Equipment
The last manufacturer to produce Super 8 cameras was the French company Beaulieu. Beaulieu cameras have been the basis for several newer cameras offered by the US based Pro8mm company. Older Super 8 cameras are available from specialized retailers and auction sites such as eBay.
Kodak is the only company currently making Super 8 film stock, including some of their latest Vision 3 color negative stock. One or more other Super 8 specialists (such as Pro8mm, Spectra (both in Los Angeles), Wittner Cinetec (in Hamburg, Germany) and Kahlfilm (in Brühl, Germany) slit raw 35 mm film stock from Fuji, Kodak and ORWO, perforate it, and repackage it in Kodak Super 8 cartridges. Due to Kodak's discontinuation of Kodachrome 40 in 2006, (the one stock that for four decades used to be almost synonymous to Super 8 as a medium itself,) the Super 8 market opened for new stocks and competing film manufacturers. There are now more varieties of Super 8 film available than ever before, but ironically very few retailers still stock Super 8 film, as there is virtually no demand from "ordinary" consumers.
One country where it remained widely available well past the 90s is the UK, where the chain Jessops carried one film: Kodak Ektachrome 64T. Until 2002 it was also available in Boots, a British high-street chain-pharmacy. In 2007 it was reported that Jessops are scaling back their film stocks and will no longer stock Super 8 film.
There were rumours of Super 8 cameras and films being manufactured and sold in North Korea, partly to be found in specialty photography stores in a few Southeast Asian countries, by a company named Kim Chek, and indeed this has been confirmed by North Korean embassies, but the only way to buy such products is to visit those countries.
Read more about this topic: Super 8 Mm Film
Famous quotes containing the word equipment:
“Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment is no more blocking what is instinctive than it is for a man who, muscles or no, chooses not to be a weightlifter.”
—Betty Rollin (b. 1936)
“Why not draft executive and management brains to prepare and produce the equipment the $21-a-month draftee must use and forget this dollar-a-year tommyrot? Would we send an army into the field under a dollar-a-year General who had to be home Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Dr. Scofield’s equipment, which you have just seen, radiated waves direct to Professor Houghland’s laboratory. When these waves came in contact with those the professor’s equipment was radiating, they created the interstellar frequency, which is the death ray.”
—Joseph O’Donnell, and Clifford Sanforth. Arthur Perry (Bela Lugosi)