[Frameworks] Kodak Super8 digital camera

[Nicholas Kovats]

Dave,

For the second time in my life I referenced a Dane as a Norwegian. :)

Here is the Logmar's Danish web site, ie http://www.logmar.dk/



On Sat, Jul 15, 2017 at 10:23 PM Dave Tetzlaff <djtet53 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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?
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