Can any videocam still shoot in 4:3 aspect ratio?

[Tuppy]

I’m planning to digitize a lot of old family 8mm film movies that were shot fifty years and more ago, and all of these old movies are at the “standard” 4:3 aspect ratio. I’ll be projecting the movies onto a screen and recording them with a video camera.

The trouble is that I can’t find a videocam that is able to shoot at 4:3 anymore. It seems that the new standard is 16:9 widescreen, and I haven’t seen or heard of one yet that offers 4:3 as an option. I had hoped that maybe an older video camera bought off Ebay might be able to do 4:3, but after a lot of looking I haven’t run across one yet. They all shoot in widescreen and nothing else.

The alternative of course is to shoot the old movies in widescreen and then crop the black sidebars off, but instead of doing that I’d rather just shoot them in 4:3 to begin with.

I still have a couple of elderly camcorders of my own that shoot 4:3, but they record to tape instead of memory cards, and I really don't want to go back to the hassles of getting video recordings off tape.

The old movies that I’ll be recording are all pretty fuzzy, if not downright blurry, by modern standards, so high definition recording is not required, and 1440 X 1080, or 1920 X 1440 would work fine. Anything 4:3.

So my question is, does anyone know of a camcorder that records to SD cards and can shoot at the 4:3 aspect ratio?

Thanks for any help.

Tom

 

[ferrarr]

Why not digitize them an easier way?

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[MacInWin]

In addition to Bob's suggestion, a major concern for your approach is the difference in frame rate between the projected image and the digital camera causing the video to have dropouts when the projector shutter is closed to move the film. Converters take that into account. Also, although the human eye will see the image brightly when projected, the camera won't be as reactive and the digital image may end up dark and washed out.

 

[Tuppy]

Why not digitize them an easier way?

5 Best 8mm Film Digital Converters to Buy in 2025

Convert your 8mm negative film to digital format with these 5 best 8mm film digital converters. Convert to MP4 or still images JPEG anytime.

www.scanplify.com

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I have one of those Wolverine frame-by-frame digitizers, and I've been processing a lot of 8mm silent movies with it, but it can't do sound movies. The only way I know of to digitize sound movies, and capture the sound, is to project the movies onto something and record them with a camcorder. By connecting the headphone jack of the projector to the audio input of the camcorder with an audio cable, you get the sound along with the movie.

I've bought off Ebay one of those "telecine" boxes that has one port to project movies into and another port to record them through, using mirrors inside the box. Today I also bought Ebay, a completely rebuilt Bell & Howell projector to project the movies into the box, and it should arrive in a week or so. I'll find out how well that method works then.

But I did want to record these old movies with a camera that uses the same format as the movies themselves, as far as aspect ratio. But apparently manufacturers decided several years ago to abandon 4:3 altogether and universally adopt 16:9 widescreen, and I haven't even been able to find a camcorder that offers 4:3 as an option. I have a high-end Olympus DSLR that takes all its still pictures in 4:3 format, but when you switch it to video, widescreen is all it will do. Frustrating.

 

[Tuppy]

In addition to Bob's suggestion, a major concern for your approach is the difference in frame rate between the projected image and the digital camera causing the video to have dropouts when the projector shutter is closed to move the film. Converters take that into account. Also, although the human eye will see the image brightly when projected, the camera won't be as reactive and the digital image may end up dark and washed out.

The Bell and Howell projector that I bought off Ebay is one of the rare ones with a variable speed control, a rheostat, that is supposed to allow you to adjust the speed of the movie to eliminate or at least minimize the flickering or pulsing so often seen in digitized 8mm movies. I'll find out how well that works when I get the projector and try it out next week.

As to brightness and darkness, I'll also find out how much of a problem that is when I try it. Most people using this method on YouTube seem to get pretty decent results and I hope I can too.

Meanwhile, since I can't find a camcorder that shoots in the 4:3 format and records to memory cards, I've dug out my old Panasonic PV-GS400 that does shoot in a 4:3 ratio, but it records to tape. I'll miss the convenience of recording to SD cards, and will have to replay the tapes from the camera into the computer to get them into my Mac's editing program (Final Cut 7), but that seems to be the only way to shoot the movies with the correct aspect ratio, since apparently no modern camcorders can do 4:3.

Final Cut would allow me to crop the black edges off of a widescreen image, but for some reason the cropped video renders more slowly and more often than if I feed it straight 4:3, so the slowness of getting the images off the tape is offset by speedier post processing.

 

[Rod]

Tuppy, it's obvious that you have a lot of personal experience/resources/devices and the willingness to do the job at hand but if these videos are valuable to you, and it sounds like they are, might it not be worth getting them professionally digitised? At least get a quote and see if it's worth it.

 

[ferrarr]

While looking around, I came across this site, https://venturaimages.com/. Did you check it out? They're in Canada, but they have the right equipment. But it's expensive.

 

[MacInWin]

The Bell and Howell projector that I bought off Ebay is one of the rare ones with a variable speed control, a rheostat, that is supposed to allow you to adjust the speed of the movie to eliminate or at least minimize the flickering or pulsing so often seen in digitized 8mm movies.

I think you said this film had sound. Adjusting the film speed may throw off the sound.

 

[Tuppy]

Tuppy, it's obvious that you have a lot of personal experience/resources/devices and the willingness to do the job at hand but if these videos are valuable to you, and it sounds like they are, might it not be worth getting them professionally digitised? At least get a quote and see if it's worth it.

I think you said this film had sound. Adjusting the film speed may throw off the sound.

Thanks for the comment. Yes, I was thinking about what might happen to the sound when the film speed is changed. Speed won't matter with the films that are silent, and I can adjust their speed for the most flicker-free recording, but the ones that have sound will be a different matter. They might have high or low pitched sound if the speed is changed.

I wonder, if I record the movies at an unnatural speed to reduce flicker, and get high or low pitched sound as a result, will the sound return to normal when I return the speed to normal during editing? I guess I'll find out next week when the projector arrives and I start digitizing.

Maybe I could the projector at a normal speed, to keep the sound normal, and try to adjust the shutter speed of the camcorder to get the best visual results. In fact I saw somebody on YouTube doing just that, and it seemed to cut the flickering down to a bare minimum. Guess that's another thing I'll find out next week.

 

[Tuppy]

Tuppy, it's obvious that you have a lot of personal experience/resources/devices and the willingness to do the job at hand but if these videos are valuable to you, and it sounds like they are, might it not be worth getting them professionally digitised? At least get a quote and see if it's worth it.

Yes, I've thought about getting the digitizing done professionally, and even picked out a good studio that could do it, but they want almost a dollar a foot to do the job, and since I have quite a few six-hundred-foot rolls of film, that could get pretty expensive. And I was told that it would typically take four months to get back a digitized reel of film.

And on top of spending thousands of dollars and waiting for months, I'd have to trust my irreplaceable films to the U.S. mail, or some other means of shipping, and risk damage or loss.

So, before I go that route, I thought I'd try the do-it-yourself way first. If my method of projecting movies into a transfer box and recording them with a camcorder doesn't produce good results, there is a fellow on Ebay going by the name "focuskye" who builds and sells custom movie digitizing machines based on a certain model of Elmo projector shooting straight into the lens of an attached Canon Vixia camcorder, through a sort of elbow arrangement that must have mirrors in it.

It's a closed system that apparently gives excellent results, judging from his 100 percent feedback rating and buyer comments, and I could buy one of his machines for a couple thousand dollars rather than give more than much that to a pro digitizing company, and then sell the machine when I'm done with it. I'll see if I can attach a picture of his rig to this message.