8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the filmstrip is eight millimeters wide. It exists in two main versions â€" the original standard 8 mm film, also known as regular 8 mm or Double 8 mm, and Super 8. Although both standard 8 mm and Super 8 are 8 mm wide, Super 8 has a larger image area because of its smaller and more widely spaced perforations.
There are also two other varieties of Super 8â€"Single 8 mm and Straight-8 that require different cameras, but produce a final film with the same dimensions.
Standard 8
The standard 8 mm (also known as regular 8) film format was developed by the Eastman Kodak company during the Great Depression and released to the market in 1932 to create a home movie format that was less expensive than 16 mm. The film spools actually contain a 16 mm film with twice as many perforations along each edge as normal 16 mm film; on its first pass through the camera, the film is exposed only along half of its width. When the first pass is complete, the operator opens the camera and flips and swaps the spools (the design of the spool hole ensures that this operator does this properly) and the same film is subsequently exposed along its other edge, the edge left unexposed on the first pass. After the film is developed, the processor splits it down the middle, resulting in two lengths of 8 mm film, each with a single row of perforations along one edge. Each frame is half the width and half the height of a 16 mm frame, so there are four times the number of frames in a given film area, which is what makes it cost less. Because of the two passes of the film, the format was sometimes called Double 8. The frame size of regular 8 mm is 4.8 mm × 3.5 mm and 1 meter of film contains 264 pictures. Normally Double 8 is filmed at 16 frames per second.
Common length film spools allowed filming of about 3 minutes to 4.5 minutes at 12, 15, 16 and 18 frames per second.
Kodak ceased sales of standard 8Â mm film under its own brand in the early 1990s, but continued to manufacture the film, which was sold via independent film stores. Black-and-white 8Â mm film is still manufactured in the Czech Republic, and several companies buy bulk quantities of 16Â mm film to make regular 8Â mm by re-perforating the stock, cutting it into 25 foot (7.6 m) lengths, and collecting it into special standard 8Â mm spools, which they then sell. Re-perforation requires special equipment. Some specialists also produce Super 8Â mm film from existing 16Â mm, or even 35Â mm film stock.
Super 8
In 1965, Super-8 film was released and was quickly adopted by the amateur film-maker. It featured a better quality image, and was easier to use mainly due to a cartridge-loading system that did not require re-loadingâ€"and re-threading halfway through. Super 8 was often erroneously criticized, since the film gates in some cheaper Super 8 cameras were plastic, as was the pressure plate built into the cartridge; the standard 8 cameras had a permanent metal film gate that was regarded as more reliable in keeping the film flat and the image in focus. In reality, this was not the case. The plastic pressure plate could be moulded to far tighter tolerances than their metal counterparts could be machined.
To easily differentiate Super 8 film from Standard 8, projector spools for the former had larger spindle holes. Therefore, it was not possible to mount a Super 8 spool on a Standard 8 projector, and vice versa.
There has been a huge resurgence of Super-8 film in recent years due to advances in film stocks and digital technology. The idea is to shoot on the low cost Super-8 equipment then transfer the film to video for editing. The transfer of film to video is called telecine.
Single 8
Another version of Super-8 film, Single-8, was produced by Fuji in Japan. Introduced in 1965 as an alternative to the Kodak Super 8 format, it had the same final film dimensions, but with a different cassette. Unlike the co-axial design of Super 8, the Single 8 cartridge featured one spool above the other.
Straight 8
A number of camera companies offered single width 8Â mm film in magazines and spools, but the format faded when Kodak introduced Kodachrome, as this was only available in the double 8Â mm format. It continued for some time outside the United States, with Agfa and Svema offering reversal film.
UltraPan 8
Introduced in 2011 by Nicholas Kovats, and implemented by Jean-Louis Seguin, this format uses Standard 8 film in a modified Bolex (H16 or H8) camera. The area of film exposed per frame is 10.52mm × 3.75mm, having an aspect ratio of 2.8:1. There are effectively two UP8 frames for every one 16 mm frame. The design means there is no waste of film emulsion for the targeted aspect ratio. Earlier versions of this general idea date from the 1950s and exactly the same design occurs in implementations of the 1960s and 1970s. The current implementation of the idea gains impetus from the relative ease with which digital delivery systems can handle what would otherwise have required, in the past, either a dedicated mechanical projector or the transfer to another film format for which projectors were already available.
See also
- List of film formats
- List of silent films released on 8Â mm or Super 8Â mm film
- Zapruder film
References
External links
- Film formats history
