
Kodak resurrects Super 8 - tarp
http://www.kodak.com/ek/us/en/Consumer/Products/Super8/default.htm
======
SwellJoe
I watched the analog-to-digital-to-analog trend happen in professional audio
(I was going to school for audio as ProTools was beginning to be a thing, we
worked on analog tape machines...but the year after I finished my degree, they
brought in digital ADAT machines for the small labs, and eventually went
digital in the 24 track room, as well). It's amusing how superstitious people
can be, especially in industries that are mostly subjective but happen to bump
up against a lot of technology. Audio, photography, video, and now film have
all been through this.

The final product will be delivered digitally for 99.9% of consumers. Why
fight it? Why spend so much money, time, and effort, to work with inferior
media? I dunno. I worked on analog tape machines (I was even a hold out, for a
while, having a 1" 16 track machine, as big as a mini fridge, in my house for
several years after digital multitracks were the smart choice), but there
really is no good argument for it today.

There was a brief window where the best digital equipment was inferior to the
very best analog equipment, but it didn't last long. Maybe five years. We may
still be in that window for film when comparing 70mm film to the best digital
equipment...but, on the low end? Hell no. This janky little camera from Kodak
will be a joke compared to digital equipment in the same price range. And, the
film/processing costs will be outrageous comparatively speaking, limiting ones
options when shooting to a significant degree.

In short: This is just hipster bullshit. Just like analog audio is hipster
bullshit.

~~~
hellofunk
Is it really an issue of image quality? Because while the qualities are
different, analog media has its own character. You have to do quite a bit of
image manipulation in digital to get that "super 8" look, and it isn't always
that convincing. Same with black/white photography vs. digital -- the way a
digital chip reacts to light is very different than the way chemicals in film
react, and some film stocks have a range and tone that is very hard to emulate
with digital images. I don't think it is a question of which is "better" but
rather that aesthetic that an individual wants. You have to learn lighting
techniques in a new way when you switch from celluloid to digital, and a good
DP's intimate understanding of how a particular film stock will respond in the
shadows and highlights no longer applies when dealing with a very different
medium.

~~~
cornholio
At first it might seem like a fad, but "character" is essential when making
art. You are trying to reach another human being, not simply deliver the best
image possible, so her past experiences, memories, the fact that she grew up
watching grainy movies at the local theater, will all interact and elicit a
certain emotional or instinctual response. It's not that analog is better, is
that your audience reacts uniquely to analog artifacts, even when delivered
digitally.

This, and not superstition is the reason we still have tube amps, 24 fps
polyester film ("celluloid"), vinyl records and the rest. That's not to say
superstition is not rampant in the professional fields, We've all seen it:
gold plated wires that deliver no measurable improvements, creators that
refuse to touch the same application in an (much cheaper and faster) Windows
PC as opposed to the "pro" Mac version, "magic" equipment brands that "all the
pros use" and so on.

It's essentially a cargo-cult: we try to emulate successful creators and get
fixated on the appearances. If we get success, often time by sheer luck, we
attributed to brand X or Y and spread magic thinking to others.

~~~
earlz
Heh, I'd say tube amps are a bit more out there than everything else you
listed (unless you mean tube headphone amps or something). It's INCREDIBLY
difficult to accurately emulate tubes on normal computers in real-time due to
their non-linear behavior. And there is at least some kind of science behind
tubes "sounding better" since second-order harmonics are suppose to be more
enjoyable for a listener, and are generated naturally by a single-ended tube
amp design. I wouldn't say musicians using tube amps are trying to elicit
memories of the past, rather that's just the best way they can make their
instrument sound good

~~~
wreckimnaked
Sure, on a normal computer that may be the case. But, products like the Kemper
Profiling Amp
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0SmSl1aS1w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0SmSl1aS1w))
are on the same price range as high-end amps and have been able able to model
_any_ amp with an incredible precision for years already. Still, it's easier
to find a wide selection of analog amps in recording studios than one of
those. That said, I think it has a lot to do with the guitar player "fetish"
of recording on a boutique valve head with a pair of 4x12 cabinets.

