A YouTuber named Nick Shirrell decided to break out his vintage 1968 video camera and record a modern track day, dubbing over some old-timey racing commentary. The resulting film makes it feel like modern race cars have somehow travelled back in time. It’s lovely.
The video, which includes lots of footage of a Mercedes 190e 2.6 whose engine has apparently been swapped with a 3.0, is just magnificent:
Nicksabeast (Nick Shirrell’s apparent Reddit handle) says he used Kodak 50D and 200T film in a Canon 1218 Super 8, which is a 12x zoom camera that came to market in April of 1968, and which Canon describes thusly on its website:
More and more families were enjoying TV around this time. This required lenses for TV cameras to have higher zooming ratios for more powerful zooming and close-up effects.
Canon also developed high-zoom TV lenses and started development of a 12x zoom lens to introduce the attractiveness of high magnification zooming to the home movie world. Automatic design using a computer reached the level for actual design work around this time, and Canon used it for the first time for development of this lens.
This new technology could achieve a compact and comparatively affordable 12x f/1.8 zoom lens with 19 elements in 13 groups for 8mm movie cameras. A “multi-layer coating” was applied for the first time on an 8mm movie lens, and it could supply high-contrast images.
The body was based on the Zoom 518, but two AA batteries and a mercury cell compartment were added at the side of the die-cast exterior. A detachable grip was also available.
This modern footage from a 1968 camera has convinced me that maybe, just maybe, life wasn’t actually more grainy in 1968 than it is today. It’s got me wondering if maybe, just maybe, life wasn’t mostly black and white before World War II.