Super 16 — A State-of-the-Art Report

By milling out a 16mm camera aperture plate so that most of the film area ordinarily reserved for the soundtrack becomes available for the picture, one can increase the frame aspect ratio to 1.66 and get what is called the super-16 format. Attempts to demonstrate the feasibility of super 16 date from Mosser's work in 1963 and Ericson's work in 1965. As recently as 1970, super 16 was regarded as experimental, but today it must be described as a complete and proven system. Among the cameras that have been successfully converted to super 16 are the Eclair NPR and ACL, the Bolex and Auricon Cine-Voice cameras, the Arriflex 16B1 and 16SR and the Aaton 7. Some of these come from the factory already converted and some are easily converted by the user. New lenses (especially a new Canon f/2 zoom lens), improved film stocks, suppliers who now sell and rent all kinds of super-16 equipment and laboratories that can provide high-quality processing, printing, and blowups of super-16 film — all of these also played a part in the evolution of an accepted super-16 format.

Print ISSN

0361-4573

Published

1973-06

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/J08857