PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Consumer Grade 8mm Film Digitizers

Sorry for sounding like an infomercial, but if you've got 8mm or Super8 films and have been intending to convert them to video, you might find this useful.

I'd been intending to digitize my parent's stack of 8mm and Super8 films for years, but was put off by the cost. We've got 30-40 small reels, and most of them are over 50 years old. We have old projectors with working bulbs, but nowhere to set them up.

I'd looked at getting one of those film-to-video conversion boxes, where you project the film into one end, and reflects it to a screen, and you photograph it from the other end. I almost picked one up at the thrift store the other month, but they're less than ideal for a whole bunch of reasons - not the least is that they're designed for video cameras, not phones.

But there are now consumer grade film digitizers on the market, and they're relative inexpensive - in the $300-400 USD range. I say "relatively", because it's still a chunk of money, but it's considerably cheaper than transferring the films via a service (although the result will be lower quality than if you use a professional service).

I borrowed one from a friend, and am in the process of digitizing the pile of reels - many of which are over 50 years old.

These work differently than the film-to-video transfer devices. For one thing, the actually photograph the frames, instead of projecting them. This obviously means you won't transfer any audio!

The frame is backlit against a white LED, so it doesn't get hot, so you don't have to worry about the film melting. It also means you don't get added color tint from the projector bulb, a hot spot in the middle of the frame, or the vignetting at the edges. It also reduces the blowout effect of scratches.

It also means you don't have the problem of the film flickering you get when you make a video of film and the camera refresh rate is competing with the projector's shutter rate.

Plus, you can capture the entire width of the frame, including the image between the sprocket holes.

However, there are downsides to this approach.

Since it's consumer grade, they use off-the-shelf components that digitize the frames directly to MP4 video. These hardware is apparently the same as that found in the dashcams so popular in Russia. There's no way to output single frames to your computer - the video goes directly into the MP4, and video compression artifacts are inevitable. The units are all 720p, and even the ones that say they are 1024p are upsampling in software.

You can (and should) adjust the settings - for example, turning off sharpening option - to minimize the effects. But they're still there.

If you stop the film to adjust the settings (such as exposure), it'll start up another video. The video can be edited together using video software, of course.

The video plays back at 18fps, so you'll need to adjust that using other software if you want the frame rate to work.

These are all-in-one units, writing the MP4 files to SD cards. So you'll need a way to transfer the films from the SD card to your computer.

They aren't especially fast, photographing at 2fps, so it takes about half an hour to digitize a small reel.

Finally, it seems to handle 8mm better than Super8. I've been using a friend's unit to digitize the films, and ordered a used unit from Amazon. The used device didn't handle Super8 very well (that's common), so it's going back.

The quality of the images depends on the quality of the film and lighting.

People have DIY projects to replace the video elements in these machines and send the frames output directly to their computers. They've also replaced the built-in camera with their own. Surprisingly, the results aren't all that different - at least, not on a regular monitor. The main difference is that they are able to avoid compression artifacts.

I've attached an example which is about average - I've converted films that look much better, as well as much worse! Keep in mind that motion tends to lessen the graininess. This particular shot comes from an 8mm film shot indoors with a camera using a mounted spolight, which is why the faces are a bit washed out. I'd forgotten how hot and bright those camera lights were!

All in all, I'd suggest if you've got a bunch of 8mm films you want to transfer, it could be well worth your time to get one of these. The Wolverine seems to be the best of the bunch, with the Magnasonic being a decent clone using essentially the same hardware.