots you took, I wasted about a minute worth of nothing but blurry content,but I was still able to splice this together into some sort of linear story, and that's the half of it with movie making.

No one really wants to see my Super 8 home movies, so I try my best to tell a bit of a story when I'm out film making. One of these days I'll get into processing, but it's not yet... And also.... While I do have a scanner at home that can scan film strips (A Nikon SuperCoolScan) that thing is for 135 print format... I would still have to buy a dedicated film scanner, and they're much more expensive for 8mm than they are 135.

I digress.... I think the hardest thing with any format isn't even so much as filming it, although it's increasingly difficult as its the equivalent of using a "global shutter" digital camera without any stabilisation what so ever (and it shows). I think the hardest thing is telling a story some other person is going to want to watch.