The days of Super 8mm sound film recording using single-system sound methods for the average Super 8mm filmmaker are now nearly a thing of the past. Aside from some expensive privately made reloading services.....and the highly expensive Beaulieu-Ritter Film & Video 200ft/60m SuperDrive Magazine unit (currently only for Beaulieu 6008 & up models requiring a minor one-time camera conversion to power the mircodrive take up motor in the magazine), the only resort is to use Double-System Sound recording techniques....with their associated complexities. Many can live with these problems and tasks required, as well as associated costs...but the home movie maker and low budget person requires something a bit more affordable. Optical sound in the Super 8mm format has existed only for release prints......many which were made by the "In-Flight" company for airliners prior to the advent of videotaped movies for air travel passengers. There was never a camera made for recording live sound optically when the film is exposed.

My idea is to convert an existing magnetic sound Super 8mm camera to optical sound will using the earlier (older) principal of "variable density optical sound". The newer version used for years now...is "variable area optical sound" and it requires a galvonometer movement to created the changes....which would be Extremely difficult to install in a conventional Super 8 sound camera due to lack of space....it would require complete rebuilding of the camera, and installing a large lower unit to accommodate this mechanism.....and there's other difficulties. Variable area was invented since it serves the needs of the professional industry so well....and maintains it's audio quality thru the necessary several generations that film goes thru until it's release prints are made. Variable density is best where it's only kept on the original or perhaps one or two copies...and it works BEST with Kodachrome film according to Auricon, inventers of modern and early optical sound equipment.

Most any Super 8mm sound projector could easily be retrofitted for optical sound (although there are about a dozen brands of optical sound Super 8mm projectors made...and you can find them if one hunts for them), using parts from broken or worn out 16mm school projectors....since it's basically fitting a controlled constant light source with a photocell receptor in the correct position...and wiring that into the amplifier system...with the necessary pre-amp for optical sound.

Possible cameras for consideration would be larger bodied Super 8 sound cameras such as those made by Chinon. Once a successful conversion prototype can be worked out....it may be possibly to convert most any Super 8 magnetic sound camera.....although.....having sufficient space in the sound head area is very important. There has to be enough room to adjust the film loop gap to the Super 8 optical sound standard of the audio preceeding the picture by 20-22 frames. Adjusting this accuracy, as well as installing a variable density lamp with shielding to protect the picture area from light spillage, and pre-amping the circuitry to light the lamp to the correct useable illumination will be paramount in the success of such a conversion. It may be possible to build to set type units which can be easily installed in various cameras.

Another major consideration for this type of project is that the Super 8 Sound cartridge will have to be used. Kodak has discontinued selling empties and they are no longer available. This means recycling good used ones, as I have done for magnetic film stock reloading services in the past, or having cartridges manufactured by a plastics injection mold company. The latter is highly cost prohibitive unless this were to be a substantially large operation with lots of sufficient interest. I feel the best alternative is to continue using good used cartridges and for either method...reloading magnetic striped film into cartridges or the successful conversion of optical sound.....it is important that as many used cartridges be collected as possible. I am able to reload Kodachrome sound film into silent cartridges for those to be sent to Kodak for processing so that the empty sound cartridge can be saved...as Kodak will not return any empties. The other alternative is to send Super 8 Kodachrome Sound film to Fuji TruColor in Arizona (or to D'wayne Labs) and request that they please return the empty cartridges to you, since they will do this, and have done this for me most times when I requested them to.

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