1970s

Why the 1970s look like this

Super 8 reached its peak in the 1970s. Cameras grew zoom lenses, automatic exposure and, early in the decade, a new class of low-light models. These opened the shutter for longer on each frame, used a very fast lens and came with a faster tungsten-balanced film, so a family could film by lamplight without floodlights. The cost was grain and a softer, flatter picture.

In 1973 sound arrived. A larger cartridge held film with a thin magnetic stripe along one edge, and the camera recorded sound onto it as it filmed, through a microphone on a lead. Many sound cameras could run at 24 frames a second as well as 18. You can hear those cameras in the recordings: a motor whirr under every voice, and the hiss of a narrow stripe of oxide.

In 1977 an instant movie system tried to do for film what instant prints had done for photographs. Its cassette developed in the player in about a minute and a half, but its black-and-white film carried fine red, green and blue filter stripes. The color was made additively, as on the starch-grain plates of the 1900s, and the filters cost so much light that the pictures came out dense and muted. Each cassette ran for roughly two and a half minutes, with no sound. It sold poorly and was withdrawn after a couple of years.

Video was the real change. Portable video went to color during the decade, and home videocassettes arrived in 1975 and 1976. Early home tape kept the color signal at a low resolution, under the brightness, so colors bled sideways, and the picture carried noise and tracking wobble.

For photographs, the 110 pocket cartridge of 1972 put a frame about the size of a fingernail into a slim camera, and labs enlarged it into grainy, soft prints. The same year the integral instant print developed in your hand, a square with a wide bottom border. Prints moved to plastic-coated paper, sometimes with a textured surface. Many color prints of the decade have since lost their cyan and yellow dyes, which leaves a red-magenta picture.

What the camera rebuilds

Saturated Color Super 8 holds an 18 fps cadence in the 24 fps file and renders the brilliant reversal response, warm and dense. Super 8 Sound Cartridge runs at a true 24 fps with a sharper lens and steadier gate. High-Speed Colour Super 8 sits a third of a stop under, with heavy grain, softer focus and paler color. Instant Movie Cassette is grey, dense and soft.

The two tape looks, Portable Colour Video Tape and Early Home Videotape, swap grain for tape noise, color bleeding and tracking wobble. The home cassette adds scan lines and a tear where the heads switch.

In STILL mode, the 126 styles print square with a white border and the 110 and half-frame styles at 4:3. The integral instant has its wide-bottomed frame, and the slides sit in slide mounts. Most color prints add a visible paper texture, strongest on Silk-Textured Print.

The sound is Super 8 Magnetic Sound, the first decade on the dial where the camera itself records the voice. On PERIOD you hear it mono, about 100 Hz to 7.5 kHz, with magnetic hiss, a gentle wow and the camera motor running underneath. SILENT keeps the motor and the hiss.

Shooting tips

• Film by lamplight. High-Speed Colour Super 8 is made for a dim room. Turn off the big light, keep a table lamp, and let the grain come. DEGREE 9 gives more of it.
• Talk to the camera. Super 8 Sound Cartridge with SOUND on PERIOD is the home interview: one person, close, the motor humming under their voice.
• Try the living-room tape. Early Home Videotape suits bright, saturated clothes, which bleed nicely. Push DEGREE to 10 for a tape that has been played many times.
• Shoot one instant. Instant Integral Square or Pack Film Instant Colour in soft daylight, then Tungsten Indoor Orange under a bulb at night.
• Dive. Underwater Blue-Green takes the reds out and leaves blue-green, as deep water did to slide film.

Before this, the 1960s introduced the Super 8 cartridge. Next, the 1980s put the whole video recorder on your shoulder. More on the pipeline in how it works.