Super-8mm Cameras manuals

It's 2020, and resources about Super-8 can be hard to find.

The reason why - and why people stopped shooting film to shoot digital pictures - somewhat still puzzles me, as the two technologies are completely different. But I feel like people also stopped drawing or making "physical" art as much as they used to (that is, non-digital art).

The massive collective hallucination that anything digital necessarily has to be better than its analog counterpart might come to an end someday, in the meanwhile, it'll be the few of us enjoying the "older" technology as much as we can.

That being said, I've found this website, with Super-8mm Camera manuals, and it's still maintained!

Photo credit: unsplash

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Replacing the leather on a Kodak No1A Series III Autographic camera

When I obtained the old Kodak camera, built around 1920-30, in 2020, roughly a hundred years later give or take, it wasn't in great shape. (I'm saying "obtained" because I didn't buy it knowingly, I bought a camera lot and it happened to come with it). The leather cover was very worn, and the outside as well as the inside of the camera was really dirty and grimy. I had no idea how to proceed, but I knew it was possible, so the thought that I could try and replace the leather covers of the camera to give it a new look, a new life, and possibly feel rewarded by the experience started to appear at the back of my head. I had bought replacement leather covers for my cameras before, from a store that sells precut leather stickers, but I had never been able to remove the old leathers (the timer screw on the Pentax ME super just won't come off), and I felt pretty stressed out thinking I might destroy one of my favorite SLRs. But here, the camera had no emotional or f...

Building a micro anamorphic setup for the Pentax Q

My project was to build two light anamorphic setups - one for my Pentax Auto 110, which I really love, and one for the Pentax Q, which I never use but does yield decent results in the "digital aesthetics" field. Since the project didn't work out for the Pentax Auto 110 for now, I will share the more successful results of the Pentax Q. This was the base idea: Find a filter that can be screwed onto the best zoom lens (to avoid cropping) Remove the glass from this filter to keep the ring with the thread Replace the glass with a donut-shaped piece of wood or cardboard Fix a small cellphone anamorphic lens onto that Here's how it went: Find a filter that can be screwed onto the best zoom lens (to avoid cropping) This one was easy. I decided to use the 02 "Standard Zoom" lens for the Pentax Q which has a thread of 40.5mm. And used a Fotasy Pro 1-D as filter. Remove the glass from this filter to keep the ring with the thread That was equal parts fun and dangero...

The medium format camera Zenobia in its Gold Edition

Browsing the eBay listings, I came upon a medium format foldable camera for which I saw great potential... for being upgraded. Indeed, it seems that every single Medium Format camera of the brand "Zenobia" that I came across have all more or less suffered a similar fate: the leather coverings are chipping and falling off (a similar fate is found on Semi Leotax models and maybe some others). But what a fantastic opportunity to replace the dying material with brand new clothes! Zenobia before Restoration pt 1 After cleaning the camera, the idea crossed my mind to simply use it as such... but I quickly discarded the idea, as the camera's body was very sharp and very cold... Something strange was discovered when peeling off the old "skin": the makers had used a piece of Japanese newspaper between the leather and the metal of the camera's back. Or maybe this was a way for people during the war to exchange super secret messages? But since the camera was bui...

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