“Load it! Shoot it! Flip it!” I’d heard those words so many times from Michael Raso and the Film Photography Project (FPP) gang on their regular podcast since August 2019, that a year later it had become engrained in my psyche. Raso was referring to his new Double 8 (I prefer to use the term Regular 8, but Standard 8 is also used) film offerings and scanning services, and while it piqued my interest a bit at first, it wasn’t until after a chance notice of a beautiful Regular 8mm Brownie Movie Camera on eBay that I finally decided to bite. What follows is a summary of what my experience was like, including mini-reviews of the 1951 version of the Brownie Movie Camera, and of the FPP’s processing and scanning service for movie film.
The FPP and the Regular (Double) 8 Story
Briefly for those who don’t know, the Film Photography Project, popularly known simply as the FPP, was launched in 2009 by Michael Raso as a podcast for still film photography enthusiasts — ironically the same year that Kodak discontinued production of the last of its legendary Kodachrome films. Bidding farewell to Kodachrome was then only the latest nail in film photography’s coffin — an acceleration of its slide to presumed irrelevance. Raso’s podcast was at least in part an effort to build community, and help reverse the fortunes of still film photography.
On reflection, I don’t think Raso’s timing could have been better, or more fortuitous. Starting in 2009 allowed the podcast to become well-established ahead of two significant changes: First, podcasting blowing-up and becoming a mainstream media force to be reckoned with. And second, still film photography nearly dying completely — only to bounce back, and eventually position the FPP for commercial success after they opened an online store in 2011.
Since returning to film photography myself, it’s been interesting to see the FPP’s online store expand. Raso seems to have carved a niche for himself and the FPP in locating bulk supplies of both interesting expired films and unusual new production films not normally provided for still use or otherwise readily available, and packaging them for sale to film photographers hungry for more options. He’s also been dedicated to keeping older film formats alive where possible; it was in fact the FPP’s re-rolled 620 film that served as a gateway to my full return to film photography.
While a true still film photography buff too, Raso’s true love (based on his bio, anyway) has long been motion picture photography, so it’s little wonder that as a filmmaker himself he’d steer the FPP to embrace that medium in addition to their core still film market. As I alluded to earlier, it was in 2019 that Raso invested in motion picture film scanning gear, and began talking about movie film in general, and Regular 8 in particular, during the podcasts. (Again, the FPP tends to use the term Double 8 to describe this film.)
Fast forward to today (late 2020), and the FPP has a surprising array of movie films for the hobbyist market, providing both processing (which is outsourced) and scanning services for Super 8, Regular 8 and 16mm movie films, in both black and white, and color, and in both negative and reversal (positive) formats.
Raso’s cinema-centric efforts have also grown to include 16mm “double perf” film — required by certain vintage 16mm cameras — as well as both 8mm and 16mm magazine film. The magazine films are conceptually similar to Super 8 in some respects, in that they’re provided pre-loaded onto a cartridge that works with compatible vintage cameras. These are sold only as a film, processing and scanning bundle, since the vintage magazine itself remains the property of the FPP, and is loaned to you with a film purchase. To the best of my knowledge, the FPP’s magazine film and services are the only options for using vintage, magazine-based movie film cameras, apart from complicated DIY solutions. (The magazines were never designed for end-user reuse.)
Regular 8 Film
Whether you prefer to call it Regular 8, Double 8 or Standard 8, the medium is a motion picture format introduced by Kodak in 1932. It was the leading consumer home movie film format until Kodak introduced the more convenient Super 8 in 1965 — Super 8 being pre-packaged in a plastic cassette or cartridge, vs. being provided in open rolls, as Regular 8 is. Super 8 also uses a smaller sprocket size and spacing, allowing the frames of Super 8 to be somewhat larger than Regular 8, and hence providing a slightly better image quality. (As a side note, the FPP also sells Super 8, and provides processing and scanning services for it as well.)
Regular 8, interestingly, is actually 16mm movie film — albeit with twice the usual number of perforations — that’s run through the camera twice, being exposed on only half the film strip in each pass. Historically, after processing, the film is split lengthwise on its centerline, and the two pieces are then spliced together to form one full length of film with sprockets on a single side of the strip. For most consumer-grade Regular 8 cameras, the original strip is 25 feet long, so once split and spliced, the resulting full movie is then 50 feet in length.