------
sparky_
Interesting to see history repeating itself a bit: "When you purchase film you
will be buying the film, processing and digital transfer". Kodak was pursued
by the DoJ in the 1950s and ultimately ruled against in an antitrust suit for
doing the exact same thing with Kodachrome, the market leader in color (still)
photography at the time.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing)

~~~
acomjean
Kodachrome was slide film. Very few labs would process it, though the colors
were bright and some people really liked it. E6 was the process that most
slide film used (even some of kodaks).

Slide film was always a challenge to expose just right, its dynamic range is
pretty narrow compared to negative film. Its what you needed to use for movies
though.

I can't see this new revival being more than a niche market. Sending film away
and waiting a week might not cut it in todays market when phones shoot hd and
can edit.

There are a bunch of these. The "imposible project" [1] bringing back polariod
film being another. Polariod though has the advantage of being instant.

[1][https://www.the-impossible-project.com/](https://www.the-impossible-
project.com/)

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Polaroid instant film is awesome and is not like Super 8 at all (except
they're both old). There is nothing digital that works as well as Polaroid (or
Fuji) instant film. No, carrying around a digital printer doesn't work as
well, yet. Integrate the digital printer into the camera so that you don't
notice the printer at all, then it will moot the instant film. This Super 8
thing just seems crazy. It's conspicuously added inconvenience where instant
film is just the opposite, an instant photo.

~~~
roborodent
I'd say the Fuji instax SP1 works pretty damn well.

------
Animats
Amusingly, it's also a video camera, since the viewfinder is an LCD display.
Not clear if the manual aperture and shutter time settings affect the
viewfinder. You can feed video into the display (why?) but it's not clear if
you can get video out of the camera. The film costs $50 to $75 per cartridge,
for a running time of 3.5 minutes. Market: wannabe hipsters and old guys in
the movie industry.

Kodak makes movie film only because the major studios, at the urging of some
older directors, pay them to do so.[1] (Pro movie film sales were down 96%)
The studios have to pay for a certain amount of film whether they take it or
not. This leaves Kodak with a paid-for, underutilized film production plant
and film development facilities. That's probably why Kodak is doing this.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-to-continue-making-
movie-f...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-to-continue-making-movie-
film-1423106264)

~~~
Animats
Amusing idea: conceal a flash chip in the film cartridge and record video to
it from the camera used for the viewfinder. Put in a sound generator to make
clicky film advance mechanism noises when taking pictures. The film in the
cartridge is just a dummy and is not exposed. When the film cartridge is
mailed in for processing, download the video, run it through Filmlook to give
it grain and jitter, then upload to the cloud server. If the user orders the
"return processed film" option, print the video to film stock at the
processing plant.

~~~
virtualritz
No hipster will even notice. :) If done right, it will be even hard to prove
there was cheating in the process.

------
bprater
You may have not noticed it, but the benefits of film have been going extinct
this decade. Check out how many feature films are shot digitally versus on
film. Unless you are Spielberg, you are shooting digitally.

Currently, there are small digital cameras like the Blackmagic Pocket Camera
(BMPCC) camera, under $1k, which have a capability to shoot images that are so
similar to 16mm film that the average consumer couldn't tell.

The bottom-line today: if you want the 8mm vibe, you oversample your image
when shooting (16mm or 35mm digital) and then degrade the image in post-
production to 8mm.

~~~
beamatronic
Or unless you are Quentin Tarantino; see Inglorious Basterds (2009) to see
what rich colors film can provide.

~~~
drrotmos
Or better yet, The Hateful Eight, in which he takes film to a new level,
shooting on Ultra Panavision 70 (which perhaps counter-intuitively is 65 mm
film).

