This retro camcorder upgrades Super 8 film cameras with modern conveniences

The CS-8 looks consecutive retired of the ‘70s, but captures footage to an SD card, not film. | Image: Camp Snap

Camp Snap, a marque known for its budget-friendly screen-free integer cameras, has announced its archetypal video camera. The caller Camp Snap CS-8’s plan was inspired by the Super 8mm movie cameras released by companies similar Kodak and Canon successful the ‘60s and ‘70s. Its functionality is likewise constricted and streamlined to marque the CS-8 user-friendly, and portion it trades movie banal for an SD card, similar the compact movie cameras from decades ago, it lacks a surface truthful there’s nary contiguous mode to reappraisal the footage you’ve shot.

The CS-8 is presently available for preorder done Camp Snap’s website for $149 (full retail pricing volition beryllium $199) with shipping expected sometime successful mid-September 2025. That’s much than doubly the terms of Camp Snap’s $69.95 integer inactive cameras, but overmuch cheaper than Kodak’s ain Super 8 camera revival which volition acceptable you backmost $5,495. Camp Snap’s CS-8 has a spot much retro charm than Kodak’s, but its capabilities are acold much limited.

A trigger connected the CS-8’s grip is utilized to commencement and halt recording, portion a brace of buttons adjacent the camera’s viewfinder zooms successful and out. There’s a dial for selecting antithetic facet ratios including 16:9 widescreen, 4:3 which much intimately resembles vintage location movies, positive 1:1 and 9:16 for capturing videos destined for societal media. A 2nd dial tin beryllium utilized to activate respective “vintage-inspired filters” specified arsenic faded sepia, grainy analog, and adjacent a achromatic and achromatic effect.

There are nary details connected what the rechargeable CS-8’s artillery beingness is like, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, which tested the camera astatine Disneyland, the camera is susceptible of signaling video astatine up to 4K resolutions, depending connected the facet ratio selected. Analog meters located connected either broadside of the camera show its remaining artillery beingness and signaling capacity, and videos are captured to an included 4GB SD paper which tin clasp astir 5 hours of footage.

That’s much than capable capableness for reshoots if you’re disquieted the moments you captured weren’t arsenic magical arsenic they could be, but the deficiency of a surface means your videos are a implicit enigma until you link the camera (or its SD card) to a machine to offload the footage. Camp Snap is positioning the CS-8 arsenic a mode to rekindle “the magic of filmmaking wherever you enactment successful the infinitesimal and acquisition the astonishment later.” Hopefully it’s each bully surprises.