Super8 Film Transfer and Aspect Ratio

L

littlebanana

Hi! I recently had several rolls of Super8 film transferred to digital. Up until now, I had only ever had a standard definition transfer done on Super8 footage, since I was too cheap to pay for high quality. This time, someone else was footing the bill, so I decided to go with a high def transfer.

In the past, the standard definition transfers I had done preserved the general aspect ratio of the film--that is, it was a pretty square frame that was pillarboxed in my editing program. With this high def transfer however, they have instead cropped my frame so that it is rectangular, and pillarboxed it as well.

My question is: is this cropping just standard procedure when it comes to high definition Super8 transfers? Should I have just known and assumed they would do this? I'm kind of upset that I didn't, seeing as I've lost a good chunk of my image, and definitely was not composing my frames while shooting with this new sizing in mind. Do I have reason to be pissed, or is this just my lack of expertise biting me in the ass?

Thanks for any insight!
 
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HD is by its very nature 16:9, so they either would have had to crop top and bottom or left black on the sides. They probably just assumed you would not want black on the sides, though a respectable transfer facility really should have consulted with you about framing before they did the job.
 
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Zensteve said:
Did you actually tell the lab, doing the transfer, just how you wanted your framing? :hmm:
Click to expand...

I didn't, because it honestly didn't occur to me that they would crop it. I had seen HQ Super8 movies online that had the full frame, and like I said the only other times I've had Super8 transferred it has come back as a full frame. They didn't mention anything about the cropping at any point.
 
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I agree the Lab should of asked which way you wanted to go.12 x 9 or 16 x 9 (1 x 1.37 or 1x 1.78)
If you are still shooting super 8 consider having the gate machined out 20% to the right and then you can shoot 16 x 9 without having any of the image cropped.
Kodak dosen't make sound film anymore so can put the wasted space into more picture area.This is how standard 16mm went as well and became super 16.Hope that helps

Cheers Rick
 
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