My new toy, um tool. Toy or tool??

[GH85Carrera]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B786237W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

$400 bucks, so a sorta expensive gizmo.

When I was cleaning out my parents house after dad died, I found a lot of treasures. One of them was a large box of 8mm movies. From the late 1950 through the mid 1970s. Not just our immediate family, but the movies from my dad's parents, my mom's parents, aunts and uncles. Lot of em.

They had a projector, so I could have watched them, but I wanted them transferred to digital. I checked around and OMG that is expensive. Especially to "just do em all" and figure out what I have afterwards.

So back into the closet they went. Recently I came across them again. Time to look at what is available. I found several different makers of essentially a film scanner for movies.

I set it up yesterday and made some crappy MP4 movies because I missed one little film clip. It is tricky to get the 8mm film aligned across the scanning gate. There are 4 little bitty clip that the film HAS to go under, and then the frame holder is clamped down. And it is critical that the film goes under the first, over the second, under the third, and over the fourth roller then onto the take up spool. If not the movie is as jittery as a kid after a couple of Red Bulls, two Cokes and a bag of M&Ms.

A small reel of film is just 3min and 30 seconds or so. That takes 45 minutes to scan or "convert" to digital. It does not convert anything, it just makes a digital copy right to a SD card. That file is 250MB, in HD resolution. Of course the file is super small, so it is grainy and so not great. I am scanning a 7 inch reel of film now. It looks like that will be 4.5 hours total from turning on the unit, to rewinding it and putting the film away. Only 9 more 7 inch reels to do, and 5 more small ones. The unit runs unattended and just dumps the file to the SD card, so not computer hookup needed.

I found the movie of me riding my bike along side the Apollo 11 "moon bug" containment capsule. I waved to Niel and he waved back so we were buddies. A really exciting parade through downtown San Marcos, TX when LBJ came to town as the POTUS. I got to shake his hand, and we were buddies as well.

No doubt many other family treasures to be found.

In the end, I will upload them all the YouTube so if any of the cousins or my brother want to watch them they can.

I will also store the files on my RAID 5 system.

[Scott Douglas]

Interesting, Glen.
I wonder how doing it your way would compare to say this.
Set up a projector and good screen and show the movies while recording with a good digital camera in say 4k?

[rockfan4]

I would think trying to record a playing 8mm movie would end with a lot of flicker, because the frames would either never be in sync, or would get out of sync.

I haven't met a president yet.
I met the governor of Illinois once. We were on vacation, touring the capital, and I wandered away from my parents and into his office. He gave me a coin with his picture on it.

I also met the king of Norway, shook his hand. He was visiting Westby, WI.

And I'd say tool, because you care about the movies, and I hope you'll share them with family. Now if you were converting the other sort of movies that came in 8mm, that maybe got shown on poker night, I'd say toy.

[pwd72s]

Cool...Memories preserved are precious things...

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by Scott Douglas

Interesting, Glen.
I wonder how doing it your way would compare to say this.
Set up a projector and good screen and show the movies while recording with a good digital camera in say 4k?

That frame of film on 8mm or even Super 8 is tiny. No magic improvement from projecting it and using a 4K camera. That frame of film only has so much data captured.

This scanner stops the frame of film, and essentially has a built in digital camera that takes a full res picture of each frame, then advanced to the next frame and does it again. That is how Hollywood does it with old movies. Of course they have a bit more money invested in the scanner.

At my last job we had a $70,000 fancy scanner to scan our aerial camera film. A 21 micron scan was all the film had to offer. We could scan it at 8 microns, and all it did was make the file bigger and did not bring any extra detail or resolution. We were "busting the grain" of the film. The 12 micron scan was a gigabyte per frame.



This is a scan I did of a 35mm slide. The film edges are not some fancy Photoshop filter, that is the real deal film edges. Notice no blooming of the frame sprockets from the light blasting through unimpeded. The full resolution scan is 120MB, and I have a large print of it on my office wall, without the frame edges. A projector with a perfect flat screen and a high res camera would be a joke compared to the scan from all the extra light in the room.

[Scott Douglas]

I guess I should have made a more complete post. Of course I would control the light in the room and set up the camera so it only had the screen in the view finder. I was thinking while typing but not typing what I was thinking. Sorry.

[GH85Carrera]

Give it a try, it will not cost anything but time.

[Scott Douglas]

Maybe I could 'rube goldburg' a way to run film thru this to make the recordings.

