Early this summer, I went to Tahiti to shoot a Shark Week show for Discovery. Since we would be living in tight quarters on a Catamaran as we travelled around the French Polynesian islands, I couldn’t bring much with me. But I did keep enough space in my backpack for my Elmo 1012S-XL Super 8 camera and 2 cartridges of Vision3 8mm film, to shoot with on my brief moments of downtime during the job.
I've never shot Super 8 film before, and had recently taken a chance on this purchase of an untested and “as is” camera for about $140. When I got it, and put the six AA batteries in, it fired up and spun the mechanism with a trigger pull. Still, with the cost of 8mm film and the developing and scanning process, I was nervous to load it up and shoot. At best, if it didn’t work, I would be out a few hundred bucks. At worst, I would lose the the recorded moments of what would certainly be a incredible and memorable trip.
That’s why I only took 2 reels of film.
Of course, as soon as I saw the scans, I was thrilled to see that everything worked perfectly, and in fact, better than I expected. I wish I’d taken more film! The color and clarity of Kodak 50D is exceptional with extremely minimal grain for the size of the film - which is smaller than you probably think and close in size to a 1/3” digital sensor, like what you would find in old DV cameras and camcorders.
The Elmo 1012S worked just as it was designed, with excellent and accurate auto-exposure and a working exposed film counter so I could keep track of how much film I'd gone through on a reel. The 10x zoom lens is sharp and rendered images beautifully, and really it's only failures were due to operator error when I couldn’t find focus. I did find it difficult to hold the camera steady at the long end of the lens, so that’s a skill I certainly need to work on. That’s probably an issue with all 8mm cameras without some kind of shoulder brace for a third point of contact for stability. Or a tripod, better yet.
Being in French Polynesia and sailing the islands around Tahiti was an incredible experience. The people, the ocean, the tropical atolls, and all the seafood we could catch and eat is a hard thing to leave when the time is over. I was lucky, too, to see so much incredible ocean shark life - tigers, black tips, silver tips. We even caught a healthy glimpse of a manta ray swimming with our little skiff one evening toward the end of the trip. But of course, my film had long been shot out. Well, there’s always a reason to go back…
Thanks for watching these two short reels of film. I’ve put it up uncut as I shot it, with only a one-light grade from the log scan of the negatives. The show is shot was called “Sharks in Paradise” with Kinga Phillips and Tristan Guttridge, and if you missed it during Shark Week, you can watch it anytime on the Discovery+ streaming network.
Информация по комментариям в разработке