Super 8 auto film scanner...
 

Is it possible to get a super-8 film feeder/scanner thingi.

A thing that would auto feed through the rolls of film and scan each frame as it goes though.. basicly an auto process..


I would be very interested as i love the look of super-8 film... works really well to achieve certain effects.


Kermie

I've never seen a home variety scanner for S-8mm. The usual way is to do it optically with an airial imager. The film is projected into the imager and a video camera is used to capture the airial image and then record to tape. The results are dependant on the quality of several factors. Camera quality, format, lens quality, imager quality and projector quality. The film can be panned and scanned, but that's not home equipment. Costs for those scanners runs into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Jeff

I've never used it, but looks kind of interesting...

http://www.moviestuff.tv/8mm_telecine.html

HTH,
Clayton

if its important footage and you arent really experienced with telecine, its a safe bet to let a lab handle it. someone like pro8mm (www.pro8mm.com) can transfer super-8 to dv or any other tape format for that matter.

I just bought a "Cinemate 20" from Movie Stuff. Took a while as he hand-builds each unit.

Had to fine tune a couple of things but it works well. Right now I'm testing it with my XL1 and getting nice results. Sure beats projecting it onto a smooth white card. And there's virtually no flicker.

The model I got runs at 20 frames/second so the transfer is done in real time. The quality is very good. One problem I ran into is the shadows get crushed due to the video camera's dynamic range being much less than that of reversal color film. I'm hoping to solve that by using a Canon XL1s and adjusting the setup level to avoid crushing the shadows.

There's other models available which will do a frame-by-frame transfer directly into your computer, using Premiere's frame grab feature. It's probably the best way to do it but the process is obviously slower. Less stress on the film, I'd think, and the quality is supposed to be higher. You can adjust the speed later in software.

You can also use software to restore the footage you capture. I'm going to see what I can do with some film of a volcanic eruption here in Hawaii shot by my dad during a trip to Hilo, Hawaii in 1971.