This is, by the way, where Raso’s chant comes into play: Load it! Shoot it! Flip it! (Then shoot it again.) Because it’s been decades since Regular 8 movie film was really a thing, reinforcing how it works is likely appropriate — and the clever mantra was enough to get me interested in giving it a try.
While I’m unable to verify the underlying facts, as near as I’ve been able to ascertain, by 2019 there was only one manufacturer of Regular 8 motion picture film left: Foma Bohemia, who still offer their ISO 100 black and white reversal film. (Kodak discontinued production of Regular 8 itself in 1992.)
Raso has clearly gone back to the film sourcing playbook he uses for still films, and is using it to source and bring additional film stocks to market for movie use, branding them under the FPP name. While Raso has been secretive about his film sourcing techniques (which is an observation, not a criticism), he’s been able to source a wide array of stocks for conversion into Regular 8, then packaging and selling the film. It makes the FPP one of only a very small handful of companies who make Regular 8 available to hobbyists and consumers, and as near as I can tell, nobody has the breadth of selection that Raso has enabled the FPP to offer.
About the only thing missing (so far, anyway)? Conversions of the whole range of Kodak’s Vision3 movie stocks to Regular 8. So far, only one has been offered: the 500T, which is ISO 500, tungsten (indoor) balanced film. I have to believe that as long as the FPP’s Regular 8 offerings prove successful, other Vision3 stocks (which include 50D, 250D, and 200T — the “D” denoting daylight (outdoor) balanced film) might eventually find their way into the catalog as well.
Regular 8 Movie Cameras
One thing that Raso hasn’t had to worry about is the availability of cameras to shoot the film the FPP is selling. Simple home movie cameras (as well as more sophisticated, more professional Regular 8 movie cameras) were made and sold by the tens of thousands well into the 1960s, and many of those cameras are sitting in attics and basements ready to be rediscovered. They are also nearly a dime a dozen on eBay and other online marketplaces.
It was on eBay that I found my Brownie Movie Camera, and it set me back a whopping $15 for a camera in near-mint physical condition, despite its 70 years of age. To be honest, the camera is beautiful, aesthetically, and harkens back to a different era. More on the camera shortly.
The bottom line is that acquiring a Regular 8 movie camera will absolutely be the least expensive part of the proposition of trying your hand at shooting Regular 8 movie film.
Choosing My Film
Given that the camera I purchased was unproven; that I’d never shot Regular 8 before and wasn’t sure about the process; and, that black and white film was far cheaper than color — it became a little easier to choose my films to give all of this a try. Given that I own a projector and wanted to be able to project the resulting film meant that I wanted reversal film, so what I received back was a positive, projectable reel.
Most movie film shot these days (and that includes in Hollywood) is negative film. If you intend to use a solely hybrid workflow (analog shooting, digital exhibition), then obviously shooting negative film is easiest. The FPP sells a range of choices, but I ended-up selecting the Cine8 BW 40 and Cine8 F1 films.
The BW 40 is an ISO 40 film — perfect for early cameras, since it’s closest to the comparatively slow film speeds that were prevalent when these cameras were in their heyday.
The F1 is an ISO 100 film — which still photographers would normally associate with outdoor, daytime use, but which for this application seems would make a good indoor shooting choice. Doubtlessly this film is actually Foma’s ISO 100 black and white reversal film, but frankly, I’m not that interested in what’s under the label.
What one needs to understand is that these cameras generally shoot at a default of 16 frames per second (fps), which is an approximate equivalent shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. This, plus the ISO, is what you use as the basis to meter your scene, and it has the net effect of seeming to “speed-up” films compared to what we’re used to with still photography. As I said above, ISO 100 film would normally be considered and outdoor film, but in the case of Regular 8? Well, you probably don’t have the ability to shut-down the aperture enough to shoot it in bright daylight.
Mini-Review: Kodak Brownie 8mm Movie Camera
From evidence I’m able to find, my Kodak Brownie Movie Camera is one of the first of its design, introduced in 1951. It served as the basis for several design iterations through the 1950s and into the 1960s. I was grateful to Remy Steller, operator of Browniecam.com, as his web site has a great deal of information on all the Brownies, and in addition, he offers scanned manuals which were a godsend in figuring-out how to use the thing.
