Would a "Super 135 format" have been successful?

[StanMac]

Kodak’s 828 film yielded a 28mm x 40mm frame, which could be considered a “Super 35” size. It was non-perfed or single perf per frame 35mm film, I think. I have a cute little Pony 828 that would be fun to use but I don’t have the patience to respool 35mm or slit and spool 120 for it.

Stan

 

[MattKing]

Yep - 828 slides.
From Kodachrome shot 57 years ago - and yes that is me in the brown.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Yep - 828 slides.
From Kodachrome shot 57 years ago - and yes that is me in the brown.
View attachment 227167

Do you still have your father's sweater?

 

[MattKing]

Do you still have your father's sweater?

No - that must have gone a long time ago, because I don't have any clear memories of it.

 

[Arklatexian]

Isn't that what we call the 645 format? I always considered it just a bit better than 35mm, but not enough to really keep my attention. I either shot 35mm or 120. The hoarding of silver started in the 70's by the Hunt brothers.

Isn't that what we call the 645 format? I always considered it just a bit better than 35mm, but not enough to really keep my attention. I either shot 35mm or 120. The hoarding of silver started in the 70's by the Hunt brothers.

The Hunt Bros. were attempting to corner the silver market at the time. They did not worry about the U.S. Government dumping silver on to the market. The government did not have enough silver to make a difference. There was an organization in the world who had more silver than any government and they had a surplus of it. That was Eastman Kodak Co. When the Hunts drove the price of silver high enough, Kodak entered the market with their surplus which wiped the Hunt Bros. out. It was said that their sister, who stayed out of the silver market had to bail them out. That is the way we heard the story down here in the oil patch. I don't believe the idea was to hoard but instead own most of the silver in the world so that if anyone needed silver, they had to go the the Hunt Bros to buy it and pay their price. Fortunately it did not work. Their father was too smart to try that but I think he had died by that time. I drank my morning coffee where Mr. H.L. Hunt ate his breakfast in the same coffee shop when he would visit Shreveport. He had oil interests in the area.......Regards!

 

[Arklatexian]

Do you still have your father's sweater?

Kodak made a beautiful camera BEFORE WW2 called the Bantam Special which took 828 film. If had a "fast" lens before fast lenses were "cool". Some of you may have one of these......Regards!

 

[MattKing]

Kodak made a beautiful camera BEFORE WW2 called the Bantam Special which took 828 film. If had a "fast" lens before fast lenses were "cool". Some of you may have one of these......Regards!

The photo I posted was taken with a Kodak Bantam RF - like this:

I have many, many, many Kodachrome slides that were exposed in that camera.
After 828 became less common, Dad switched to 35mm - a Canon Ftb.
The Bantam RF was discarded at some point - Dad wasn't a collector, and I didn't appreciate collecting cameras back then.

 

[AgX]

The Instamatic 126 film was the same width as 35mm, but the image was a square, so about 24x24 mm; one sprocket per frame. Not a bad format, but Kodak didn't include a pressure plate in the cartridge, so it didn't achieve all the might have been possible in the format.

Agfa replied on this by reviving their type Karat in form of the advanced type Rapid.
Here they could have introduced a super-35 format. But with their Rapid cameras the stayed with two sprocket wheels and thus two rows of perforations. This could be reasoned by technical considerations (though for instance Pentacon with similar cameras used only one row). But production logistics might have played a role too.

Maybe industrial processors then employed two-sprocket wheels too. A lot of things were to consider.

And most important the (for the manufacturer) benefital acceptance of the consumer. If the consumer would not care for a few millimeters more image width, why the introducing a new film?
But instead pushing standard DP-35mm film into these new cassettes.

 

[Jim Jones]

Kodak made too many film formats. While 620 film had a slight advantage over 120 in making folding cameras more compact, Kodak also forced photographers who used the magnificent Medalist cameras to use the less appropriate 620 film with its tiny core that tightly curled the film. Kodak wasn't the only company that valued profits over customer service. Univex mandated proprietary film in some cleverly designed and well-built cameras in the 1930s and early 1940s, leaving these cameras impractical for use today.

