As Tom knows well, 16mm prints take up a lot of room, not as much as 35mm of course. I reached the point where I have run out of space, the spare room (box room) is difficult to walk in because of piles of features on the floor. I had promised the wife I would stop, but then something unexpected always came along that I had to have. I finally said 'That is definitely it', and a few weeks later David Guest listed a 16mm print of 'Jason and the Argonauts'. A film I saw at the age of about 9 years at the cinema. I had always wanted the Derann print, but at that time I thought it too expensive. When I had to stop collecting I felt disappointed that my collection was incomplete. Then this title comes up, and I was the lucky winner. It's the realisation of a dream. I don't know what film stock it is on, as it's not recorded on the edge, but the colour is as probably good as you would get for a print of this age which is not IB Tech. I also have this on disc, but the print was viewed more times in a fortnight than the disc has been in 10 years.

I've always maintained the very same thing Robert.

We can have the discs of films we like for years and years and for some unexplainable reason watch them no more than twice in that time period.

Find the very same title on film and it gets viewed at least half a dozen times even in its first month of ownership!

The magic of real film.

very true about the space Robert, i am only very to have all of the lower ground floor here but thinking about the future where one day we will almost certainly have to downsize, this is the reason why i have to limit the collection, plus i want to be able to view the films at least once a year in between all the super 8. I no longer see any point in collecting just for the sake of it, you potentially end up with films you dont remember having and rarely watch most titles.
That was a great purchase from David there Robert, thats also one of our favourites to own, the colour on your print looks great for that age of film you lucky boy
I listed a small of wants on the other channel, i will put it up here later but at the end of the day so far this year, i feel we have done OK on 16, for us its just the fact that everything you buy has a perfect sharp image, (even with a few splices or light lines), i was becoming a bit bemused about spending on 8 only to find its not quite pin sharp or there's fade creeping in and the really desirable titles are just about all becoming ridiculous in price, you have to be realistic in a hobby.

Occasionally I have seen modern printed films on 8 less sharp than they perhaps they ought to have been or for sure, could have been.

I found Gigi to be one such title, but only when viewed in scope.
I guess this must have been due to the particular negative obtained by Derann as they always used HQ labs in this era.
Not seen it happen too often, but for sure at times on odd occasions.

On 70's and earlier prints, much seems to depend on the distributor, stock chosen to print upon and labs used to do the printing.
For these reasons I have found far more variations in these type of films plus a far higher visible grain content on screen.
I'd imagine even though 16mm films similarly were not are their peak for stock quality in this earlier era, they would look far superior to those projected on 8 from those same stocks.
Things were not so different between the two resulting images once stocks improved drastically in the mid 80's.

Even films with a reputation for not being as good for sharpness as they ought to be on 8 like The Little Mermaid for example, I couldn't find anything to complain about, at least not on the print that I was fortunate to find anyhow.

I always thought those American Columbia and 20th century fox 400s were 99% pin sharp, and the sound quality was always nice and clear with decent bass. Unfortunatly at that time, (Deranns pre 80s), aside Walton, a huge amount of films produced here was stuff like Mountain films, while they did do some good items, they also did a lot of crap with either soft or grainy images and often with poor sound. The amount of films we had to send back is no odds to no one, looking back at those early days it makes wonder why we pursued it all the years we did. Fortunately Walton films had very good image and sound along with a few others but certainly the American produced super 8s were generally very good. Thank goodness better stocks and quality products came along. I remember Derek Simmons writing more than once that the collector demanded better and he was determined to do it.

Walton Films were among the few from the 70's that still remain more than presentable now in colour or in black and white.

They were pretty much in a league of their own from the selection of distributors back then.
It's such a shame they had to call time on it all as early as they did.
Marketing prints and MGM were not bad either for actual print quality but as we see now, very few still remain unfaded whereas many of the Walton prints still look ok.

Some of my own Colombia 400 footers also still look great for print quality, sharpness and colour.

My first Columbia digest was a 400ft B&W western with Tim McCoy and a young John Wayne, from 1932, and I had never seen a print so sharp, with such good sound. I only wish they had made it the complete feature. I did get it later on VHS, and the digest was edited very well, so that you don't really miss much. The only other one I have is a colour print of 'Lawrence of Arabia', which is now totally red.

Tom is right, we did put up with some crap; I've had films out of sync after lab splices, or the contrast is different after a splice; it was very disappointing after you had saved for a month or two to buy it. If you had paid £5 for a wristwatch and found it faulty, you would have returned it, but we were spending between £40 and £60 and keeping less than perfect goods.

I did return one feature to Derann, it was a Hopalong Cassidy western, and was bleached white; I returned it, expecting a replacement, only to get a refund, and the film was not listed again, making me think they were all the same. You wouldn't have thought the labs could have got away with sending out stuff like that.