5 responses so far ↓

• 1 anonymous // Oct 19, 2008 at 11:35 am

  Wonderful video. Yup, the BBG is a masterpiece.

  Just wondering: how many families had color-Super 8 cameras in ’58? I know my dad had a B&W handheld that took grainy images.

• 2 Phil // Oct 19, 2008 at 12:16 pm

  One other thing about the BBG. It used to be free!

  Since I’ve been watching Mad Men regularly I’m beginning to have nostalgic feelings for the way we used to dress. This video only increased that nostalgia.

  I know anyone looking at this comment would just consider me an old fogy. I am what I am. Of course you can’t go backwards.

  I wonder if I can get some of the 8MM film I have converted to video as I assume this one was.

• 3 Eric // Oct 19, 2008 at 2:28 pm

  In answer to questions posted in prior postings:

  1) Nobody had a Super 8 camera in 1958: Super 8 wouldn’t come along until the mid-1960s. But regular 8 mm cameras had been around for a number of years. These required the photographer to, mid-way through a 50 foot roll of film, go into a darkened room and flip the spools of film (which apparently was re-packaged 16 mm film) inside the camera before proceeding.

  2) You can have your old 8 mm and Super 8 movies converted to DVDs fairly inexpensively. Google “convert 8 mm film to digital” and you will see there are a number of companies that will do it. Rite Aid and CVS will also provide the service for a bit more than on the internet, though they farm it out — they don’t do it themselves. Remember “GIGO” (garbage in, garbage out): if you started with underexposed, overexposed, faded out or out of focus movies, they won’t look any better on DVD. But at least they’ll be preserved in a form that may be more stable than film. My own experience in converting my dad’s movies was that the old 8mm Kodachromes from the early 1950s were much less faded out than the Super 8s from the 1970s. Added bonus: no leisure suits in the 50s.

• 4 Brenda from Flatbush // Oct 19, 2008 at 7:04 pm

  No track suits …or pierced navels or bare bellies…or baseball caps…or logo t-shirts…or tattoos. What a beauti–I mean, what a sad, repressed era of conformity in those Eisenhower 1950s!

• 5 Andrew Porter // Oct 25, 2008 at 1:35 pm

  As a member of the BBG I go there once a week to watch the changes in the Garden. Right now the trees are starting to change color, autumnal flowers are being planted and others cut down, the cafe is still outside –try the apple crumb pie! — and this weekend is the Great Gourd Festival. Still a wonderful place, and people really don’t dress as informally as Brenda seems to think.