I was at a flea market in Caddo Valley, Arkansas when my girlfriend Delaney found this old camera. This one is an 8mm camera similar to the Super 8 camera I reviewed some time back. This one is quite a bit older though, dating back to 1958. It is a black and white camera that uses different lenses to get different shots.
Multiple lenses
The lenses actually rotate and are removable with the top lens being the one used for recording There is "Normal", with the lens actually built into the camera and the removable piece just being a shade, "Telephoto" or basically a zoom lens, and "Wide" that gave you a wider shot, or basically zoomed out from normal. Originally you could only shoot black and white video unless you had a special filter, but in later years film was made that could capture in color without a filter.
Filter & f value controls
On the side is a wheel that controls the aperature for different conditions, from "Bright Sun" to "Dark Day" There is a small switch that places a filter in front of the lens, though I can't confirm what they do. There is an "A" and "N" setting, with one website suggesting it is an Amber filter and Normal filter.
Light meter
One unique thing about this camera is that it has a light meter that can guide you to the correct aperture settings, though my camera doesn't seem to work as well, even pointing it directly at the sun only makes the needle move about halfway up. Opening the light meter, it is basically a very old solar cell that generates a small electric current to move a magnet connected to the needle, personally I didn't know they had solar cell technology in the 50s but it was pretty cool!
A wind-up motor
On the side there is a crank that can be stored in the small lower hole. You might have seen older cameras where you crank the handle to actually move the film across the aperature, but this one is actually just to wind up the motor, there is a switch on the front you can see that you just push down to engage the motor. This way you have the proper speed. But winding up the motor doesn't last long, after about 7 seconds the motor starts to slow down, which would give you a fast forward motion on the projector film, so you would have to keep the motor wound up frequently and your shots short.
The viewfinder
This viewfinder helps you get your shots in frame. Each box represents each lens, the yellow box being the Normal lens, the red box being the Telephoto, or zoom, lens, and the entire viewfinder as the Wide shot lens. If you have ever used an old 35mm camera, you know these can be pretty inaccurate but it gives a general idea.
Film!
One cool thing about this camera, is that when I found it, it had film inside! I might have damaged it a little bit by opening, if you expose 8mm film to light before it's processed, you lose the picture forever. I have since stored the film in a sealed box to maybe get it processed later. This camera is very odd in the film it uses, at first I thought it was a 16mm movie camera from the physical size of the film, but it actually uses 16mm film that is flipped over to record double the frames of regular 8mm film. This kind of film was hard to find even during the 60s and 70s, and even harder to get processed.
As far as the film goes, I emailed a local shop that converts 8mm film to digital video, they suggested I send it to California, since the only places that can process 8mm film are in Los Angeles where there are a lot of filmmakers that use 8mm film and cameras today for special effects and art forms. From looking online, just to get the film processed, not even converted to digital, would be about $50 wish shipping, and that's for standard 8mm film. I don't know if they would even be able to do anything with this 16mm size. I'll do some searching, and if I ever decide to get it processed and converted, I'll post whatever is found on the film! Talk about a time capsule...
So first, it has been a while since my last blog, I had to focus on my studies and, well, I haven't got any new retro stuff lately!
Now I want to finish off my blog on the Intellivision ECS. It's actually the 50th anniversary of the BASIC computer language, invented in 1964 as a beginner's programming language that anyone could use. It was the primary software on almost all 80s computers, the most popular version was made by Microsoft. It slowly phased out of use with the introduction of more versatile programming languages, and better computers that didn't require the user to program anything. It's descendant still used today is Visual Basic.
This is all you get!
When you first start the Intellivision with the ECS, you get a choice to run the game cartridge, use the music keyboard, or run BASIC. If you click basic, the above picture is what you get. A blinking box, no Start menu, no launcher, no icons, no mouse, that's it! Just your keyboard and a blinking box for $450 (over $1000 in 2014!). And my god, look at the color! Black text on puke green background...who knows why they chose this color scheme.
The real power lied in writing and loading programs. The Intellivision loads and saves programs to cassette tapes, and you have to type in a command and go through an interesting process to load a program
Loading a program
Loading and saving a program, including the time it takes to line up the cassette tape in the right place, can take from 2-5 minutes, depending on the size of the program. Also, the ECS was actually a very limited and primitive version of BASIC since the ECS itself was the product of a frantic rush to appease a lawsuit. It didn't include as much as a full-blown home computer. By the way, I didn't misspell "Hello," 4 characters is all you have to name a program.
Displaying and running a program
By issuing commands, you can write, view, edit, and run programs Programs are written like this:
10 PRIN "HELLO"
20 PRIN "THIS IS A TEST"
30 PRIN "OF THE ECS"
The BASIC software reads the program in numerical order. You use multiples of ten when first writing the program so that it's easy to add lines later. Say you wanted to clear the screen before the program runs. You could add:
05 CLR
at the end, and it would read it first since 5 is less than 10.
I've done some experimenting with having a modern Windows 8 PC communicate with my old ECS. Obviously there was no networking or internet, so the only way they can communicate is by sending and receiving BASIC code. The videos I've made are of successfully sending a program written on the ECS to my PCS, and of a program generated by my PC being successfully recognized and loaded on the ECS. My goal is to be able to type out a program in a text file (because the ECS keyboard is hard to use, and the software is very primitive and tedious to edit programs), convert it into an audio file the ECS can understand, and load it into the ECS.
You can try writing and running BASIC programs yourself with emulators found on the internet today! It was an easy programming language to use, people could program a way to balance their checkbooks, do math homework, and do other simple tasks that PCs and phones have built in today.
Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll have something new for you soon!