Other people are going digital, but Quentin Tarantino seems to be busy taking
film to the next level instead :)

~~~
rplst8
The "70" in Ultra Panavision 70 mostly refers to the projection system. As
projected in the the theater, it uses 70mm film. During the filming process a
65mm stock is used. The extra 5mm was for the optical soundtrack.

------
ryandamm
The death of film has more to do with distribution than acquisition; the
pervasive switch to digital projection completely killed the last bastion of
demand for film stock. (A typical film might requires 100s to 1000s as much
stock for delivery to theaters as it needed for initial capture.)

That said, you can't get the entire Super8 look with digital filters. There
are optical properties (have to use the same lens and sensor size), and the
way it handles highlights vs lowlights is different than digital sensors. (The
'rolloff' in the highlights, rather than clipping at saturation, is very
desirable.)

And it's true that film isn't entirely dead in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino
shot his most recent film on 70mm stock. But that's nearly 100x the resolution
of 8mm film, so they're not really comparable. OTOH, I recently saw Wes
Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom," which was shot on 16mm reversal (color, not
negative) film stock for the look.

In each case, the choice of film stock definitely affected the look of the
film. It also affected the act of shooting the film; even if you can mimic a
filmic look digitally (through digital acquisition and post processing),
shooting digitally is very different than shooting film. I happen to prefer
digital, but courses for horses.

But yeah, for consumers, it's pretty much a hipster affectation. Good for
Kodak, though! Also of note in the annals of hipster retro photography is 'The
Impossible Project,' which revived Polaroid film:

[https://www.the-impossible-project.com/](https://www.the-impossible-
project.com/)

Also, 'lomography.'

------
lcrs
With modern film stocks and scanners Super8 can look remarkably good. It'll be
interesting to see how Kodak's scanning service compares to scans like these,
both of which were shot with another new Super 8 camera, the Logmar
Digicanical:

[https://vimeo.com/129700087](https://vimeo.com/129700087)

[https://vimeo.com/groups/super8/videos/87243287](https://vimeo.com/groups/super8/videos/87243287)

------
nickbauman
I wish they would have resurrected 9.5 mm instead. 9.5 mm was an amazing
format in that the emulsion went from edge to edge with no pulldown claw
sprocket. Instead it used a single sprocket hole _between the frames._ It was
still very cheap film but more than 50% larger emulsion than Super8.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9.5_mm_film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9.5_mm_film)

~~~
Aloha
Unlike 9.5, they never stopped commercial manufacture and processing of Super8
so all of the commercial infrastructure is still there - its less of a
revival, and more a introduction of a new Super8 camera.

~~~
nickbauman
Good point, but 9.5 is still kinda amazing format, if only.

~~~
sitkack
What does it take to make film? The camera can't be that difficult. All those
Nikon and Canon lenses for small sensors would be ideal.

~~~
dietrichepp
Black and white film? It's very hard, but doable. Probably comparable
difficulty to building your own computer out of logic ICs. You'll buy
cellulose acetate stock, a bunch of chemicals, and build a coating machine
yourself. You'll also need some chemical engineering skills. Your film might
be comparable to that from the 1950s.

Alternatively, you can buy a film factory when it gets shut down, but these
tend to produce film in large batches, and it might be difficult to repair the
machines. People have done this before.

Color film? Basically impossible. Probably comparable difficulty to building
your own ICs. Only a handful of companies were ever successful at it.

------
AnimalMuppet
Interesting. But it doesn't solve the worst problem I've ever had with analog
film: The developer lost the rolls that had our honeymoon pictures on them.
(As compensation, they were generous enough to offer us... blank replacement
rolls. We were not impressed.)

That's the advantage digital has - you don't mail the pictures anywhere.
Nobody can lose them for you. (Yeah, you can still lose them yourself...)

~~~
dietrichepp
Tip from the pros: if the pictures are irreplaceable, then divide them in
half. Send half to the developer. If it gets ruined, you've only ruined half.

This is how wedding photographers who shot on film avoided getting sued into
oblivion by angry brides (and yes, there are many, many photographers who have
been sued into oblivion by angry brides, contract or no contract).

~~~
madaxe_again
Or alternately learn to do manual colour positive processing. It's really not
hard, and with a big tank you can do half a dozen 120 reels at a time.

~~~
dietrichepp
YMMV, the machines are very consistent, it takes some serious discipline to
match that consistency at home, and you can get color casts accidentally. The
C-41 chemicals are also a bit more unfriendly and more difficult to dispose of
properly (not sure about positive). So these days I only do non-chromogenic
film at home, but I might have made a different choice in the 1990s.

Speaking of which, Kodak doesn't even make E-6 film any more.

~~~
madaxe_again
Indeed. I've a freezer stuffed with fuji e6 120 and 5x4, and chems for
processing.

C41 is a pain in the ass and I only bothered a few times - but with a little
practice you can develop positive film perfectly at home - all about being
able to work blind, and having a series of tubs at the right temperatures.
Admittedly my first few tries ended up with lomo quality from a rollei!

------
smacktoward
I'm strugging to figure out who exactly this thing would be _for_.

Amateurs for home movies? Nope, digital will always be cheaper, and
faster/more convenient to work with to boot.

Aspiring filmmakers? Nope, if you want to shoot on film professionally you'll
want at least 16mm to avoid the magnification/graininess Super 8 brings with
it.

People nostalgic for the blurriness of old home movies? Do any of these
actually exist?

