Tape

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

Second that. Tape, for sure. I have standard 8mm films from 60's and 70's, spliced with tape, and some spliced with cement. Tape still holds (40 years on); cement has pretty much fallen apart on every splice.

BTW - I love that camera. The R8 was the first camera I bought. A friend and
I went in together (with a lot of help from our parents) and we made more
than a dozen films with it.

Thanks. I have the obligitory Kodak Universal tape splicer and a smaller one made by Hanimex. It was just my luck, too, to find a local camera store that carries super8 tapes. Now that I've said that, what viewer should I get. I have a Sears Du-All viewer, but I want to know what you would reccomend?

Somewhat related to the topic, I thought I'd share.

I recently recovered a 50-year old East German Pentaka 8B standard 8 (double 8) wind-up camera. When I was a kid, my dad had taught me how to use it. I even became pretty good at eyeballing the light and getting the aperture correct. Towards the mid-70's, it was replaced by a cheap, battery-powered Sovied-made Super-8, and was collecting dust ever since.

The device still works the same, and it was an emotional experience, examining it and checking the features. So, I decided to get some film stock and shoot something with it. There is still (exactly) one shop in the US that sells double 8 colour reversal film stock, and it ain't cheap ($22 for 25' can). Loading it brought back memories... and I realised, I still have the muscle memory. I used to do it under a heavy blanket, to avoid exposing even an inch of film. 35 years later, I was able to do it without much effort. So far, I had shot one side of the film (mainly my two little children) and have already flipped it. I'm waiting for the next sunny weekend to finish it off and send it to the lab. Very, very curious how it will turn out... It will be quite something to see my own kids on the same medium as myself when I was their age...

8mm, format of the proletariat, format of the independent, format of memory. Vassic, thank you for sharing your memories. I wish you the best of success in your 8mm ventures.

Thanks, the kilted one. I'm afraid, though, my 8mm venture will be limited to this one-time retro-experience. It was mainly to re-live a bit of past, as well as to put my own 'millennium' kids (both born in this millennium) onto a medium from the previous millennium... I did one thing a bit differently from forty years ago; while filming, I also held my cellphone in the other hand and recorded sound with it. The audio quality isn't exactly spectacular, but it likely matches that of the Super 8 with sound from the 70's. My plan is to eventually build some scanning contraption using an ordinary desktop scanner (with the transparency adapter) and some additional mechanics (apparently, people have done it with Legos and put their experiences online), then scan the film into something like Final Cut Pro, then sync my cellphone audio to it.

The medium itself just oozes nostalgia for me. Still, although I do have an old Bell & Howell projector, it is just a major hassle. The hope is to eventually get all of it scanned in and then mothball the original film and the projector.

I tried using my HD camcorder (Canon HF-100) to capture projected images, but as expected, the result is barely acceptable. The issue of flicker, as well as the image sharpness cannot be overcame by that method. By scanning each frame and placing it on a NLE timeline, I should have as good an output as one could possibly get from 8mm medium.

Vasic, if you go to Mike Nyberg's site you can find plans for a workprinter.