Shibaden Video Recorders in Australia

[G D Peck]

Just did a search on Shibaden Videos recorders in Australia and found this article about Secondary Schools in South Australia - the following paragraph I thought might interest people.

The next year a more manageable video recorder came on the market. This was a Shibaden recorder, which used open-reel half-inch tape. Croydon bought one late in 1970, shortly before Audio-visual Education Centre (AVEC) announced that it was supplying one Shibaden video recorder free to every secondary school.

Full article is here, this quote is taken from third last paragraph.
www.lythrumpress.com.au/vision/075.html

Does anyone else know anything about this? Was this just in South Australia or countrywide that the free video recorder was offered? I know it's a very slim possibility but could any missing TV whether it be Australian or UK etc have been recorded?

Just thought I might share it with you all.

[Rob Moss]

It's possible that some material was recorded. It's less likely that the tapes would still exist, and even less likely that they'd play, but yes, it isn't impossible.

[Ewan Montague]

Interestingly because of the chemical composition of the tapes the 60's ones last better than the 70's ones. the change in the tape formula in the 70's mean that they are more prone to "sticky tape". I don't know how long the tapes would last in australia but if they were in a stable dry enviroment they could last quite a long time. Eventually they would loose their signal though. Given the right circumstances they could last 50yrs +

just out of interest what is the max life expectancy of safety film either physically or that of the images? in other words when do we call it a day.

[Steven Sigel]

For film there are two issues - the base and the emulsion.

There are two types of commonly used safety film stock bases:

Mylar/Estar based - which in theory should last thousands of years

Acetate based - which is prone to Vinegar syndrome -- acetate prints that were not processed correctly, were 'rejeuventated', or have been stored inappropriately can develop this problem which is basically a chemical breakdown of the cellulose acetate into acetic acid.. When it happens, the prints curl up and disintigrate. Not a pretty sight. HOWEVER, properly proceed and stored acetate prints can certainly last hundreds of years if not more -- I've got prints from the 1920s that are still in great shape

The second issue with film is emulsion -- for B&W this is generally not an issue, but certain types of color film stock (mainly monopack stocks like Eastmancolor) tend to fade over time. IB Technicolor and Kodachrome prints (dye transfer) appear to hold their color perfectly forever (or at least for as long as anyone has been paying attention -- 1930s IB prints still look like they did when they were printed). Low-fade stocks (such as Eastman LPP) which came into wide use in the early 80s (late '82 for LPP) in theory should not fade either -- we only have anecdotal evidence that they've held up for about 30 years now with no serious fading.

Regular Eastmancolor is a disaster - used widely from 1954-1982, this stuff almost always goes red or pink (with some exceptions). Over time it can fade so badly that there's pretty much nothing left but outlines of the image..

FUJI and AGFA color stocks from that era tended to hold up better than Eastman, but still can fade. (Fuji from pre-1975 is awful, afterwards it can often hold up quite well. AGFA is odd, early 70s prints seem pretty good, but later 70s prints are fading. Not really sure why)...

[Charles Norton]

Of course, sadly they stopped doing Kodachrome quite recently. In fact, it's somewhat unique developing process seems to have counted against it in the end, with just that one lab left in Lausanne.

Interestingly (and we really off-topic here), as soon as Kodak stopped their Super 8 Kodachrome cartridges, they introduced a brand new Ektachrome stock to replace it. That's right, in the 21st century, Kodak brings a new Super 8 stock onto the market. Good old Kodak.

[Peter Stirling]

One of Kodak's problems was the fact it had the monopoly, and therefore did just what it wanted, such as the Super 8 cartridge which was not very good IMHO.Small competitors such as the British Ilford company just came and went, while even the mighty Technicolor was swallowed up by them.
Having Technicolor meant they could use the name on Kodak products (Steven S may confirm this ?) So when you see 'Technicolor' on the Mystery Movie series and other Universal shows it is probably dodgy old Eastman film in reality?

However the rich contrast ratio and colours of Technicolor was part of its downfall as early television could not cope with it, so Eastman prints graded for TV was what you saw on TV when a Technicolor musical spectacular was on. If you watch 'The Adventures of Lancelot' TV show you may notice that the colour editions may not be uniform from episode to episode, this I believe was because NBC was asking ITC to send different types/gradings of film to see which worked best on their color TV.

Fuji nearly became a serious rival to Kodak, it had an innovative Super 8 cassette and a revolutionary movie film that was tough,unbreakable and therefore less prone to damage. Kodak had to respond to this with its own Mylar, Estar films.

[Robert Belford]

The Fuji system was called Single 8. The same dimensions as Super 8 but in a B-shaped cassette. I believe it was a polyester base whereas Super 8 was acetate.

There was a Technicolor brand of Super 8 film in the late 1970's. It had a nice distinctive colour to it. If I remember correctly the mailing address was Heathrow airport so it was probably flown abroad and back for processing.

Looks like it was made by Agfa Gevaert:

www.super8data.com/database/film_list/film_technicolor/technicolor_s8_film.htm

The colour was different to the Agfa branded film.

[Steven Sigel]

Technicolor never made super 8 dye-transfer film. They did make some regular 8 dye-transfer prints for disney, but those are few and far between. The technicolor cartridge projector prints were just standard eastmancolor style prints.

There are two common misconceptions people have with regard to Technicolor -- first off, just because something says "color by technicolor" in the titles, DOES NOT mean that a particular print was printed using the IB dye-transfer process. And second, Technicolor labs prints both IB and regular prints for quite some time, and then shifted over to solely printing standard eastmancolor style prints.

