An Artist Brought a Broken Canon Super 8 Camera Back to Life as a 4K Video Camera
Last year, Nico Rahardian Tangara went to a flea market in Sydney, Australia, and found an old, non-functional Canon 514XL-S Super 8 movie camera for just $5. Tangara bought the camera and converted into a working 4Kp60 camcorder using a Raspberry Pi system.
“While the film mechanism was dead, I preserved the original body, lens, trigger, and switches — and rebuilt the inside using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W and Camera Module 3,” Tangara tells PetaPixel.
He adds that he wanted to preserve as many of the camera’s original dials as possible, including the original power switch. But he did make some tweaks. For example, he repurposed a camera switch to toggle between “indoor and outdoor settings,” enabling him to control the Raspberry Pi Camera Module’s white balance.
The camera runs on the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS, which Tangara says is “efficient and stable.”
While some of the build process was not overly complicated, there were nonetheless difficulties.
“The most challenging part of the build was achieving proper focus,” he explains. “Just a one millimeter difference between the sensor and the lens could throw the entire image out of focus. This step took a fair amount of trial and error to get right.”
He originally used the Raspberry Pi Camera Module 1, which “matched the [desired] retro aesthetic nicely.” However, this camera module failed to deliver a cinematic look, so Tangara upgraded to the newer Pi Camera Module 3.
The Canon 514XL-S’s original motor — the cause of the iconic Super 8 sound — was faulty and needed to be removed. Not to be deterred, Nico added a low-frequency buzzer inside the camera so that when recording is active, viewers can hear “a subtle nod to the camera’s heritage.”
Much like how people used Super 8 cameras in decades past, Nico Tangara says he will use his revamped digital camera to capture the growth of his family through a nostalgic lens.
Nico Tangara is an award-winning advertising creative based in Singapore. The digital Super 8 is not his first Raspberry Pi-based camera project. He also created the Digitally Analog Polaroid Camera that combines digital and analog technology in a 3D-printed shell.
Image credits: Nico Rahardian Tangara
