Is anyone else even remotely interested in the huge archives of 16 mm motion-picture film that are out there in the world? If you want to tie it to the “educational purpose” of the 'Space, there are lots of old educational films & so on which would be interesting to watch, or better, to transfer to a modern video format.
There are various ways & means of doing this. I just thought I’d raise the question.
I have my own personal 16mm and 8mm films I would like to transfer, too.
1 Like
Definitely interesting to me! What do we need? I believe we already have one projector (though I don’t know much about it)
There are a lot of different possibilities. I mean, if you look up “telecine” on eBay, you can easily spend several hundred dollars — or buy a new Flashscan for ten times that or more. I have an idea that what’s known as a film editor (a sort of tabletop small-screen projector, used for inspecting rolls of film) combined with a digital camera, & some other accessories, might be able to do the job. Certainly that could be a fun project!
Here’s my plan, which I have invented, although it’s entirely possible others have thought of it.
We have the film being pulled through the editor continuously, by a capstan/pinch-roller system like that of a tape deck. A photodiode detects the sprocket holes, feeding a phase-locked loop which controls the motor speed. (This allows running “shrunken” film.) The same PLL triggers a high-intensity light source (I suggest a white-light LED with a good colour-rendering index) just at the moment the film frame is centered in the editor window. (This calls for certain adjustment controls.) Off to one side, a photodiode reads the soundtrack, with presumably some preamp/equalizer circuit (quite simple).
A camera, I suggest a DSLR for the interchangeable lenses & external microphone input, is set up (perhaps on a special mount) so that the screen of the editor completely fills its frame. The camera is in the video mode, & if it has a shutter-speed control in this mode, that is probably set to the slowest value (requires experimental verification). The whole apparatus is mounted under a cover to preserve the perfect eternal darkness. Ahem.
The setup for 8 mm would be similar, although it would have to deal with the differences between standard & super 8, & possibly super 8 with mag sound. In any case, I would think the necessary apparatus could be put together for a couple of hundred dollars, including the macro lens for the DSLR, but not including the camera itself.
The technique would work best for 16 mm with a camera having a 24p mode. 8 mm runs at 18 frames per second, which is more challenging. A video editing program might allow duplicating or blending frames to fill in for blanks which would occur if photographing at 30 fps (or 29.97). Alternatively, using a camera with a shutter control, the frames of the image could be recorded separately, & merged with the audio in software.
I haven’t scanned any film clips, but I have scanned and edited a lot of film photos. I do OK with small batches, less than a dozen, but I’d rather let a professional service do anything more than that. They have the equipment and skill needed to do a professional job in a short time. I suspect that might be true of film clips, too.
This is perfect for the Archive Subcomittee I’m starting. I have one of those right angle projector to video adapters, but I don’t have a good working projector. I have an (super)8mm one that seemed to break my films. Maybe the film was too bridle or the projector is bad.
One of the advantages of a capstan-drive system would be its gentleness on weak film. As you correctly observe, a projector out of spec can also cause damage.