My particular camera is equipped with an f/2.7 Kodak Cine Ektanon lens, which is a fancy sounding set of words that basically means it has a really cheap, small, and basic fixed-focus lens on the front. That lens is, however, sufficient for most general home movie shooting, but with no ability to focus and no coupled viewfinder to focus through anyhow, you need to be mindful of the distance information provided in the manual, in the form of this easy-to-understand chart:
As you can see, it depicts the closest distance, in feet, that you can be to the subject for each of the available aperture settings. That point, on to infinity, constitutes the range of acceptable focus.
The Brownie Movie Camera has an adjustable aperture that uses Waterhouse stops; there’s a plastic, rotating wheel that can be used to set the aperture’s f-stop from a limited range of options; those are shown in the chart extract above. There is merely a hole in this plastic disc that acts as the lens aperture.
Just like still film photography, and as I described previously, you meter based on the film speed (ISO), and then it’s a simple matter of setting the shutter speed to 1/30 and metering to determine the f-stop value you need to use. Dial that in, and you’re good to go. The smallest aperture in this camera is f/16, which with an effective shutter speed of 1/30th of a second, doesn’t provide very much flexibility in practice I discovered, even with the slow speed of the BW 40 film. As I’ll describe later, I overexposed my film in several scenes on my first roll, and I vaguely recall situations where the meter would have suggested an aperture of f/22 or smaller, and I had no choice but to use the f/16 minimum that was available to me.
In terms of aesthetics, the design of the Brownie Movie Camera is seriously Art Deco, and is actually quite striking in my opinion. It’s also a model of simplicity; there are no batteries, there is no meter, there’s nothing fancy at all. In fact, the camera is powered by a wind-up mechanism that drives the film movement and shutter, and it’s not really much different than the wind-up mechanisms in many toys of that era. You twist a knob, it tightens a spring, and as you shoot, the spring tension loosens to drive the camera. This limits shooting time to roughly 30 seconds, but as you can read in the manual, it suggests keeping each scene to between 12 and 20 seconds for maximum visual interest — and it happens to keep the scene within the 30 second window of a single winding.
Loading film into the Brownie is a bit of an adventure, primarily because it’s hard to know if you got everything seated properly, and secondarily because the keyed spools are sort of a pain. They’re designed the way they are to facilitate the flipping and respooling needed after you shoot the first side of the film, and before you shoot the second side. Having film in an open spool is also nerve-wracking; I was constantly afraid that the spool might lose tension, and my exposed film would loosen and ultimately be fogged by light. To be sure, some care is needed when handling the film, but I’m not sure it’s particularly subject to unspooling. It does, however, mean that you need to make sure you do your loading in subdued light, as there’s little doubt direct sunlight shining on the guts of the Brownie would indeed cause fogging.
My recommendation is to download the manual, read it carefully before you start, and have it handy as you’re working with everything for the first time.
Using the Brownie is simple. Make sure the spring is fully wound-up; meter the scene as described earlier; set the aperture; lift-up both sides of the simple metal-frame sight-style viewfinder; point it at the subject; and, press the button. Release it to stop shooting.
An indicator on the front of the camera will let you know when you’re out of shootable film.
The Brownie Movie Camera is so simple and easy, there’s really not a lot more to say about it.
Accessories
Original accessories mentioned in the owner’s manual are probably not terribly relevant, or easy to find at this point. They included a light bar for indoor shooting with the typical slow speed films of the era; Brownie-branded projectors and projection screens; and a field case.
The manual also mentions lens attachments and filters, and after a great deal of patience, I was able to locate some of them for my camera. The Brownie Movie Camera uses Kodak’s modular system of lens attachments that were common at the time, each designated by a series number, usually in Roman numerals. The filters themselves are basically capsules — filters, each in an unthreaded metal frame — that drop into the filter holder that matches the appropriate series, and whichever is the proper one for the camera.
This camera requires Series IV attachments, and the ability to use the system begins with an adapter ring: Series IV, Number 43 specifically for this camera. This gets confusing, and I erroneously bought a Series IV, Number 44 adapter along with some Series IV filters, only to discover it doesn’t fit my camera. I’m sure that this modular system was simpler for Kodak (and consumers), since they didn’t need to produce threaded filters in every conceivable size, and for every conceivable camera. Notable, it also allowed the use of filters on cameras whose lenses had no threads, by using a press-on adapter ring instead.
In any case, the adapter screws into the threads of the (very) tiny lens barrel. A filter capsule then drops into place, and a front component screws-on to hold the filter in-place.