~~~
sitharus
The same people who buy impossible project instant film.

Sure you could shoot a perfectly in-focus colour corrected image and filter
it, but there's something fun about not knowing the result instantly. It's the
reverse of when digital cameras came out, then instant was exciting.

~~~
Htsthbjig
"but there's something fun about not knowing the result instantly."

Let me guess, you have never ever used a super 8 camera. I have, and FUN is
the last word that will come to my mind about those machines.

Using a new cartridge and not being sure about light exposure in complex
scenes, only knowing about it after having sent the cartridge away and
returned. Idem with motion response, color and lots of little things that now
we have feedback about in seconds, but at the time, took weeks.

I mean, after all the pain now you need to mount the projector, switch light
off only to discover that your film is ruined, because you did not take the
right decisions or just the developer lab did it wrong. Frustration, anger,
disappointment, anything but fun.

This happened several times to my father. It was an expensive process to
learn, only fun if you did not pay for it.

It was a pain in the ass.

------
liquidise
As someone who went to school in Rochester, NY (RIT), i love to see Kodak
making a move that could possibly return them to a relevant position in the
film industry. Rochester was once a proud city that has been beaten down by
missing the innovation train. I hope this and other initiatives help to return
it to some of its former luster.

------
lectrick
Is there an actual double-blind study that proves that digital still cannot
beat analog in certain realms? Because I'm having a hard time believing that
this "analogue renaissance" isn't just pure marketing hokum.

~~~
plaguuuuuu
If nothing else, it's a stylistic choice. Choosing how a film should look, the
colours and tonality etc, is a creative process and has aesthetic and
therefore subjective goals. You can't really say which one is 'better', only
that they're different.

~~~
lectrick
Everything you described is at least theoretically digitizable.

~~~
leejo
This is the best thing i've read on the whole film vs digital debate:
[http://www.fototazo.com/2015/04/the-meaning-of-films-
decline...](http://www.fototazo.com/2015/04/the-meaning-of-films-decline.html)
# TLDR: most film advocates claim all the wrong reasons for shooting film, and
i say this as someone who is primarily a film shooter.

The most compelling reason to shoot film is because it gives you access to a
range of camera and lens technology that is impossible to replicate with
digital without significant compromise in quality and/or shooting style.

Nolan shoots on IMAX cameras with modified Zeiss lenses that give an extremely
shallow depth of field (witness some of the scenes in The Dark Knight Rises).

Tarantino shooting on Super Panavision 70 could not be replicated on digital
without extreme cropping of a wide angle digital source, which would change
the depth/perspective, or stitching (difficult if impossible in motion picture
shooting). See also panoramic cameras: Fuji 6x17, Hasselblad X-Pan.

Large format and even medium format, because the available digital backs have
not yet reached the size of a full 6x6 negative. The digital back
manufacturers claim they are "full frame" but when used on actual full frame
6x6 cameras they are anything but (this is not a resolution/quality argument,
it is a "oh, my 100mm lens is now actually cropped" argument).

~~~
lectrick
Are you claiming that that range of camera and lens technology will never be
duplicated in the digital realm?

~~~
leejo
Not at all, and i suspect as sensor technology improves and prices become more
affordable digital formats larger than 35mm will rise in popularity.

------
ethbro
Hearing the name "Kodak" just makes me sad these days.

From the wikipedia entry, _" From the $90 range in 1997, Kodak shares closed
at 76 cents on January 3, 2012"_.

~~~
drglitch
As sad as that is, it's a pretty long life for a company that was killed by
mis-management: they invented the digital cameras but chose not to cannibalize
their incumbent analog business. To combat demise, they chose to fire people
and become an IP shell. Last try at survival was to sell off most/all IP and
license its name. The rest is history.

