Tag: Super 8

Super 8, introduced in 1965 by Kodak as a format accessible to everybody for its low costs and ease of use, is right now experiencing a huge revival: not only in its actual analog form, but also through its many digital imitations.

With Camer8 (formerly Super 8), Booom! intended to bring to iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad the authentic feel of old Super 8 home movies.

Main Features

• Show video up to HD resolution;
• Two filters with three intensity levels for each (light, medium, heavy);
• Recording limit on/off;
• 12 or 18 FPS.

Appotography Opinion

Camer8 lets you process videos taken from within the app — not external videos. Before recording your video, you have to choose among 12 or 18 FPS (Frames Per Second, the number of still frames displayed per second). You can set either of those as a default from your device settings. In general, given the phenomenon of persistence of vision in relation to human mind, the briefer the interval between still images, the smoother the perceived movement. Original Super 8 worked at 18 FPS; the most widely used standard for film is 24 FPS, although today there are many other popular formats (25, 30, etc.).

To record a video, you either keep the trigger button pressed or you tap on the latch, which will keep the trigger pressed in your stead. In both cases, a large viewfinder is brought up and you have a clear view of what you’re actually recording. You have a default time limit of sixty seconds per recording session, which is a lot better than the previous twenty-second limit of the first releases of Camer8; if it weren’t enough, this can be disabled or changed from Settings. Enabling recording time restrictions can be seen as a way to bring back the limitations of the original medium, although Super 8 allowed a much longer continuous filming time (a little more than three minutes per reel).

The recorded material is sent right away to the Camer8 Process Lab, a gallery where all unprocessed videos are stored. The filters add a colored layer of a warm golden color or of a cobalt blue over the clips, other than some dirt, scratches and dark framing. The intensity of the filters varies a little depending on whether you choose light, medium or heavy processing. Overall, the filters are quite good. You can filter the same video clip over and over, choosing warm or cold effect and different intensity every time. Rendering times are perfectly in the norm; to make things easier you can add to the processing queue several items at once — in this case, be careful because the app may crash if too many items are added. Processed videos are saved directly to your Camera Roll.

Compared to other video processing apps in the same league, Camer8 lacks some useful features, especially in the sharing department and, from my experience,  it’s also crash-prone. The effects, however good, are not as eye-catching as the ones of this app’s direct competitor, iSupr8. Still, Camer8 is a fairly decent app and a valuable addition to your collection, especially after the last update which fixed some of its major issues.

Overall

Name: Camer8
Developer: Booom!
Compatibility: iPhone 3GS-4, iPod Touch, iPad 2. iOS 4.1 or later.
Price: £0.59||$0.99||€0.79
Vote: 4/5