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Standard 8, Super 8, 16mm & 9.5mm Film Explained:

Standard 8
The standard 8mm film format was developed by the Eastman Kodak company during the Great Depression and released on the market in 1932 to create a home movie format that was less costly than its predecessor 16mm. The film spools contains a 16mm film with twice as many perforations along each edge than normal 16mm film that is only exposed along half of its width. When the film reaches its end in the take-up spool, the camera is opened and the spools in the camera are flipped was swapped (the design of the spool hole ensures that this happens properly). The same film is then exposed along the side of the film left unexposed on the first loading.

During processing, the film is split down the middle, resulting in two lengths of 8mm film, each with a single row of perforations along one edge, hence fitting four times as many frames in the same amount of 16mm film. Because the spool was reversed after filming on one side to allow filming on the other side the format was sometimes called ‘Double 8’. The frame size of regular 8mm is 4.8mm x 3.5mm and 1m film contains 264 pictures. Normally standard 8 was filmed at 16 frames per second whereas better cameras could vary the speed. The common length of film spools allowed filming of about 3 minutes to 4.5 minutes at 12, 15, 16 and 18 frames per second.

Kodak stopped selling standard 8 mm film in the early 1990s but continued to produce the film, which was sold via independent film stores. Several companies buy bulk quantities of 16mm film to make regular 8mm by re-perforating the stock, cutting it into 25 foot (7.6m) lengths, and collecting it into special standard 8 mm spools which they then sell. Re-perforation requires special equipment. Movie cameras, had an upsurge in popularity in the immediate post-war period giving rise to the creation of home movies. Compared to the pre-war models, those cameras were small, light, fairly sophisticated and affordable.

Whist a basic model might have a single fixed aperture/focus lens, a better version might have three or four lenses of differing apertures and focal lengths on a rotating turret. A good quality camera might come with a variety of interchangeable, focusable lenses or possibly even a single zoom lens. In the 1950s and for much of the 1960s these cameras were powered by clockwork motors, again with variations of quality. A basic mechanism might only power the camera for some 30 seconds, while a geared drive camera might work for as long as 75 - 90 seconds (at standard speeds). In 1965, Super-8 film was released and quickly took hold of the amateur market. It featured a slightly better quality image and was easier to use mainly due to a cartridge-loading system which did not require re-loading halfway through.

Sometimes, the improvement was not as apparent, since the film gate in some cheap Super 8 cameras was plastic as was the pressure plate, which was built in to the cartridge, whereas standard 8 cameras often had a permanent metal film gate that better kept the image in focus.

Super 8
The Kodak Super-8 system was by far the most popular format. It was at one point available with a magnetic sound track at the edge of the film but this only made up 5 to 8% of Super-8 sales and was discontinued in the 1990s.

Launched in 1965, Super-8 film comes in plastic light-proof cartridges containing coaxial supply and take-up spools loaded with 50 feet of film. This was sufficient film for 3 minutes and 20 seconds of continuous filming at 18 frames per second for amateur use, for a total of approximately 3600 frames per film cartridge. Kodak proudly point out that the Super-8 plastic cartridge is probably the fastest loading film system ever developed as it can be loaded into the Super-8 camera in less than two seconds without the need to directly thread or even touch the film. The original Super-8 film release was a silent system only. In 1973 a sound on film version was released. The sound film had a magnetic soundtrack and came in larger cartridges than the original so as to accommodate a longer film path. (This was required for smoothing the film movement before it reached the recording head) A second aperture was also needed for the recording head. Sound film was generally filmed at a speed of 18 or 24 frames per second.

16mm
16 mm film refers to a popular, economical gauge of film used in motion pictures. Other common film gauges include 8 mm and 35 mm. 16 mm refers to the width of the negatives. 16 mm film was introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1923 as an inexpensive amateur alternative to the conventional 35 mm film format. Snobishly, during the 1920s the format was often referred to as sub-standard film by the professional industry.

As it was intended for amateur use, for safety reasons 16 mm film was one of the first formats to use acetate safety film as a film base. Kodak never manufactured nitrate film for the format due to the high flammability of the nitrate base. 35 mm did not abandon nitrate until 1952.

The silent 16 mm format was initially aimed at the home enthusiast. The addition of optical sound tracks and, most notably, Kodachrome in 1935, gave an enormous boost to 16 mm sales. The format was used extensively in World War II and there was a huge expansion of 16 mm professional filmmaking companies in the post-war years. Initially as a news-gathering format, the 16 mm format was also used to create programming shot outside the confines of the more rigid television production sets. Thanks to the compact size and lower cost, 16 mm was adopted for use in news reporting, corporate and educational films, and other uses. By contrast, the home movie market gradually switched to even less expensive 8 mm film and Super 8 mm format. Single-perforation film only has perforations on one side of the film. The picture area of regular 16 mm has an aspect ratio close to 1.33, and 16 mm film prints use single-perf film so that there is space for a mono soundtrack where the other perf side would be on the negative.

In Britain much television footage was shot on 16 mm from the 1960s until the 1980s. Some dramas and documentaries were made entirely on 16 mm, notably Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, The Ascent of Man and Life on Earth.

9.5mm
9.5 mm film is an amateur film format that was introduced by Pathé Frères in 1922 as part of the Pathé amateur film system.

It became very popular in Europe over the next few decades. Over 300,000 projectors were produced and sold mainly in France and England, and many commercial features were available in the format. The format uses a single, central perforation (sprocket hole) between each pair of frames. The single hole allowed more of the film to be used for the actual image and in fact the image area is almost the same size as 16 mm film! The perforation in the film is invisible to viewers as the intermittent shutter blanks off the light as the film gets pulled through the gate to the next frame. In most 9.5 mm projectors, the shutter also operated once whilst each frame was stationary in the gate for the purposes of increasing the apparent frame rate.

Not many people appreciate that the width of 9.5 millimeters was chosen because 3 strips of film could be made from one strip of 35 mm film. This was useful when duplicating films because only 1 strip of 35 mm had to be processed. Finally, the sides, which contained the 35 mm sprocket holes, were cut off, the remaining film was cut into 3 strips, and the central sprocket holes added to each new strip.

Notched 9.5 mm film
The projection system also incorporated a way to save film on non-moving titles. A notch in the film was recognised by the projector which would then project the second frame after it for 10 seconds. By this method, 10 seconds of screen time was available for 1 frame of film, rather than the 160 frames required if the film was projected at the normal rate. (The same principle was used by the Agfa Family system of Super 8 camera and projector in 1981.)After the war, the 9.5mm gauge suffered intense competition from Kodak's 8mm film, which was inroduced in 1936. Notwithstanding the poorer resolution of the 8mm frame, which could hold only about a quarter of the information of the 9.5mm or 16mm frame, 8mm was taken up by a wider public and the wonderful name of Pathé began it’s decent.