~~~
meric
We weren't in the company. It can be hard to tell. You could open a beauty
therapy shop, and it's revenue increase every year, and suddenly after the
introduction of cheap laser treatments and race-to-the-bottom competitors, in
one year you could face a reduction of 70% of your revenue.[1]

[1] Anecdote.

~~~
ghaff
Kodak certainly did a lot of things wrong--especially with the benefit of
20-20 hindsight. Part of their problem with digital was that they were
arguably ahead of curve (and not quite on the right curve) with things like
PhotoCD and providing equipment to photo shops to print customer photos.

However, the bottom line is that it would probably have been very difficult
for even the most brilliant management to replace the film, photo paper, and
chemicals consumables business. That revenue basically doesn't exist in the
digital world unless maybe you count inkjet ink--though that's trending down
too.

Fujifilm did end up doing OK by, among other things, applying their film
making expertise to other industries like medical. But they had a tough run
too. [1] The film business fell off a cliff that made CD sales look like a
gradual decline.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-
fujifi...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifilm-
survived)

~~~
intrasight
I worked at Kodak as a summer intern in '85\. Was the era of the disk camera.
Was also my first programming job. Lotus 1-2-3.

Most people today can't comprehend the scale of American manufacturing as it
still was at that time. The Elmgrove plant where I worked (one of a dozen
facilities in the Rochester area) has over 14 thousand employees. Our start
and end times were staggered in 7 minute increments to manage traffic flow.

That none of that would exist 20 years later was inconceivable at the time.
The word "disruption" wasn't in business vocabulary. Nor was the phrase "made
in China". Some senior technical managers saw the "digital" writing on the
wall. But what could they do? What could anyone do? There was no way to turn
that aircraft carrier on a dime.

There was no business model in digital cameras that would employ 100 thousand
engineers, managers, factory workers, technicians, and staff.

~~~
ghaff
What people don't get a lot of the time when they're opining about what a
business should do or should have done because the market is
collapsing/collapsed for a particular product category is that you have to run
the numbers. Maybe the business executes brilliantly on creating a new $1B
business (which is _hard_ ). But if that replaces a $10B business, things are
still going to get ugly. I don't have the exact numbers at my fingertips but,
as I recall, film revenue fell something like 90% in under 10 years.

(That said, Fujifilm provides an existence proof that Kodak could have,
however painfully, probably navigated this with better management making
better choices.)

------
sssilver
> There are some moments that digital just can't deliver

Isn't this the mindset that drove them into the ground in the first place?

------
salmonet
Came across a tweet about the Sony MiniDisc Recorder/Player going for hundreds
and even thousands of dollars on Ebay. Nostalgia apparently sells.

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m5...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R4.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xsony+MZ.TRS0&_nkw=sony+mz-
rh1&_sacat=0)

~~~
bambax
That's amazing. I have one that works absolutely flawlessly; I still need to
transfer what I have on those disks before I try to sell it, but then...

Why would people pay that kind of money for this?? Do they need it to play
their old disks? Wouldn't it be cheaper to have them transferred to another
media by a lab?

~~~
72deluxe
My brother has a bunch of MiniDisc players and recorders. I do not understand
why. He refuses to get an MP3 player or use his phone but will instead record
audio in REALTIME from CDs etc. to MiniDisc. He says the battery life is
really good. The psychoacoustic modelling on the audio is not, however!!

He even bought a multitrack minidisc desk. Apparently it was going cheap. I
understand why - with 4 tracks of audio, it'll record 15 minutes. No good for
long jams.

I do not understand the fascination with it at all. Even an old Tascam
portastudio or the modern equivalents that record to SD card would be better.

~~~
stinos
_The psychoacoustic modelling on the audio is not, however!!_

There were quite some improvements between older and the latest models though,
and the latter could also use uncompressed and/or lossless schemes.

