Istanbul on Super 8

A few years ago, before I had heard of Holgas and lo fi photography, I watched some old super 8 family films my father had shot during our summer holidays in Spain in the early 1970s. I loved the saturated colours and impressionist feel to the super 8 film and decided that I would try to capture images using super 8 film.

Naively I thought that if I could digitise the film, I could then freeze frames and capture single images from them. I then bought a super 8 camera on ebay and a couple of reels of film and was then ready, albeit without realising it, to immerse myself in the world of lo fi.

The camera arrived just in time for me to take it on a short break in Istanbul and I spent the next few days shooting short location shots throughout the city.

When I sent the film for processing I was then told that there is no way of freeze framing digitised film footage to isolate individual frames. This meant that the only option was to scan frames individually which, if anybody has tried it, is a real pain in the derriere!

Anyway these two images were about the best that I produced - all in all my experiment was a failure but the camera was cheap, though processing film is expensive, and one day I will make some short super 8 films if the camera still works. The quality isn't great but these images do mark my beginning of my lo fi career.