It was a cold winter's day back in 1965 when Kodak gave their first ever public demonstration of the Super 8 format in front of an eager audience of the Royal Photographic Society. The presentation was conducted by a Mr. C.C. Nicholson from Kodak's Industrial & Professional Sales division. The camera was a Kodak 'Instamatic' and cost around £25 when it arrived in the UK in October 1965. The film was Kodachrome Type A.

32 years later and you can still walk into a second-hand camera shop and find a Kodak Instamatic Super 8 camera for around £25, and you can still buy exactly the same Kodachrome Type A film cartridge to go with it. But the most amazing thing is that the footage you capture today will still have a texture and colour that make it look like it was shot way back in 1965. So just how did Kodak manage to create a moving image format that so vividly characterised the way we remember a generation?

Super 8 was marketed as the new idiot-proof way to film moving images of your family and friends. Gone were the days of lacing up those tricky Double 8 spools, now shooting cine film was as easy as taking still photos. All you had to do was pop the film cartridge into the camera, ...

Full article published in Filmwaves - Issue 2, November 1997. Subscribe now!