Certain styles of photography or videography immediately evoke an era. Black-and-white movies of flappers in bob cuts put us right in the roaring 20s, while a soft-focused, pastel heavy image with men in suits with narrow ties immediately ties us to the 60s. Similarly, a film shot at home with a Super 8 camera, with its coarse grain, punchy colors, and low resolution brings up immediate nostalgia from the 80s. These cameras are not at all uncommon in the modern era, but the cartridges themselves are definitely a bottleneck. [Nico Rahardian Tangara] retrofitted one with some modern technology that still preserves that 80s look.
The camera he’s using here is a Canon 514XL-S that was purchased for only $5, which is a very common price point for these obsolete machines, especially since this one wasn’t working. He removed all of the internal components except for a few necessary for the camera to work as if it still was using film, like the trigger mechanism to allow the camera to record. In the place of tape he’s installed a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W and a Camera Module 3, so this camera can record in high definition while retaining those qualities that make it look as if it’s filmed on an analog medium four decades ago.
[Nico] reports that the camera does faithfully recreate this early era of home video, and we’d agree as well. He’s been using it to document his own family in the present day, but the results he’s getting immediately recall Super 8 home movies from the 80s and early 90s. Raspberry Pis are almost purpose-built for the task of bringing older camera technology into the modern era, and they’re not just limited to video cameras either. This project put one into an SLR camera from a similar era.
Who was using Super 8 in the 80s or 90s? VHS, Beta, and Hi-8 spanned that era. All my Super 8 memories are from the 60s and 70s.
My family for one, at least throughout the 80s. I’m currently trying to build a scanner to revive the huge stack of old home movies in my parents cupboard. It may well span into the 90s I can’t remember, but hopefully I’ll find out soon enough.
Yeah, at least in Japan and North America, the camcorder rapidly and almost completely conquered the home movie market after ’83.
Super 8 did end up becoming as a popular choice for certain types of professional filmmaking later in the 80’s and into the ’90s, like many music videos of the era, as well as some commercials and documentaries, since it was one of the most portable and affordable film formats to shoot, but it still offered very high quality and a distinctive look.
Yes, but this included higher end Super 8 equipment (good film, camera with stable film transport, good optics).
Another advantage was that the reporters could edit/cut the footage at the hotel room.
The typical home equipment that private people bought wasn’t up to this, I’m afraid.
Unless it was meant for a special event, say a wedding or so.
Btw, in a similar ways, portable b/w video camcorders were a “thing” in 70s-early 80s.
They did record on pre-VHS medium, the recorder was not in the camera itself but in a separate shoulder bag.
For student movies and other kind of documentaries, the b/w format was still acceptable.
Speaking under correction.
This era was more of my (grand)parent’s time. ;)
Btw, about professional film making.
Star Trek from the 60s apparently was shot in 35mm, which gives about 2k video resolution if scanned.
https://www.startrek.com/en-un/news/the-lost-film-of-tos
https://shotkit.com/35mm-film-resolution-vs-digital/
In return, average Super 8 (8mm) should be quite a bit below HD video, maybe.
So if NTSC equals VGA in 640×480 pixels, the Super 8 in 4:3 might be Super VGA in 800×600 pixels ? :)
AFAIK, 35mm motion picture film has much, much more available picture information than 2K resolution.
I regularly get Super 8 scanned at 2 and even 4K, but Super is natively around 800lines of resolution.
But as with any film format, the resolution of the film stock used and the quality of the lens will be deciding factors here.
Aside from the janky lens I don’t really get how it preserves the look of the original. Reducing the framerate would probably help a lot.
A good startup idea: Make a “cassette” that has electronic components to record videos. Maybe for Video8 camcorders. Kinda like those audio cassette adapters.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq85ZsAZxso
Videotapes use helical scanning, which involves extracting a section of the tape from its cartridge, wrapping it around a rapidly-spinning read head, and, feeding it past the head at a relatively precise speed.
Getting a magnetic pickup to spin up and synchronize with all that somehow – while still fooling the unit into thinking that it’s working with a real tape – would be quite the challenge.
It’s not just that. Some tape formats have separate audio and tracking heads. You may also need to figure out some way to monitor the capstan to ensure proper timing.
That being said, I wonder if would be possible to design a long electromagnet that could be printed on suitable length of flex pcb. If done in the right pattern then the flex pcb should be able to wrap around the head drum and if we can get the electromagnet to line up with the path of the heads… The only thing then would be timing the activation of the electromagnet with the passing of the heads.
Just wondering aloud…the idea of spoofing media to a magnetic head is well known to late 90’s early 2000’s kids in the form of the Cassette adapter (which I see has now gone bluetooth), which wasn’t much more than a read head flipped around and stuck in place of the sticky tape and rust:
https://www.amazon.com/Arsvita-Bluetooth-Wireless-Cassette-Receiver/dp/B085C7GTBD/ref=sr_1_2?crid=25O07KMQTRLTX&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.6MZZe9cZeO5cpR0MhFUjy8I533a_xmzSQ4-3WVX8UHUdnu252nH2KEgYHzOUL99yjRPIM9mEDiojeJFGEuJ2g98rY7MU1SibAIp8sjXDP_Ls7nQUjWXgfRDRIyDnu2ql-xnN-Ftt8CkCvzkBCCCbDGZQIfpzfbLuELG0xlKM4Jccy3fm9x4HCh8_OqCISAC1nsPTFB6vWveoHI8KsQpoSEZbzLBPILGJZcHslGr_jdw.bLkvXMa_xVSRIGgj2u1UsSnvznTyYvDWEnY7zaq1riU&dib_tag=se&keywords=cassette+adapter&qid=1751375650&sprefix=casette+adapter%2Caps%2C132&sr=8-2
and for those who are truly old, there’s the PXL2000 video camera, which recorded to audio cassette media:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PXL2000
You’re looking at different media heads depending on your chosen format (VHS, Hi-8, etc.) but the lazy layman in me thinks that “duct taping a head with some wires hooked up to it in place of the video media” isn’t that far from a solution. We’re still talking analog signal at the end of the day.
The problem is reaching the video head of a VCR, I think.
It’s deeply inside the machine, rather than being exposed as it is the case with audio cassette recorder.
So you need some sort of pseudo tape, maybe some metal endless tape that acts as an antenna.
Maybe you could use a real tape, in a short loop, and then somehow build a second video tape player inside the cassette.
The problem is that the video head drum is taller than the cassette, I think.
Because VHS uses vertical helical scan.
I don’t think it would be that hard. I grew up reading about duplicating blockbuster cards on hackaday using a tape read head to record and playback the stripes. Seems like it should work in reverse, for getting data from the recorder to a simple ADC logger.
How about a digital “film” cartridge to use in an unmodified super 8 camera?
Would be nice if he had any sort of write-up or video of how he made it rather than just a 1 minute video of the finished product. He mentions in the comments about “figuring out the hack for the dial which was fun” which seems like it would have been cool to share. He also mentions in the video the difficulty of getting the focal distance right but… No mention of how that issue was solved.
Neat hack, just wish there were a few more details.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Asg6QaHJ400
Much prefer this one. Enough details on the process to give a good idea of the work involved, while not a step-by-step hand holding exercise.