CompuServe Messages

I'm using an 8mm (Super 8) camera and some hacked together hardware to controll it from my Amiga. There are a few things you have to watch out for if you want to film from a monitor: shutter speed and filtering. Most 16mm cameras I've seen allow you to adjust the shutter speed (or the shutter angle), but 8mm cameras are fixed at 24 fps or (older ones) 18 fps. Interlaced Amiga screens refresh at the equivalent of 30 fps, so you'll have to adjust the camera's frame rate to avoid banding and flickering. Anything less than 15 fps will do. I had to make a PWM motor speed controller for my camera, but I think I'll need to use a stepper motor to get rock-steady shutter movement. Filtering is a bit tricky. A lot of Super 8 cameras have built in filters that are automagically placed in the optical path if you use certain film types (like Type G Ektachrome as I recall). Some monitors put out a lot blue, giving your film a cool tone which may not be intended. So…you have to experiment there. 8mm film costs about $12 a cart. here in Chicago and processing is about $3. You can get about 5 min. of 24fps animation on a cart (that's a LOT of rendering…). Also, most 8mm film (and decent optics) have a resolution of about 80 lines/mm, which means that the images tend to be smoothed out just a bit. ..I should, in fact, be getting my 2nd test reel back from the lab today…