Question about 8mm film

[madhombre]

Please forgive my ignorance on this subject but I was wondering.

I know (as stated often) that each reel gives you 3-3.5 mins of film ish

But if these are just reels of tape couldn't they have made longer ones? Even with home movies I would think thats a short amount of time to like capture you child's first bike go at riding a bike etc.

Also why did nobody try to double up on their own? Thinking that could be like old camera film, you cant expose it to sunlight which you would obviously have to do.

Can someone clue me in please?

Thanks

[NuffM]

Please forgive my ignorance on this subject but I was wondering.

I know (as stated often) that each reel gives you 3-3.5 mins of film ish

But if these are just reels of tape couldn't they have made longer ones? Even with home movies I would think thats a short amount of time to like capture you child's first bike go at riding a bike etc.

Also why did nobody try to double up on their own? Thinking that could be like old camera film, you cant expose it to sunlight which you would obviously have to do.

Can someone clue me in please?

Thanks

Film is not made out of tape. It is made out of film.

Some batches of reels are shorter, some are longer. If you want to shoot longer material then buy a 16mm camera that can shoot for way longer.

[marksturdy]

My guess is that it was mainly down to the physical capacity of the cameras? Point of super 8 being that it was very compact and portable - if you look at the cameras there wasn't a whole lot of room for the reels, so logically you could only get a certain amount of film in there.

I guess they could have just made bigger cameras with bigger reels, but as NuffM says, you may as well go to 16mm if you're doing that.

[madhombre]

Thanks for the history lesson guys appreciate it