I was able to secure that adapter, as well as a Series IV lens hood, and several Series IV filters. They include a photoflood filter for shooting daylight-calibrated color films indoors, and the reverse: a daylight filter for shooting tungsten-calibrated color films outdoors. These are really only useful with the 100D (Ektachrome) film, and the 500T (Vision3) film currently offered by the FPP. (The 500T film is so incredibly light-sensitive, however, I can’t see much value in even trying to shoot it outdoors without a pretty powerful ND filter on your camera lens.) If other Vision3 stocks make their way into the FPP’s line-up, these two filters might have broader utility.
Beyond those two, I found a red filter, a UV filter, and one that’s not a filter at all — a Portra +1.
The Portra +1 is a drop-in close-up lens which mounts the same way as the filters, and allows you to get the camera as close as 23 inches from your subject at f/8. You do need to be mindful too of parallax, and the manual has details on how to make appropriate adjustments when your subject is close-in — whether you’re using the Portra add-on lens or not.
Finally, I was able to get a tiny little slip-on lens cap for the camera as well; Kaiser makes a universal one that fits perfectly, in the required (and quite diminutive) 22mm size.
Mini-Review: FPP Processing and Scanning Services
While the FPP is not the only game in town for processing and scanning your Regular 8 movie film, I decided to use them for a number of reasons, including: simplicity of ordering; their native familiarity with their own film stocks and processing needs; the ability to purchase film, processing and scanning packages; and finally, the ability to pool your Regular 8 purchases with other film or darkroom supply purchases. That last one I appreciate, because it ultimately saves a bit on shipping if I need to order still photography film (or other FPP products) at the same time.
The ordering simplicity is appreciated; you can choose what you want online, and order it like any other product in whatever quantities you need. Once you place and have paid for the order, you simply download a PDF, print it, fill out the form, and send it in along with your unprocessed film roll(s), and the USB thumb drive(s) needed to store the scanned movie(s). When finished, you get the film back along with your USB drive containing your scan(s). If you send-in reversal (positive) film, it’s returned slit and spliced into a single roll; negative films, since they’re not projectable, are returned unslit on a core for safekeeping.
I did research other options, including Cinelab in Massachusetts. But the ordering process and required paperwork were far more confusing and seemingly geared to professional filmmakers.
The FPP is clear that turnaround times can be a bit lengthy — 4 to 6 weeks — but it’s not as if using Cinelab would shorten the timeline when I inquired with them. While I don’t know who the FPP outsources its processing to, Cinelab runs ECN-2 process films like Kodak Vision3 on a daily basis, while black and white as well as color reversal (E-6) films are run much less frequently due to lower demand. It seems logical to expect that the FPP’s lab would do likewise, based on the same demand factors.
In practice, the round trip was about 5 weeks in total, and I will be honest: That was an awfully long time to wait to see if my camera even worked. But in many ways, I’m somewhat shocked that it’s even still possible to shoot and process Regular 8, so a little extra lead time is what it is.
I’ll talk about my own errors shooting the film in my wrap-up below, but I do give high marks for FPP’s scanning. I overexposed much of my roll of film, and when I projected the roll (which I did before looking at the scan), a lot of it was hopelessly washed-out. Reviewing the scan, however, it’s clear that they’re able to adjust (within reason) to the poor exposure. Most of my scenes were quite usable in the scanned version despite my shooting errors.
I also liked that the FPP scans the entire imaged width of the film, including the sprockets. It’s a nice touch when watching the raw scanned footage, but it also provides flexibility in editing if you intend to bring your scanned footage into an editing suite like Adobe Premiere Pro; you can crop it — or not — as you see fit.
About the only down side of the FPP’s services is the lack of visibility into status. Once it’s mailed, you’ll first get an e-mail acknowledgement that the materials were received. After that, you won’t really hear anything unless there’s a problem — at least until your order actually ships back to you, when you’re sent a ship notification. But, that too is what it is; the FPP is not exactly an Amazon-scale operation, nor is home movie processing a high-volume business these days. My advice? Be patient and go shoot more film while you wait.
The Results
So, what did the results look like? Well, I’d taken the camera along for a full day-long tour of a few Colorado ghost towns, and decided I’d edit the footage down to those parts of the reel to give readers an idea of the result.
You’ll notice some of the overexposure issues I mentioned previously, although after FPP’s scanning, much of it turned-out pretty well.
This edit contains the full frame as provided by the FPP.
