Super 8: before you blame the camera

Before you send a Super 8 camera for repair, rule out three things that can imitate a fault on almost any model: tired batteries, a cartridge that will not run, and a meter reading a film it was never built to read. Take them in that order. What is true of one particular camera is on its own page under the models.

The batteries

Fit a fresh set of cells before you test anything else, because tired cells can imitate many other faults. How many a camera takes, and of what kind, differs from model to model. The Braun Nizo 801, for example, takes six AA cells for the motor and two separate button cells for the light meter. The model page says which.

Use fresh alkaline cells. Rechargeables are not new to these cameras: Braun, for one, sold a nickel-cadmium pack for its Nizos. But a nickel-metal-hydride cell is rated at 1.2 volts against an alkaline's 1.5, so a full set gives noticeably less voltage than a set of alkalines, and a battery check built for alkalines may read it as flat. Ordinary nickel-metal-hydride cells also lose charge sitting in a drawer, fastest in the first day. If you want rechargeables anyway, use low-self-discharge cells, which keep most of their charge for a year, and charge them shortly before you shoot.

A camera's battery check tells you about the cells, not the meter: a camera that passes it can still have a meter that reads wrong. Never mix old and new cells, or two chemistries, in one camera, and take them out when the camera goes away: a leaking cell can ruin the contacts of a working camera.

Mercury meter cells

Some older cameras power the meter from 1.35 volt mercury cells. Those were withdrawn from sale in Europe and the US in the 1990s. A 1.5 volt alkaline or silver-oxide cell of the same size fits and runs the meter, but on many cameras it reads the light wrong, and an alkaline's voltage also falls as it drains. Zinc-air cells, at about 1.4 volts, or a voltage-reducing adapter get closer to the original, though zinc-air cells dry out within months once opened.

The cartridge

Cartridges do jam, and it is not always the camera.

The test is quick. Take the cartridge out, mark the film through the front window with a permanent pen, put it back, run the camera for two or three seconds, and take it out again. If the mark has moved on, the film is moving. Then swap: a different cartridge in the same camera, or the same cartridge in another camera. If one cartridge fails and others run, suspect the cartridge; if every cartridge fails, suspect the camera.

If it jams, do not open the cartridge: you fog the film and destroy the evidence. Send it to the lab, which can open it in darkness and process what was shot. Kodak runs a feedback form for Super 8 cartridges.

One explanation you may read is worth correcting: that Vision3 stocks jam because their base is thicker, having been designed for 16mm and 35mm. Kodak's own technical data for VISION3 500T covers 5219 and 7219 in one sheet, gives an acetate base and publishes no base thickness for any gauge. Jams are real; that explanation for them is not supported.

The notches

A cartridge tells the camera its film speed by a notch cut in its side, and the faster the film, the longer the notch. A camera reads only as far as its sensing pin reaches, so it settles on the fastest speed it can detect and meters for that. The standard notch table jumps from 400 to 640 for tungsten film, with nothing for 500: Pro8mm lists its 500 ASA stocks on the 400 notch, so a camera that reads 400 meters it at 400, and one that stops lower meters it lower still. If a camera tops out below the film you loaded, every frame is off by the same, predictable amount. That is a limit of the design rather than a fault, and the answer is setting the exposure by hand or asking the lab about a correction in processing.

The orange filter

Most Super 8 cameras carry a built-in orange (85) filter so that tungsten-balanced film can be used in daylight. A tungsten cartridge has a filter notch: the camera's pin drops into it and the filter stays in the light path. A daylight cartridge has no notch, so the pin is pushed in and the filter swings out. A filter that stays in when you load tungsten film is therefore correct. It costs about two thirds of a stop when it is in.

The meter

A needle that takes a moment to settle is normal on older cadmium-sulphide meters, and slowest when you pan from bright to dark. Drift is not normal, but it happens: Pro8mm measured eight used Canon 1014s and found them off by an average of two stops. If the exposure is wrong across a whole roll and the notch reading is right, the meter is where to look.