 _the fascination with it at all._

One thing I really liked about it is the handling of discs. I don't know why,
but I just liked the feeling of opening the player, ejecting a disc and
inserting another one with a satisfactory 'click'.

~~~
72deluxe
A bit like using an old cassette walkman then!

Wobbling CDs into top-loading CD players was never as satisfying (and you were
likely to scratch the underside of it as you slid it into the caddy).

Loading MP3s isn't satisfying at all.

------
markbnj
I grew up in upstate NY and visited Kodak's campus in Rochester in their
heyday. It was impressive as hell to a ten year-old. I'm sure the idea that
the massive works and the business they represented could almost completely
evaporate never occurred to the people working there. It's a little melancholy
in some ways. I wish I could see this as more than a desperate attempt to
rekindle that dead business, but I can't. How much do the benefits of using
analog processes to capture the light really matter when the vast majority of
people will access the content downstream through digital delivery platforms?
Somewhere along the line the information is going to get sampled and aliased.
Tarantino getting all nostalgic for analog content that will be shown to
viewers via $100,000 digital projectors is one thing, but most photographs are
viewed on phones, and in web browsers.

------
S_A_P
I feel like we're out of ideas, so we revert to nostalgia. I just saw that
Technics just re-reintrouduced the SL-1200 and now Kodak is reintroducing the
Super 8. All so that we can feel the analog warmth. I think this is just the
effect of software taking over the world. We cant have these tangible things
anymore that have their own character, quirks, and defects(that when new
infuriate users only to be remembered fondly 20 years later) We recently
bought my 9 year old an instant camera. Each pack only has 10 pictures. She
blew through that in about 30 minutes because she was so used to the
"infinite" digital pictures she could take. To add insult to injury, she kept
taking the film pack out and exposing the pictures, and couldn't figure out
why they were blank.

------
NovaS1X
This is good for digital in ways I think people won't notice quite yet.

As an amateur photographer I tend to see film users a lot. I shoot digital but
I'd like to shoot film too. The reality is that there are some artifacts that
film gives you that you can't replace in digital _yet_. In art, if the effect
or feeling that you want is given on a certain tool then that is the tool for
the job. In photography, if this is film, then film is the right tool for the
job. There's also the large factor of workflows. People get used to a workflow
that influences their style and it's important to them to maintain that
workflow. What is measurably better in technical terms is not important.

What I see happening is that market trends like this will push digital forces
to perfectly re-creating classic films. The difficulty with re-creating film
with filters or presets is it's notoriously hard to do and usually not
perfect. Fujifilm is a perfect example of this with their film simulation
modes on their X-Mount camera lineup. I suspect that the film trend is going
to push photography giants into creating more accurate emulation of film baked
into their workflows and devices rather than the current trend of generic
hipster Instagram filters or playing in Lightroom for a few hours (and still
not getting the effect you want).

Whether you're a professional or a 16y/o girl with a K1000 and mix-matched
80's leg warmers film still does have a place amongst people and this will in
turn affect the development of digital processing.

------
newday
Cool, I'm switching to coding with punchcards.

~~~
72deluxe
Might be a startup idea to sell hole punches then eh?

------
k-mcgrady
Interesting. Today I've come across quite a few stories on analogue tech. This
+ new Technic SL-1200 models + new vinyl pressing machines being produced due
to vinyl demand continuing to grow + record players and instant film cameras
being incredibly popular on Amazon this Christmas. I wonder if we'll see this
occur to other analogue tech too?

~~~
mmahemoff
There will always be a big market for items of nostalgia, whether it's taking
photos, playing music, enjoying ancient video games, or banging out letters on
a typewriter. All good fun as long as people don't spout pseudoscience about
its inability to be emulated with modern equipment.

~~~
colechristensen
It isn't just nostalgia.

Digital music can't simulate having a physical album cover, an e-ink screen
won't ever be similar to a printed page, no music encoding will physically
prevent loudness-wars mastering the way a vinyl record will (the needle would
just jump out of the track), no printer will ever be able to fool someone into
thinking a document was written on a typewriter.

You can tell the difference if a piece of mail was signed by a human with a
pen instead of a printer, and it means something.

The limitations of analog media are very often their strengths, especially in
corner cases. The limitations of a medium are often a significant driver for
the creative process and losing them or approximating them makes lots of
things worse.

Normally people (morally) opposed to analog media spout just as much
pseudoscience in defense of their position. (normally people arguing about
such things on the Internet are idiots anyway)

~~~
kalleboo
What gives those things value IS the nostalgia though. A computer printed page
has clear crisp letters with advanced fonts and typography compared to a
typewriter with smudged, fixed-width fonts. E-ink books allow for notes,
search, bookmarks and much more. The new is with few exceptions objectively
better.

~~~
nikdaheratik
But it's not just about nostalgia. There's the fact that there is more human
work and thought involved with doing something by hand. It is a social signal
with some of the objectively "worse" ways that will stick around for awhile.

------
dietrichepp
I see USB and... SD card slot on the back? HDMI and... 3.5mm audio?

One of the most characteristic features of Super 8, at least to me, is the
complete lack of audio (at least, on most Super 8 works). So if you went to a
theater to see something on Super 8 there might be a live band playing the
soundtrack.

I wonder if Kodak is doing something like putting audio on the SD card and
then storing digital synchronization marks on the film somehow.

