8mm

Someday soon, (well, not too soon) I want to be able to develop 10ft

strips of Super 8 film.

 

I will probably start with Tri-X, and at least at first as a negative, until

I get used to it. Is there a good way to do this?

 

Eventually I might try some E6, though I am not so excited about

that as I could be. (And might have been some years ago.)

Here's a article on it, tho' it cold say more about the lengths... My Process: Developing Movie Film at Home!

 

For longer lengths, there were frame wheels for winding the film around, but for 3m or so, I'd guess you could just use a tub and lots of agitation.

 

from a post at Developing 8mm movie film

 

There are three common ways for home development:

 

1) in a bucket, with the film loose;

 

2) in a Morse rewind tank (what we used for the workshops); and

 

3) in a 'Russian Tank' - a spiral tank that can hold either 33 ft or 50 ft of film. (what I used at home)

I suspect that an actual tank will cost more than I want to pay.

 

I have wondered about splicing some together and sending it in a

Super 8 cartridge. (Not having done much film splicing, and especially

not in the dark.)

 

Here is what the camera looks like:

 

cineroc - Google Search

 

 

It uses 10.5 foot strips in a special custom film cartridge.

 

It seems that Tri-X reversal, which presumably can also be processed as a negative, is available.

I am not sure of the status of Ektachrome in Super 8.

Many years ago I developed regular 8 film (25 ' lengths, 16 mm wide) in a plastic tank with a spiral on the bottom and a flat plate on top, though I can't remember what the brand was. It worked well enough for B&W reversal film (we re-exposed the film to light part way through the process), although the fun part was splitting the 25' length in half after the film was dry without getting anything on the floor... As for splicing, if I had to do this in the dark I would look for a guillotine tape splicer, although you would have to make sure that a commercial processor wasn't doing any ultrasonic cleaning along the way since that would remove the tape splices. Cement splices will last longer if done properly but require removing the emulsion from one piece of film which can be tricky even in good light. Film cement is also notoriously short lived--the solvent that creates the weld evaporates quickly and splices fall apart the next day even though they seemed fine when you made them. I think you might have problems with a lab if you told them that you had splice short lengths together--the last thing they want is to have the film break in the middle of a run, potentially ruining other film on the same batch.

There is a new thread discussing Super-8.

 

It seems that Dwayne's does a cartridge for $12 plus S&H.

I now asked them about 10 foot strips.

Will see what they say about it.

 

The film seems to be about $38/cartridge for

either Tri-X or Vision-3. I don't know about

Ektachrome.