[Frameworks] Kodak Super8 digital camera

[Dave Tetzlaff]

Nicholas wrote that the Kodak was designed by Logmar. I couldn’t find anything about this online, but I assume since Nicholas has one of the Logmars, he’s in touch with the company and knows what he’s talking about. Logmar apparently made 50 units in one batch in 2014 and that was the end of production. If the Kodak is a more simplified mass-mkarket version of the Logmar then we might see a declining price curve, since the Logmar was $6000, the 'limited edition' Kodak is supposed to be $2000, and I found an early projection for the ‘standard’ Kodak at "around $400 to $750". They may have abandoned that target, as they’re already way past the release dates they projected when they first showed prototypes. Heck, the whole thing may turn out to be vaporware. But if not, we could wind up with a tool that’s priced accessibly enough to a base of niche users big enough to keep it afloat. Or not.

The question then is, who is in that niche, besides the professional customers served by Pro8mm, and "trust-fund hipsters”. 

For experimental makers, I think Jeff identifies well that the question goes back to the format itself, and especially to the stocks available. I share Jeff’s sentiments that "the S8 aesthetic” is really based on reversal stocks. Thus, I just shook my head seeing the dust and scratch marks in that test footage: negative! what a pain!m I’d go beyond that to argue that most experimenatl work is best served by shooting reversal, in 16mm too, if only because you can do so much more work with it yourself. 

We might hope if the ‘digital’ Kodak sells to whatever targets Kodak sets for it, that might lead to new stocks being released, including reversal. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. Once video supplanted Super 8 in the 80’s, Kodak seemed to ditch any interest in ‘non-professional’ users of motion picture film. Back in the early aughts, every year at UFVA I used to plead the case for small colleges doing more ‘personal’ filmamking with the Kodak education reps, including the importance of color reversal. I might as well have been talking to a wall. No one from Rochester was capable of understanding filmmaking outside of some commercial model, and all the ‘education’ efforts were directed at the big industry feeder schools and framed within the context of training for professional cinematographers. The new camera, and the negative stocks (to be processed by Pro8mm, apparently) suggest that mentality hasn’t changed at all. That is, seem to not even be aiming for the trust-fund-hipsters, but that ‘pro’ Super 8 thing keeping Pro8mm going. 

Jeff argues that "Color neg in Super 8 just looks like bad 16mm,” and 16mm remains a better, more cost effective choice for experimentalists and other ‘personal’ makers. The question then, is why anyone would choose to work with this digital Kodak S8 over 16mmm. 

Professionals are likely to have a negative view of 16mm – that it just looks like bad 35mm. For them, the format and the gear of 16mm aren’t different enough to speak a different aesthetic from what they’re used to. To ‘think different’ they have to go smaller and shittier, even if that’s not the lovable 'small and shitty' of a Canon 814 shooting Kodachrome oldsters like Jeff and myself once knew.

For us in the non-commercial world, who are generally happy with 16mm, even in the absence of the reversal aesthetic I can imagine some uses where the smaller all-in-one form factor of the Kodak would be a benefit. This would be especially so if it turns out to be quiet enough for decent sync shooting. One of it's features is that it records digital audio to an SD card when the film is running. Presumably, this comes back in sync with the digitized video as a single file in ProRes or whatever. That’s something you can’t get in 16mm – easily syncable double system hifi sound all in one self-contained hand-held body you toss into a backpack or whatever like a mid-sized camcorder…

But yeah, if you’re shooting MOS true-film, I don’t see why you’d forsake a Bolex or an R16 or whatever for one of these…

Maybe people who are licking their lips for the Kodak could say why, speaking specifically to the comparison to 16mm?