Amateur Photographer & Cinematographer (1933)

April I2th, 1933 iHf AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER ra 6 CINEMATOGRAPHER a mateur NEWS, NOTES AND MATTERS OF IN¬ TEREST FOR ALL CINEMATOGRAPHERS USING AMATEUR CINE APPARATUS. Cinematography The 8-mm. Cine Film Arrives The Cine-Kodak “ Eight ” strikes a new note in amateur cinema¬ tography, and is going to make a lot of converts for the Movies in the Home. It is comparatively cheap to run ; the camera, which will slip into a man’s coat pocket or a woman’s handbag, is almost ridiculously easy to use (fixed-focus, of course) ; and the results on the screen are a real revelation of what can be done with a tiny film one-twenty-sixth the size of a penny stamp. It derives its name — the “ Eight ” part of it — from the fact that the film used for projection is 8-mm. wide. You load the camera with a 25-ft. spool of special fine-grain “ pan ” film of i6-mm. width. It is run through the camera twice. On the first trip only half the width of the strip is exposed. At the end of the film’s journey you turn the spool round and run it through again, thus ex¬ posing the other half of the film. After development by Kodak, the film is slit down its middle, the two ends are spliced, and your 25-ft. spool of i6-mm. film is returned to you as a 50-ft. spool 8-mm. wide, ready for projection. The new 8-mm. film is thus not a mere arbitrary variation in film sizes, chosen in order to be just a little different from the next small size, but became 8 mm. because it is half the width of the amateur’s i6-mm. size, and it can be processed (up to the slitting operation) as a i6-mm. film. As each frame is half the width and half the height of a i6-mm. frame A famous Circus on the road. Such subjects should he taken advantage of by the cine-ph otograph er. this policy allows one foot of the new film to do the same amount of work for the screen as four feet of orthodox i6-mm. film used in a i6-mm. camera. A 25-ft. spool (which means 50 ft. of 8-mm. film for projection), costs I os., this charge covering the whole course of processing, slitting and spooling, and (if necessary) posting back to you. To project such a tiny film on a screen 40 x 30 in. requires a high degree of enlargement, but Kodak were equal to the demands, and they have worked out an emulsion with a really superfine grain. The quality of the picture is also partly due, no doubt, to the scrupulously careful processing methods of Kodak, and their reversal method. Pictures taken by amateurs — such as the captain of an Atlantic liner on a cruise, or by our amateur cricketers in Australia, and others — which they showed to some of us when launching the new film on the market recently, are convincing testimony to the real excellence of the film (and the camera) and to the simplicity of Kodak “ Eight ” cine¬ matography. The Cine-Kodak “ Eight ” camera. 24 368