If vinyl can be revived by a new generation, what about Super 8? Someone at Kodak must have asked themselves that question, because the company used CES this week as a launchpad for the new Kodak Super 8 Camera.

That's right. Hoping to give filmmakers and videographers the chance to fall in love with a film format the way movie-mad kids did in the 1960s and 1970s, Kodak is launching a Super 8 film camera in 2016.

The Kodak Super 8 Camera takes Kodak cartridges loaded with 50 feet of film. Buying the reel of film includes processing and digital transfer — the lab will send the developed film back to the user, and password-protected video files will be available online for download. 

The camera comes standard with a fixed 6mm Ricoh lens, and an 8–48mm zoom lens will be an option. It shoots at variable frame rates: 9, 12, 18, 24 and 25 fps. Focus and iris control is manual, but the camera does incorporate a 3.5-inch SD TFT LCD viewfinder. The battery is integrated and charges via a USB wall adapter.

Kodak trotted out an army of filmmakers to endorse the new initiative, from Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams ("a dream come true") to Museum Hours director Jem Cohen ("Super 8 … has its own integrity, versatility, and power").

Kodak didn't say when the camera (described in a company press release as "an early prototype") will ship or how much it will cost, but noted that it's part of the company's Kodak's Super 8 Revival Initiative, which it said involves a roadmap for introducing a full line of cameras, along with lab services and post-production software. The Wall Street Journal tried to nail Clarke down on price and availability, and he estimated the camera would ship this fall for somewhere between $400 and $750, with film cartridges running $50–$75. He did tease a lower-cost mass-market version of the camera for release in 2017.