 

[John51]

The Hunt Bros. were attempting to corner the silver market at the time. They did not worry about the U.S. Government dumping silver on to the market. The government did not have enough silver to make a difference. There was an organization in the world who had more silver than any government and they had a surplus of it. That was Eastman Kodak Co. When the Hunts drove the price of silver high enough, Kodak entered the market with their surplus which wiped the Hunt Bros. out. It was said that their sister, who stayed out of the silver market had to bail them out. That is the way we heard the story down here in the oil patch. I don't believe the idea was to hoard but instead own most of the silver in the world so that if anyone needed silver, they had to go the the Hunt Bros to buy it and pay their price. Fortunately it did not work. Their father was too smart to try that but I think he had died by that time. I drank my morning coffee where Mr. H.L. Hunt ate his breakfast in the same coffee shop when he would visit Shreveport. He had oil interests in the area.......Regards!

I hadn't heard of the Kodak connection to the Hunt brothers but it makes sense.

The story us Brits got was that the family silver got traded for cash and there was so much of it that the Hunts couldn't keep the price up. I remember seeing news clips with jewellers buying so much silver that many had a table outside their shop. Queues of people cashing in. All kinds of antique silver got beaten down with a mallet and dumped in a sack.

 

[PGillin]

Yep - 828 slides.
From Kodachrome shot 57 years ago - and yes that is me in the brown.
View attachment 227167

Jericho Beach?

 

[MattKing]

Jericho Beach?

Yep - or adjacent to it.
Near where my Dad did some of his WWII training, before being posted to the area of the province then known as the Queen Charlottes to serve as an RCAF radio/radio direction finding operator.

 

[alanrockwood]

The Hunt Bros. were attempting to corner the silver market.......Regards!

The silver market? That's peanuts. General Bullmoose attempted to acquire all of the money in the world, and I believe he succeeded too.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

You would need lenses to cover the new format. Even if existing 35mm lenses had enough image circle to cover in principle, they tend to be masked to cover only as much as needed, so you would need lenses masked to the larger format, and designed to be sharp to the corners to take advantage of the greater film area. You would have to be sure the lens mount doesn’t vignette, need a larger viewfinder, larger mirror in an SLR, etc. Might as well go straight to medium format.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

You would need lenses to cover the new format ... need a larger viewfinder, larger mirror in an SLR, etc. Might as well go straight to medium format.

While it's true that new lenses and cameras would be needed, that's exactly what happened with 126, 110, disc, and APS. One might claim, possibly cynically, that the introduction of new formats was partly done to boost sales of new equipment and monthly magazines.

Part of my Super 135 idea was that it would've occurred near to the transition of 8mm to Super 8. This was a time when I don't think many amateurs could afford medium format and the Family Snapshooter probably didn't know about medium format (other than 127). My thoughts are that this Super 135 would be devised to totally supplant 35mm.

 

[wahiba]

Probably not in recent times. Maybe in the 1930s. In practise a single notch per default frame size provides the mechanical ability to count and lock in place. However I suspect in the 1930s most 35m film was used for movie making. Remember then photography was relatively much more expensive than it is now.

There was possibly a point post WW2 when it might have been possible but really the quality of film improved and 120 covered the market for larger frames.

In the cine world super 8 probably succeeded as dual gauge projectors showing original 8 were possible.

Maybe if APS had used 35mm film it could have achieved this idea. Going for narrower film was a mistake.

 

[AgX]

There was possibly a point post WW2 when it might have been possible but really the quality of film improved and 120 covered the market for larger frames.

Post WWII the economical situation was very different between Europe and the USA. Both markets then need to be looked upon differently.

 

[Bill Burk]

I would worry that the developing artifacts like surge marks that we all get... would ruin too many Super 35 images .