Edit: To be clear, I know you can already put audio on Super 8. It's just that
most Super 8 films I've seen in the theater have had no audio or live audio.
And yes, I looked at the specs. The specs don't mention anything at all, but
the product rendering appears to show jacks for audio and data, and I'm
wondering how that's incorporated.

~~~
johansch
You're just imagining what the product could be like instead of reading the
actual product/specs page? That's an interesting approach, but should probably
label your fantasies accordingly.

[http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/consumer/Product/Product_Specs...](http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/consumer/Product/Product_Specs/?contentId=4294993082&TaxId=4294969683)

"FILM GAUGE: SUPER 8 ( EXTENDED MAX-8 GATE )

FILM LOAD: KODAK CARTRIDGES WITH 50 FT (15 M)

SPEED: VARIABLE SPEEDS (9, 12, 18, 24, 25 FPS) ALL WITH CRYSTAL SYNC

LENS MOUNT: C-MOUNT

FOCAL LENGTH: FIXED / 6 MM, 1:1.2 – RICOH LENS (OPTIONAL ZOOM 6-48 MM LENS )

FOCUS / APERTURE: MANUAL FOCUS & IRIS"

etc.

~~~
dietrichepp
I did read the specs, and they don't answer any of my questions. This comment
fails to give me any new information and instead just makes me feel bad, so,
congratulations, if that was your goal.

~~~
purpled_haze
Description of crystal sync here:
[http://www.tobincinemasystems.com/index_files/Page269.htm](http://www.tobincinemasystems.com/index_files/Page269.htm)

"a camera's running speed is locked to the digitally divided oscillations of a
quartz crystal, with an accuracy of a few parts per million. The function of
the pilot cable was to feed a representation of the camera's speed to the
recorder. Since with crystal control that speed is precisely known, the cable
can be replaced by a similarly accurate crystal generator mounted in the audio
recorder. This eliminates any connection between camera and recorder, but
permits them to stay in sync with each other. A pilot signal is recorded as
above, but it comes from the built-in crystal instead of the camera. The
resulting tape is resolved to mag film just the same as a pilot tape. You
still need a clapper board for a start mark."

So, it doesn't actually record the sound, but it is capable of being sync'd to
the recording of the sound.

------
WalterBright
It'd be nice to see films shot in color again instead of blue and orange.

[http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-
orange...](http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and-
blue/)

~~~
platz
Go see Carol (shot on 16mm)

------
zzzeek
dumb question. as someone who shot plenty of super 8 about 35 years ago, what
I don't see here is the projector? That was the part that sort of sucked (not
to mention editing). You still need a projector to consume this media, right?
Or is it just teleported through some hipster USB device now...

~~~
ghaff
It's color negative film anyway. Probably gives better quality scans and is a
bit cheaper.

[Edit: And actually I don't believe Kodak makes a reversal Super 8 film any
longer, although others do.]

~~~
mng2
Yeah, Kodachrome processing stopped about 5 years ago, since the chemicals
were too nasty. I think Kodak still sells B&W reversal though.

------
pacomerh
This is amazing news, the quality of the super 8 has a lot of character.

------
namuol
Well, this will surely at least be a _collectible_ , some day.

------
n_plus_one
Here's a nice solution in search of a problem.

~~~
purpled_haze
I speculate that there is latent demand for it between older people that miss
it and younger people that are tired of pure digital and want something more
organic and different.

Personally though, I would rather have something similar to analog that
doesn't require the cost and time/complexity. I wonder how many folks will buy
these to go with them: [http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/nolab-digital-
super-8-cartri...](http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/nolab-digital-
super-8-cartridge-make-film-cameras-go-digital)

~~~
ghaff
>younger people that are tired of pure digital and want something more organic
and different

Which I actually sort of appreciate (in my less cynical moments). Though, if
it's just that they've never shot anything on film, I'm sure they have friends
or co-workers with old still cameras gathering dust. Borrow one, shoot a roll
of film, send it off to be processed, and the urge will probably have gone
away by the time you get your prints back. You can get those prints scanned
too if you like.

------
fomoz
That's crazy amazingly awesome. Need to know how much it costs though, both
camera and film/processing/cloud.

~~~
Aloha
I'd expect the camera to cost 2-800 and the processing/film to be about 30
bucks a cartridge. Too bad they don't make a color reversal film anymore, so
you can project it too.

------
jlebrech
it makes a lot of sense for film makers who want to film in 4K without forking
out for a Red camera, just paying per minute of film instead.

If you like in hollywood tho, it's probably cheaper to rent a 4k camera for
your next blockbuster.

------
mtw
These are all meaningless words without a sample video

------
rfrank
If Kodak is scanning all of the photos and putting them into the cloud
themselves, does that mean they have rights to said images?

