super8 Archives - Impactist

irregular8mm / 03

Once we got a handle on the irregular8mm technique in regards to color, lens, sprocket skipping, shutter angle, etc., the next step would be to figure a process for a reversal black and white emulation. But, that’s going to be much more difficult. In our minds, BW reversal 8mm is synonymous with hand processing which results in scrapes and cuts in soft emulsion when it’s wet and you’re cramming it in buckets between developers, bleach, and fixer.. How can you get the same physically scarred effects in camera? The point is to figure out a way to get these effects in one go, or at least 99% in camera before any shot assembly in post like traditional film with a telecine process. Not sure if we have the time to wrap our heads around that one right now.

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irregular8mm / 02

Non particular irregular8mm test shots. In camera Fuji digital. Unimportant subjects. Casual stuff trial-and-erroring more and less glass, more or less bounce, how much faux-sprocket skipping, focusing on flares, chasing that feeling of being inside those tiny viewfinders, reflex or otherwise. Shooting out of old S8 and reg8 cams sometimes felt like you were looking out of tiny well up at the sun with your fingers crossed that the fresh cartridge of Ektachrome wasn’t going to bind up and leave you 25 dollars poorer. Test shots here on unimportant scenes of how to reach into the past and pinch off a part of that feeling. Though, shooting this way, you don’t have to wait a month for the Kodak E6 kit to arrive by mail to pick up at Dot Dotsons on Willamette St. so you can sleep while the open chemicals dance on your brain in your bedroom hand-process-DIY-super8-darkroom/lab in 1990’s Eugene, Oregon. Oh, that was just us? Was it the color developer that was most toxic? Had to be the chems in the glass bottles and not the plastics. A little color developer never hurt no one.