[Norm K]

I'm working on convincing myself to spend the $400 so I can have something more archival than the old 8mm film. I'm concerned the cellulose, of similar age to yours (mid-50s through early 70s) might have turned too brittle to load and run without crumbling, but it's not getting any fresher so I might as well give it a shot.

If it works I might consider doing it for others or even renting the machine to those who'd like to give it a go it themselves. I'd probably offer either the service or the machine for a very nominal charge, as helping people to resurrect long-lost memories would be pretty cool.

_

[masraum]

Cool, I've got pics and some photos of my family and my parents families, but no movies of any sort.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by Norm K

I'm working on convincing myself to spend the $400 so I can have something more archival than the old 8mm film. I'm concerned the cellulose, of similar age to yours (mid-50s through early 70s) might have turned too brittle to load and run without crumbling, but it's not getting any fresher so I might as well give it a shot.

If it works I might consider doing it for others or even renting the machine to those who'd like to give it a go it themselves. I'd probably offer either the service or the machine for a very nominal charge, as helping people to resurrect long-lost memories would be pretty cool.

_

I figure once I have all my stuff scanned, I will sell the scanner.

It is a process that is not bad at all if you can set it up next to you as you do other things. With 3 inch reels it is stop every 45 minutes. There is some dust and "stuff" that ends up on the light source and the film guides that I clean off after every one. Just a Q-tip and some film cleaner and it is clean.

I am scanning a movie I had never seen before, and did not know my parents had. Back when we moved to Hawaii the first time in 1959 Hawaii was not yet a state. My parents were 29, and really got into Polynesian dancing, and Hula. They evidently had a group of people that all dressed up in grass skirts, and the men in the Polynesian style wraps.

Nothing to wild, just a lot of hips wiggling from Hula and Tahitian dancing.

The big celebration of statehood is one of my early memories.

[cstreit]

There are services that will do this for you. Perhaps it would be less than $400

[911_Dude]

There is a market for these things. But the reviews weren't all that encouraging. And scanning time of 10x the movie length time. Sounds like a long time. Ive got a box full of old super 8 from my parents early years and up until maybe early 70's. It would be cool to see them again.

[gregpark]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Nothing to wild, just a lot of hips wiggling from Hula and Tahitian dancing.

The big celebration of statehood is one of my early memories.

But people were dancin pretty wild in the streets celebrating statehood!

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by cstreit

There are services that will do this for you. Perhaps it would be less than $400

All the services charge by the foot. I looked into that, and they would be way more expensive, and I have to ship my movies to them. One of my relatives had their entire collection of home moves lost forever in the mail. Poof Gone.

The 7 inch reel of my parents wedding, and early days before I was born is 70+ years old. When I opened the can it has a sharp smell of vinegar and fixer, and the film is curling and very brittle. I broke off a 18 inch long piece of it just trying to thread it into the scanner. It will not last much longer.

It is wonderful to see my grandparents smiling and in their 50s at the wedding. I just saw my dad's graduation ceremony from Pilot school and getting his wings.

To have total control of the process is way better than hoping some service bureau will take care of my family history. I have uploaded one short 3:15 movie of my cousins at the family picnic, and then the zoo. It it is on YouTube now. I will upload the rest to YouTube as I get them done. No one but the family will ever care, but to see my childhood in "living color" is just cool.

If any of you have home 8mm movies get them converted to HD and in a safe place, they will not last much longer. My mom had some of these converted to VHS decades ago. Those VHS tapes are kinda hard to watch with no VCR, and they are in low def anyway. This is way better.

[Scott Douglas]

Glen, any chance you'd share a link to one of your conversions so we could see what kind of quality you're talking about here?

[GH85Carrera]

Yea, once I get one of the more interesting ones done. Folks may want to see Hawaii in 1959 when we first went there.

[GH85Carrera]

Here is one that is not a great one, but maybe interesting to many.

For the old guys that remember the Apollo 11 moon mission, some worrier types were worried there might be deadly microbes living on the moon, and the astronauts might contaminate the Earth with deadly bugs. When the astronauts returned they were ushered into a containment module. That module on the Navy ship. It docked in Hawaii, and drove over to Hickam AFB and passed within a few blocks of our house. I waved at Niel Armstrong, and he waved back at me.

Anyway this is the 8mm movie my parents shot of the event. Then it goes to me flying model airplanes. Not real exiting stuff.

https://youtu.be/TRq8njALmjM

[Norm K]

Thanks for sharing that, Glen. Cool shots of the procession, and the quality of the film-digital conversion looks more than acceptable - definitely better than I thought it might be.

_

[Scott Douglas]

Thanks Glen. That must have really been something to see those guys after they were on the moon.