~~~
smegel
What amazes me is the lawyers haven't been able to come up with some legalese
that allows companies to transfer your data around their internal systems for
_your_ own use without stating "we can do whatever we want with your content".

~~~
wmf
AFAIK this is a solved problem in B2B. e.g.

AWS: "We do not access or use customer content for any purpose other than as
legally required and for maintaining the AWS services and providing them to
our customers and their end users. We never use customer content or derive
information from it for marketing or advertising."

SoftLayer: "As a Processor, SoftLayer will not access the Customer Content for
any purpose beyond providing You with support as described above, and will not
disclose it to any person or entity."

------
DonnyV
This is going to fail HARD.

------
lazylizard
c mount? i mean "c mount"!!!!! yes!

------
marincounty
Wow--surprised! Never thought I would see another film camera again. I didn't
want to get into the film/digital debate, but I have no life--so here goes:

I can still tell the difference between film and digital. It could be I'm too
used to film? It could be I'm partially color blind? Whatever the reason, I
like the look of film.

Recent example. I watched Dumb and Dumber Too. Yes--it was bad on a lot of
levels, but what really suprised me was the look of the movie. It just looked
cheap. Say what you want about a Farelly brothers movie, they always looked
great. I then looked into it, and one of the Farelly brothers was given the
choice between film, or digital. The producers brought him to a digital lab,
where the techs applied the film "look" program to make the digital look like
film. Farley couldn't tell the difference. I sure could? They went with
digital. If this is their last digital film--they will have settled to
controversy--in my little world. I just have a feeling their next movie will
be in film?

As to digital photography. When digital finally hit the practical point, I
went digital. For myself, it was the Canon 20D, I bought the camera, and three
very expensive lenses. Yes, it took great pictures. Great pictures to what? I
wasen't a photographer before digital? I didn't know better. Actually, as a
kid, I was a photographer. I used a Pentax K1000, and a Canon 350D. A few
years ago I found a stash of negatives. I had them blown up, and asked a
couple of family members to pick the best pictures. These were nature
pictures. All picked my kid pictures. Maybe I was a better photographer as a
kid? I don't know.

If I was going to "gear" up again, I think I would stay with film. Not because
I think it's that much better, but because the used lenses, are so cheap right
now. A used Canon F 2.8 300mm lens is under a grand used. The digital Canon
2.8 300mm lens is a minimum of $3500 used(usually beat up.).

To anyone who honestly wants to get into photography, but funds are tight,
look into film. Hell, I wouldn't even bother with color. I would set up a
bathroom darkroom, and set up shop.

I guess it's easy for me to throw around this advice. I'm not going back to
chemicals in the sink. I have bought the digital equipment, and probally won't
go back to film. Oh yea, whatever you do stick with prime lenses. That was my
biggest mistake. Buy whatever camera bare. Buy the lenses(glass--if you want
to sound like one of those guys--I never wanted to be in that club.) Buy your
primes separately. Try to keep your digital camera not in [fully auto] all the
time, but then again, I sometimes wonder why.

My ex-girlfriend is a professional photographer--takes studio pictures of old
stuff. She loved to brag about it. "I'm a professional Photographer. Did you
know, I take pictures for a living?" Yes--it was worse than going to the
dentist, but maybe I was being too critical? She has never been in manual
mode, TV, or even AV mode. She doesn't know about F stops, or exposure times.
I think she got lucky though. I told her the pictures were Spectacular, but I
really though they were too Photoshopped. As to her job--well it's a lot about
who you know at big corporations.

Good luck--

~~~
VLM
"I used a Pentax K1000"

I got one of those as a gift, probably so I'd stop borrowing his Spotmatic
(the K1000 was basically an 80s version of the 60s Spotmatic, with an
annoyingly different lens mount).

I think a large aspect of picture quality when we were kids, is rich grandpa
can give you triple digits worth of camera at Christmas, but I paid my own way
on consumables and I had to push a broom at the food store for something like
ten minutes per pix once all the costs of analog were accounted for. Large
sheets of photo paper for enlargements were not cheap, either.

Something often overlooked is the analog era was extremely expensive.