Peter - Technicolor was NOT swallowed up by Kodak - it's still an independent company.
Also - the reason that IB printing died out was not related to TV contrast (that was mostly an issue for early B&W TV prints - by the time color came along it was not so much of an issue. I've had dozens of IB TV prints go through my hands) - rather the issue came down to costs. IB printing (which required the creation of matricies for printing) was only cost effective for larger print runs, while Eastmancolor (and the like) was effectively the same cost for however many prints you made.. And in that era (unike in the recent past) they often didn't make that many prints at a time.

[Brian Fretwell]

I'm surprised you say Technicolor never made Super* prints as a couple of Bugs Bunny cartoons on that format have colour fringing like mis-registered IB prints. They were made by Technicolor Italy and had their symbol on the label, later ones were not fringed when printed in England not Italy.

Didn't Carlton buy Technicolor at one time and try to restart IB printing in the USA, ("Titus" being one film done) but the plant was too small for the now increased print runs needed for multiplexes?

[Steven Sigel]

Brian -

They did try to restart IB printing (35mm only) in the late 90s - they did some releases like Godzilla and Apocalypse now, plus reissues of Wizard of OZ, Rear Window and Gone With the Wind (there may be others, but that's what comes to mind). Didn't last very long unfortunately...

Definitely no super 8 IB prints that I'm aware of - but you can tell instantly if a print is IB by looking at it, they are very distinctive if you know what you are looking for.... Do you own these prints? If so, post a scan of some frames and I'll probably be able to tell.. BTW - Technicolor labs did lots of printing on regular stock (and still does to this day), so just having a technicolor labs label on it means nothing.

[Peter Stirling]

thanks Steven.

Robert
The Technicolor Super 8 was not sent the same address as Agfa Super 8. The Technicolor was ent (as you say to an address in heathrow) .while Agfa was sent to Merton Park. When Super 8 died out, Agfa sold up and its premises actually became the studio home of 'The Bill'
I think?.
So maybe Super 8 Technicolor was a seperate entity to Agfa? It certainly had a distinctive look from any other Super 8 if I remember correctly. It was also about the same price, so doubt if it had any traditional Technicolor processes. ie IB.

[Steven Sigel]

Peter - are you talking about processing labs? If so, then it would be impossible for it to be IB. IB required that Cyan, Magenta and Yellow matrices (basically raised stock with hills and valleys) be created and then used as a template to transfer each color to the film -- it was a printing only mechanism - the negatives from which the matrices were made were originally three separate strips of B&W negative that ran through the camera. This proved to be far too complex, so they started using standard mono-pack negatives and creating the separations as part of the process to make matrices.

I'm not sure what kind of stock they processed, but it would not have been IB ...

Note: just to update - I did some checking and apparently for a very short time around 1968, Technicolor did prints some super 8 IB dye transfer prints, but, they were optical track prints (and would have had the distinctive gray soundtrack that IB prints have) and there were not many made.

[Peter Stirling]

Dec 9, 2011 2:32:19 GMT Steven Sigel said:

Peter - are you talking about processing labs? If so, then it would be impossible for it to be IB. IB required that Cyan, Magenta and Yellow matrices (basically raised stock with hills and valleys) be created and then used as a template to transfer each color to the film -- it was a printing only mechanism - the negatives from which the matrices were made were originally three separate strips of B&W negative that ran through the camera. This proved to be far too complex, so they started using standard mono-pack negatives and creating the separations as part of the process to make matrices.

I'm not sure what kind of stock they processed, but it would not have been IB ...

Note: just to update - I did some checking and apparently for a very short time around 1968, Technicolor did prints some super 8 IB dye transfer prints, but, they were optical track prints (and would have had the distinctive gray soundtrack that IB prints have) and there were not many made.

Steven- In the UK they were a similar price to other Super 8 stock and infact undercut Kodakchrome, so as you imply it must have been 'ordinary' film stock as I doubt they could have sold it for that price being 'real' Technicolor'. However I do not believe they were something Agfa were doing as a sideline as Technicolor super 8 really did look different to everything else

[Ian Watlington]

Dec 5, 2011 22:25:55 GMT Charles Norton said:

Of course, sadly they stopped doing Kodachrome quite recently. In fact, it's somewhat unique developing process seems to have counted against it in the end, with just that one lab left in Lausanne.

Lausanne stopped processing in 2006... after that the only place in the world processing Kodachrome was Dwayne's Photo in Kansas, but you could send your prepaid film to Lausanne and they would forward it to the USA at no extra charge... the last day that Dwayne's would accept Kodachrome for processing was 30th December 2010.

[Robert Belford]

I'm not sure how many reels I have of Technicolor Super 8. But one is Christmas 1980. Normally I used Agfa which I would characterise as tending to have muted colours with a blue tinge much of the time. Technicolor was warmer, slightly pastel colours I would say and a more pleasant balance.

I can't remember where I bought it from. I have a vague memory that perhaps it was mail order and I bought several rolls.

Agfa 50ft silent cost about £2.75 a roll in the late 1970's.

I'm sure the name was just a marketing device. I never for one moment thought it would be imbibition Super 8. On the subject of colour fringing on commercial Super 8 prints, perhaps the master was an IB print?

Dec 8, 2011 23:46:59 GMT Peter Stirling said:

thanks Steven.

Robert
The Technicolor Super 8 was not sent the same address as Agfa Super 8. The Technicolor was ent (as you say to an address in heathrow) .while Agfa was sent to Merton Park. When Super 8 died out, Agfa sold up and its premises actually became the studio home of 'The Bill'
I think?.
So maybe Super 8 Technicolor was a seperate entity to Agfa? It certainly had a distinctive look from any other Super 8 if I remember correctly. It was also about the same price, so doubt if it had any traditional Technicolor processes. ie IB.