Tweet Make your own silent movies on 35mm film

It's wacky, but here's the news story at Yahoo:

http://tinyurl.com/4yx99kk

Derek

Idea- Cute

The $99.00 price- ridiculous.

If you want to get just about the same effect get a 35mm camera with an autowind and just hold down the button, then process the film into prints and make a flip book from them.

Both ideas depend on having a film processor nearby- which is an increasingly rare situation.

Not only that, but it assumes you can find reversal slide film, which is even rarer.

Not only that, but it assumes you can find reversal slide film, which is even rarer.

Actually, their website says "Load the LomoKino with any kind of 35mm film that takes your fancy – Color Negative, Slide, Black and White; the choice is yours." Not sure how that's gonna look if you load with C-41 and they send back a strip of negs to put in your viewer.

I note their sample film shows light leaks from the plastic body camera. I'd advise if you really want to make movies, get a used Super-8 camera, buy some film direct from Kodak, and shoot away. Send to a good film processor like Dwyane's and get back a film with a half-decent frame rate, a sharp picture, and probably no light leaks.

Derek

I used to have an 8mm (not Super) silent camera that I played around with. Think I bought it for around $30.
I kind of doubt they make film for it anymore though?

I used to have an 8mm (not Super) silent camera that I played around with. Think I bought it for around $30.
I kind of doubt they make film for it anymore though?

No, it's still available.

http://www.myoldcamera.com/Regular8mm.html

Derek

Freestyle Photographic carries Fomapan in regular 8. http://www.freestylephoto.biz/411801-Fo ... cat_id=407

Actually, 8mm film (I think) will be available as long as 35mm film is.....as far as I know, all they do is take 35mm film and cut it into 4 strips, then punch the sprocket holes.

Not only that, but it assumes you can find reversal slide film, which is even rarer.

Actually, their website says "Load the LomoKino with any kind of 35mm film that takes your fancy – Color Negative, Slide, Black and White; the choice is yours." Not sure how that's gonna look if you load with C-41 and they send back a strip of negs to put in your viewer.

I note their sample film shows light leaks from the plastic body camera. I'd advise if you really want to make movies, get a used Super-8 camera, buy some film direct from Kodak, and shoot away. Send to a good film processor like Dwyane's and get back a film with a half-decent frame rate, a sharp picture, and probably no light leaks.

Derek

Apparently with the Lomo photographic crowd light leaks and flaws are some of the positive points. It grew out of using cheap and inferior cameras where the flaws gave interesting qualities, such as image softness, chromatic aberration, Etc. This is fine if you're dealing with vintage cameras and I understand- it's sort of a game and sometimes the results are artistic. The thing is, they are making new cameras with intentionally built in flaws. For me that's a big HUH???

Not only that, but it assumes you can find reversal slide film, which is even rarer.

Actually, their website says "Load the LomoKino with any kind of 35mm film that takes your fancy – Color Negative, Slide, Black and White; the choice is yours." Not sure how that's gonna look if you load with C-41 and they send back a strip of negs to put in your viewer.

I note their sample film shows light leaks from the plastic body camera. I'd advise if you really want to make movies, get a used Super-8 camera, buy some film direct from Kodak, and shoot away. Send to a good film processor like Dwyane's and get back a film with a half-decent frame rate, a sharp picture, and probably no light leaks.

Derek

Apparently with the Lomo photographic crowd light leaks and flaws are some of the positive points. It grew out of using cheap and inferior cameras where the flaws gave interesting qualities, such as image softness, chromatic aberration, Etc. This is fine if you're dealing with vintage cameras and I understand- it's sort of a game and sometimes the results are artistic. The thing is, they are making new cameras with intentionally built in flaws. For me that's a big HUH???

I don't think they're being intentionally built that way, they're just cheaply made from the start. I can't imaging some engineer sitting there figuring out how to make an intermittent light leak!

Derek

Perhaps, but I think the quality control is intentionally low. Look up Lomography- there's a lot of endearingly odd stuff. The nice part is, this old tech approach requires Real Actual FILM!- even though most choose to scan the negative and make a digital print.

On a related note, there are a lot of people using old manual typewriters

[Christopher Jacobs]

Finally looked at the camera's website with photos and demo films (since I've got broadband access this afternoon). They can squeeze 144 frames onto a standard 36-exposure roll of 35mm film because still photos are normally shot in images 8-perferations wide (same as VistaVision), while normal movies use images that are 4-perferations tall, and this camera shoots images 2-perferations tall (same as Techniscope), and with no soundtrack area masked off it's actually 2-perf Super-35, giving an extra-wide widescreen picture. The camera's rate of two or three frames per second, however, is hardly a "movie," and more like the motion photography experiments of the 1880s.

There used to be labs that used Eastmancolor negative film to print both slides and typical paper snapshot prints, sending the negatives back in a roll with a stack of prints and set of mounted slides. I think it would take special lab instructions to print slides from your color negatives but send the positive print back as a long strip rather than cut up into slides. I don't know of any labs anymore that would make black-and-white slides or a B&W film print from a few feet of 35mm tri-X.

This looks like a cutesy novelty that just might get some interest with the success of THE ARTIST, as well as give a minor boost to sales of physical 35mm film. I'd rather find a deal on an old 35mm Eyemo, however. It might not be hard to find real 35mm movie projectors at reasonable prices in the next couple of years as theatres dump them all for digital.

Just go for a 16mm Bolex- they're beautiful to use and look art.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Just go for a 16mm Bolex- they're beautiful to use and look art.

Well, actually I do have a Bolex H16 Reflex, adapted so it can take a 400-foot magazine (though I don't have an external magzine for it), and have a 10mm and a 25mm lens on the turret (but no telephoto). I even have a bunch of rolls of Kodak Vision 250D that have been sitting in the refrigerator for about a dozen years now, but I haven't found anything I want to spend the hefty processing and printing costs for yet (and one of the rolls is actually exposed but unprocessed -- a test roll for a feature I wound up shooting on DV back in 2001). One of these days (or years)... After all, BLACK SWAN got an Oscar nomination for its cinematography last year and it was shot on 16mm film!