Reflecting on the Experience (and Cost)
Continuing from a point I made above, sadly, I overexposed much of my first roll, and the result was, unfortunately, a bit disappointing here and there. The overexposure was bad enough during projection that I actually wondered at first whether I’d fogged the film, but when I got to one of my few indoor scenes, I discovered that the film was just fine; it was me. You’ll notice it looks far better than the footage above that was shot outdoors.
How I managed to get the exposure so far off the mark in so many areas is beyond me. I did use a meter, I used it in accordance to the research I’d done on the subject, which included a reference in an FPP blog post: by setting the shutter speed on the meter to 1/30 (as I outlined above), and the ISO to 40 to match the film. I did not keep notes on exposure as I do for my still film photography, so I have no record of my thinking, the meter results, or the actual f-stop values I might have used in each scene. When I go to shoot my second roll, I’ll avoid repeating that mistake, and keep a thorough log so there’s a way to learn from the experience.
Additionally, if I’m shooting black and white, I’ll likely use the red filter I mentioned above when shooting outdoors in bright daylight, as it provides 3 stops’ worth of light filtering — which will provide much more flexibility given the limited range of the camera’s aperture. Those three stops will get my Brownie down to the equivalent of a minimum aperture of f/45 — which should be plenty to shoot either the ISO 40 or ISO 100 film in even the brightest outdoor conditions.
In any case, despite the overexposure issues, I have to say that it was great fun acquiring the camera and the film, as well as doing the shooting.
If there’s a down side, it’s cost; film movies are not cheap these days. When I was in my teens, I had a Super 8 movie camera (regrettably, it went missing at some point), and I shot reel upon reel of film with it. The fact that I could as teenager — one in a lower-middle-class household no less — even afford to shoot movie film was a testament to the relatively low cost of both the film, and the processing, at that time. Today, with film being a specialty niche in general, and movie film specifically being an even more limited and more specific niche, prices reflect that.
I know that the FPP is doing what it can to try and keep prices reasonable; Raso has mentioned it on the FPP podcast on multiple occasions, and I know that goes for both still and movie film products. But there are realities that are out of Raso’s, or our personal control; Kodak, Ilford and others continue to raise prices with painful regularity as their own costs increase, and it seems the global COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated that problem, in theory by raising both raw material and logistics costs. (It may also merely be providing cover for price increases that have nothing to do with the pandemic, but that’s speculation on my part.) My personal hope is that as more and more people discover (or rediscover) the joys of film photography in all its dimensions, perhaps we’ll collectively help moderate the size and frequency of those increases. Or, maybe we’ll get lucky; once the pandemic has fully subsided, perhaps the cost dynamics shift once again.
In any case, at the time of this article (December 2020), a single roll of Regular 8 film at the FPP runs anywhere from a very reasonable US$20 or so (for BW 40, or F1) to just over US$60 (color 100D) — and bear in mind, one roll equals less than four minutes of actual screen running-time. The FPP’s processing and scanning bundled service adds an additional US$55 per roll to the overall cost.
It’s worth noting that you can save quite a bit by choosing a “triple bundle” that includes film, processing and scanning all together, which is available for some (but not all) of the Regular 8 films that the FPP offers. For example, the Ektachrome-based color reversal 100D bundle runs US$90 per roll, whereas buying the film separately from the processing and scanning would run about US$115 in total — so buying it all at once is a US$25 savings. (That’s enough of a savings to buy an entire Regular 8 movie camera from eBay.)
In Closing
I applaud Michael Raso and the FPP for working so diligently to carve-out an interesting niche in the overall film market, and in the process, helping keep a nearly-forgotten film format alive and viable. While for me shooting Regular 8 (or any) movie film is primarily a nostalgic curiosity and not something I plan to do with too much regularity, if enough people find value in it and do the same (or more) as I’m doing, we can keep something going that’s more than simply a connection to our past.
As with still film photography, serious shooting of movie film requires more thought, more dedication, more planning, and more work than simply picking-up your smartphone and touching a virtual button on a slab of glass. And what you get in return from the extra effort is something special, something unique, something a bit timeless, and something unusual in the context of our modern, technology-focused world; something worth doing for the creative experience of doing it.
There’s no question I’ll be shooting more Regular 8 film with my vintage Kodak Brownie Movie Camera. But with the opportunity cost of shooting a roll, it’ll remain something for occasional enjoyment, rather than a frequent part of my photographic arsenal.
Happy shooting.
